It took barely a day for Megyn Kelly’s new book to attract a torrent of bad reviews on Amazon — many of them, it seems, from Donald Trump supporters determined to bash the Fox News host, who has had a tense relationship with the president-elect.
“Received as a gift because I used to watch Fox News,” one reviewer wrote on Wednesday, referring to “Settle for More,” Kelly’s memoir published Tuesday. “I am into real journalism nowadays.”
“She is an insult to women journalists,” another wrote. In fact, as of Wednesday night, 62 percent of the 158 reviews for Kelly’s book were one star, the lowest rating in Amazon’s five-star system.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the wave of bad notices appeared after a Reddit forum espousing Trump and his views urged users to troll the Kelly book and provided a link to her Amazon page. “It would be a shame if her biased reporting was reflected in the customer reviews!,” the Reddit post said.
A spokesman for HarperCollins, Kelly’s publisher, told The Times: “It has the hallmarks of an orchestrated effort to discredit the book and our author Megyn Kelly. We have brought it to the attention of Amazon.”
Amazon often removes reviews that are found to violate the company’s “Community Guidelines,” which are posted on the site. Among other rules, those guidelines tell users: “Don’t attempt to drown out other people’s opinions, including by posting from multiple accounts or coordinating with others.”
Some of the negative reviews were evidently purged Wednesday, but many others remained.
Kelly clashed with Trump during a Republican primary debate last year, when she asked the candidate about comments comparing women to “fat pigs” and “dogs.” Trump later responded by saying that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” during the debate – a comment that many took as a reference to menstruation.
Kelly has since revealed that after the fight intensified, she felt the need to travel with a security detail. She has also had a public spat recently with colleague Bill O’Reilly, who has accused her of making Fox News “look bad” with her allegations that former network boss Roger Ailes sexually harassed her.