'Genuinely angry': Megyn Kelly defends her flip-flop on Trump

Former Fox News Megyn Kelly once had a very adversarial relationship with Donald Trump and his supporters, some of whom were so angry at her in 2016 that she needed an armed bodyguard for protection. But in 2024, the far-right pundit appeared onstage with Trump and gave him a passionate endorsement.

In a Q&A interview published by the New York Times on March 29, Kelly details her transition from Trump foe to passionate Trump defender.

Kelly was still with Fox News when Trump became furious over her coverage and some of his supporters threatened her with violence. And journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro, during the Times interview, noted her need for "armed bodyguards."

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"In the beginning," Kelly told the Times, "I think he was genuinely angry…. It was such an annoying nine months. I did not want to take an armed guard to Disney World. I did not want this to go on and on. I knew it wasn't good for me as a journalist, as a Fox News host or as a person to have this level of acrimony constantly aimed at me, and I desperately wanted him to just lay off. So it was just a stressful time when you're waiting for somebody who's very angry with you and toying with you to get focused on something else."

But in 2024, Kelly appeared onstage with Trump at a campaign rally and endorsed him — a move that, many Trump critics argued, showed a total lack of journalistic ethics.

Kelly, however, defended that endorsement during the Times interview, stressing that her focus is on commentary — not hard news — these days, and she isn't claiming otherwise.

When Garcia-Navarro noted that she crossed a "red line for most journalists," Kelly responded, "There's no question that I owned my bias on Trump and crossed a line that I had never crossed before, and never would have crossed when I was still straight news, ever. It's just this weird new hybrid lane I'm in that even made it a possibility in my mind, that I even allowed myself to consider saying yes to the invitation, and it was another before-and-after moment, because for sure, you're crossing a line. But I had crossed it prior to then."

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Read the New York Times' full interview with Megyn Kelly at this link (subscription required).