In what appears to be an effort to make the fourth Republican primary debate a splashy and gossip-inducing TV special, the Republican National Committee has announced via a press release that one of the moderators of the December 6th event will be former Fox News anchor, Megyn Kelly. Kelly is not a totally shocking choice, despite her controversy, since she has been a presidential debate moderator before. But she seems to be approaching the role with a strange brand of gusto.
“It will be the margarita of debates — spicy, fun and somewhat intoxicating,” Kelly said in the RNC press release. And I’m sorry, what? What in the strip mall Tex-Mex family restaurant does that mean?
If the fourth debate, is going to be “fun” it will certainly be a departure from the last one, which featured a truly surprisingly long and irrelevant discussion of navy ships. Perhaps the so-called “spice” in the “margarita” of a Kelly-hosted debate will be her long history of making strikingly racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ+ remarks on-air.
From defending blackface to telling kids “Santa is just white…Jesus was a white man too,” to tweeting that it genuinely brought her joy to see Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush be “triggered” by the history of slavery, she’s done it all unapologetically.
Kelly now hosts a podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, on SiriusXM, but she was once on NBC, and before that, she was Fox News’ Top Blonde Anchor with her own show, The Kelly File. Her career since the 2016 election cycle has not been smooth. It’s hard to forget the Trump vs. Kelly feud of the 2016 presidential election when Trump said some pretty unprofessional and extremely misogynistic things to Kelly after she didn’t back down while questioning him at a Republican primary debate.
After Kelly tried to direct the debate toward his treatment of women, saying things like “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,” Trump got nasty, firing back with the now famous line he told CNN: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” This feud was the beginning of the end for Kelly at Fox News.
After leaving Fox News, Kelly went to NBC for a couple of years but was met with the termination of her contract. NPR called her career breakdown an “implosion.”
The other moderators announced for the December 6 debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama are NewsNation anchor Elizabeth Vargas and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon.
(featured image: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images)
