SiriusXM show host Megyn Kelly defended Donald Trump’s ribbing of Chris Christie during a recent campaign event in which he made fun of the former New Jersey governor’s weight.
Former Fox News star anchor Kelly’s relationship with the thrice-indicted, twice-impeached former President Trump has proved to be a long, mixed bag of public insults, recriminations, make-ups and mutual admiration. Kelly reasoned on her show that it was OK that Trump castigated Christie with a “fat pig” joke because the former New Jersey governor had repeatedly criticized Trump’s criminal behavior.
“Every chance he gets he calls Trump a ‘criminal,’” Kelly said Thursday during her interview of U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas. “I’d rather somebody call me a ‘fat pig’ than a criminal.”
Trump’s comments came during a campaign stop Tuesday in a New Hampshire high school gym.
“Christie, he’s eating right now. He can’t be bothered,” Trump said.
“Don’t call him a ‘fat pig,’ you can’t do that,” Trump then said, pointing to an audience member before repeating himself.
Kelly insisted Trump supporters of all shapes and sizes would not be offended by such a comment.
“I don’t think there’s one heavyset Trump supporter who actually is going to be offended thinking, ‘Oh, he must think I’m a fat pig,’” Kelly said. “Like he’s using these very derogatory terms to insult somebody who he can’t stand. Trump’s admitted that he himself has got a bit of a weight problem in the past.”
“Like, if you’re going to get nasty with him, he’s going to get nasty with you,” Kelly added later. From the beginning of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Christie has cast himself as an outlier among GOP candidates by using Trump’s indictments and pending indictments against him.
But Kelly’s own past with Trump includes the former president leveling his Twitter aim at her after he didn’t like the way she moderated a 2016 presidential debate. She has in the years since said they mended fences, despite at one time revealing he threatened her.
Hunt, who represents a Texas district in the Houston area, called Trump’s fat jokes appropriate political discourse and said they were a natural reaction to Christie’s criticisms.
“This is theater. This is politics,” Hunt said in the SiriusXM interview with Kelly. “And President Trump gets this better than anybody else. He knows how to appropriately attack his opponent, to drive their polling numbers down, to get them out of the race. And that’s exactly what he’s doing.”
For his part, Christie dared Trump to call him a “fat pig” to his face.
“There are tens of millions of Americans that struggle with their weight the same way I struggle with my weight,” Christie said. “And they look at somebody who talks like that and they say, that’s a child. That’s a child.”
Watch the full SiriusXM interview segment in video at the top of this post, via YouTube.
