Fox News has a reputation for presenting a conservative bias, but Megyn Kelly assured “Tonight Show” audiences on Monday that she is “a straight news anchor,” unlike her colleagues who specialize in opinion.
“I’m a straight news anchor. I’m not one of the opinion hosts at Fox,” the “Kelly File” host told Jay Leno. “But I always laugh because I’ll have a conservative pull me aside and say, ‘I love your conservative principles.’ And I’ll say,’You assume too much.’”
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Don’t assume she leans left, either.
“And then I’ll have the liberals pull me aside and say, ‘I know you’re one of us.’ And I’ll say, ‘You assume too much,’” Kelly continued. “But I always tell people if they think that I’m this conservative operative, ask Karl Rove if that’s true.”
Kelly may have been referencing her network’s coverage of the 2012 election, which Rove argued until the bitter end that Mitt Romney had a chance to beat President Barack Obama — even after Fox had called the election in Obama’s favor. Kelly called the exchange “awkward” at the time.
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“The way we do it on the Fox News Channel is the straight news anchors give a hard time to both sides,” Kelly said. “I don’t care about pandering to the left or the right, I care about protecting my audience. My boss, Roger Ailes, pays me a decent amount of money to go out there and ask questions, because he thinks I know the questions my audience wants answers to.”
While Kelly appears to pride herself on the distinction between “news anchor” and “opinion hosts” on Fox, she isn’t afraid to clash with guests. And one of the “most contentious” she’s ever had on the air was Anthony Weiner.
“He was so full of hubris, and he was so sort of in your face,” Kelly said. “If you were walking around with that kind of secret, and you were going on the national news, wouldn’t you sort of dial it back a little bit?”
Watch what she has to say about the disgraced former Congressman and New York City mayoral candidate in the video, below: