Megyn Kelly came to the defense of Donald Trump following a widely criticized interview he gave at the National Association for Black Journalists’ annual convention on Wednesday, slamming the ABC News representative who opened up with a tough question for the Republican candidate.
“To me, it’s so funny. All [of the] white liberals being like, ‘Ah! He’s horrible,’” Kelly began the segment. She claimed that “actual Black people all over Twitter” didn’t think it was a big deal, adding that they were “posting videos of themselves watching it and tweeting about it being like, ‘And?’”
The former Fox News journalist, later turning to the meta-discussion of Trump’s appearance, made racially charged comments about the journalists involved.
“I wasn’t aware as a journalist myself of the rule that you cannot attack Black journalists. I’m just now finding this out that they are too fragile, I guess, for us to call them names,” Kelly said. She continued on the same track before taking a turn back to praise some Black journalists, adding, “Does the Black skin make them just completely weak and unable to take criticism, because that’s not true of the amazing Black journalists I know.”
During the segment, the host described Trump giving interviews to a panel of Black journalists at the event as the former president going “into the lion’s den.”
“This reporter Rachel Scott from ABC News, decides to open up the event with the nastiest question she could dream of,” Kelly said, echoing Trump’s complaints about the question that cited Trump’s own prior statements about Black people.
“I will just tell you as a journalist who has asked Trump very hard questions, I thought this was grossly inappropriate,” Kelly said. “It’s not a presidential debate. That is not how you begin an interview. He does not — unlike a presidential debate — have to be there.”
Kelly famously received highly critical, sexist comments from Trump during the 2016 campaign and was even defended by 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but Kelly has since turned around on Trump and come out as a strong supporter of his in the 2024 race, doubling down on that support following the recent attempted assassination of the former president.
Scott’s opening question for Trump was, “You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen of color, who were American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabid’ to describe Black district attorneys. You have attacked Black journalists, calling them a ‘loser,’ saying the questions they ask are, quote, ‘stupid’ and ‘racist.’ You’ve had dinner with a White supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So my question, sir — now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
Trump responded at the time, “Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so — in such a horrible manner, first question,” before adding that ABC is a “fake news network” and “terrible.”
“There’s an understanding of presidential debates in the primary contest that you will be there, at least back then when it was unclear he was going to win it anyway,” Kelly said. However, Trump notably didn’t participate in primary debates during the 2024 primary. Kelly shared Trump’s frustration that he attended while Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, citing scheduling conflicts, did not attend in person.
“You can ask some tough questions, but there should be a crescendo and decrescendo,” Kelly argued of how the interview should have been structured. “And by the way, the question should be fact-based and she put a lot of non-facts in her question as though they were true. So I did have a problem with what she did, though I liked tough questions as a general principle.”
You can watch the full “Megyn Kelly Show” segment in the video above.
