Megyn Kelly

• 1. Introduction

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  Megyn Kelly stood on a rally stage in Pittsburgh on the 4th of November 2024, one day before the presidential election, and endorsed Donald Trump. She told the crowd he would be a "protector" of women. Afterward she posted a selfie with him on X and captioned it "God bless him. Go vote for him!" During the 2016 campaign, the same man had called her "nasty" after a widely publicized debate exchange. That reversal is only one turn in a career with many. Kelly trained as a lawyer, became a nightly cable news anchor, lost a network job, and then built an audience with no network behind her. How does a litigator end up in front of the cameras? Why did a clash with a presidential candidate make her famous? And what happens to a television star when the television is gone?

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• 2. Courtroom to Camera

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  Megyn Marie Kelly was born on the 18th of November 1970 in Champaign, Illinois. Her father, Edward Francis Kelly, taught in the School of Education at the State University of New York at Albany. Her mother, Linda, stayed home. Kelly grew up Catholic, with an older sister, Suzanne, and an older brother, Pete. Her early schooling was at Tecumseh Elementary School near Syracuse. When she was nine, the family moved to Delmar, New York, a suburb of Albany.

  Her father died of a heart attack in 1985, when she was 15. She went on to Bethlehem Central High School, then studied political science at Syracuse University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1992. At Albany Law School she was an editor of the Albany Law Review. She earned her Juris Doctor in 1995.

  Her first legal job was as an associate attorney in the Chicago office of Bickel & Brewer. In fall 1996 she co-wrote an article titled "The Conflicting Roles of Lawyer as Director" for Litigation, the American Bar Association's journal. She later spent nine years at Jones Day, where one of her clients was the credit bureau Experian. Along the way, she married the anesthesiologist Daniel Kendall in 2001. They divorced in 2006. In 2008 she married Douglas Brunt, a technology executive who later became a writer and podcaster. The couple has three children, all conceived through in vitro fertilization.

  Honors from her old schools came later. Albany Law School gave her an Alumni Achievement Award in 2010, timed to her 15th class reunion. On the 26th of September 2015, Bethlehem Central High School inducted her into its Hall of Fame.

  The move to television came in 2003, when she went to Washington, D.C., as a general assignment reporter for the ABC affiliate WJLA-TV. She covered the confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito and John Roberts, the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. She also covered the 2004 presidential election. Years later, CNN president Jonathan Klein said he regretted not hiring her at the start of her career. In his words, she was "the one talent you'd want to have from somewhere else".

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• 3. Afternoons at Fox

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  Kelly applied to Fox News in 2004, and her early work there was almost entirely legal. She contributed legal segments to Special Report with Brit Hume. She hosted her own segment, Kelly's Court, on Weekend Live. She appeared weekly on The O'Reilly Factor and sometimes filled in for Greta Van Susteren on On the Record. Most of her anchoring was as a weekend substitute. She also sat on the panel of the late-night satire show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld.

  On the 1st of February 2010, she took over the two-hour afternoon slot with America Live, replacing The Live Desk. Viewership rose 20 percent that year, to an average of 1,293,000 viewers. Among viewers aged 25 to 54, it rose 4 percent, to an average of 268,000. She co-anchored America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and hosted a New Year's Eve special with him in December 2010.

  Election night in 2012 gave her a defining moment. Fox News' decision desk projected that Barack Obama had won Ohio and a second term. Republican operative Karl Rove objected on air. Kelly walked backstage, with a camera following, to question the decision desk directly. She also asked Rove, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?"

  She left America Live in July 2013 and took maternity leave. That October she returned with a nightly program, The Kelly File. It sometimes beat The O'Reilly Factor in the ratings.

  The new show brought controversy too. In December 2013, she discussed a Slate article arguing that Santa Claus might be black. She said Santa is white, and later in the segment said the same of Jesus. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow and Josh Barro were among those who satirized her. Two days later she called her remarks "tongue-in-cheek" and said the skin color of Jesus is "far from settled".

  A 2009 award from Childhelp recognized her coverage of child abuse. In June 2015, she interviewed Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting about their son Josh's alleged molestation of five girls in 2002. She later spoke with two of their daughters, Jill and Jessa. That episode drew 3.09 million viewers, against an average of 2.11 million. Only coverage of the Ferguson riots, at 7.3 million, had drawn a bigger crowd.

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• 4. Debate Night

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  On the 6th of August 2015, Kelly asked Donald Trump a question that set off a long public fight. At a Republican presidential debate, she noted that he had called various women insulting names. She asked whether a man of his temperament should be president. Trump attacked her professionalism, and she answered that she would not "apologize for doing good journalism".

  The feud shaped the next campaign season. Trump declined to attend the Iowa debate that she moderated on the 28th of January 2016. Senator Ted Cruz said that she had called Trump "Voldemort" off-camera, though Fox News denied it. Bill Maher said she was "so much better" than the candidates who did show up, and argued she would make a more viable Republican nominee. The Atlantic reported that Rupert Murdoch had "ordered" her "to hit Trump hard".

  Kelly told CBS News Sunday Morning she was disappointed by the lack of support from colleague Bill O'Reilly and from CNN. CNN had aired a Trump event at the same time as the debate. The following April, at her request, she met Trump at Trump Tower, hoping for "a chance to clear the air". After interviewing him the next month, she said she would like to do it again, though reaction to that interview was mixed. In June she criticized his claims about the impartiality of judge Gonzalo P. Curiel.

  October 2016 brought another viral clash. On The Kelly File, she argued with Newt Gingrich over Trump's sexual comments on a 2005 audio recording, and the exchange spread widely on social media.

  She returned to the moderator's desk on the 6th of December 2023, co-hosting the fourth Republican primary debate on NewsNation with Elizabeth Vargas and Eliana Johnson. It was her first presidential debate since her Fox days. The event was hosted by independent media figures, part of the Republican National Committee's shift toward alternative platforms. Trump, the leading candidate, did not take part.

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• 5. Leaving Fox

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  In May 2016, a sweeps month, Fox broadcast a one-hour prime-time special in which Kelly interviewed celebrities. It had been announced that March. The special drew 4.8 million viewers but placed third in its time slot. Writer Gabriel Sherman noted that she was in the final year of her contract, calling the special "essentially a public interview for her next job".

  Her profile was rising on other fronts. She appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in February 2016. That same month she signed with HarperCollins to write an autobiography, in a deal worth more than $10 million. The book, Settle for More, came out on the 15th of November 2016.

  In July 2016, reports said Kelly had confirmed that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had sexually harassed her too. The reports arrived amid wider harassment allegations against him. Two days later Ailes resigned. His lawyer, Susan Estrich, publicly denied the charge.

  Coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland brought a different kind of attention, as critics picked at her clothing. Jenavieve Hatch of The Huffington Post defended her, writing that a woman in a weather-appropriate outfit on national television becomes a target for sexist commentary. Also in 2016, Variety named her a Power of Women honoree for her work addressing child abuse. In September she was reported to be working with Michael De Luca on Embeds, a scripted comedy about reporters covering politics.

  By late 2016, rumors had her weighing offers from other networks. In January 2017, The New York Times reported that she would join NBC News in a "triple role". It included a daytime talk show, a Sunday-night newsmagazine, and duty as a correspondent on major events. She left Fox on the 6th of January 2017, after the final Kelly File. People magazine reported that a non-compete clause might keep her off a rival network until July 2017.

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• 6. Rise and Fall at NBC

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  On the 2nd of June 2017, Kelly sat across from Russian president Vladimir Putin. First she moderated a panel with him at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. She then conducted a one-on-one interview for the premiere of Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, which aired on the 4th of June 2017.

  Her daytime show, Megyn Kelly Today, premiered in September 2017. Reports put her NBC pay at between $15 million and $20 million a year. Sunday Night ran eight episodes in the summer of 2017. NBC then said it would return in spring 2018 after a break for football and the Winter Olympics, but only occasionally. That return never happened. She instead reported stories for Dateline NBC through the summer of 2018.

  On the 23rd of October 2018, Kelly spoke on her show about blackface in Halloween costumes. She recalled that when she was a kid, it "was okay as long as you were dressing up like a character". She also defended Luann de Lesseps, who had used skin-darkening spray to dress as Diana Ross. Backlash came fast, and Kelly sent an internal email of apology that same day.

  Three days later, NBC canceled Megyn Kelly Today. It had been reported that she was already considering ending the show to focus on being a correspondent. NBC ended her employment on the 11th of January 2019 and paid her the $30 million remaining on her contract.

  Fox's turmoil later became a movie. Bombshell, released on the 13th of December 2019, dramatized Roger Ailes' sexual misconduct and resignation. Charlize Theron played Kelly and received an Oscar nomination for the role. Kelly said she had not been consulted. After watching the film, she hosted a roundtable with people involved, confirming and disputing parts of it, and called the experience emotional.

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• 7. Going Independent

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  The 10th of September 2020 marked the launch of Devil May Care Media, Kelly's production company, with a podcast called The Megyn Kelly Show. The first episode premiered on the 28th of September 2020. In July 2021, it was announced that the show would move to SiriusXM on the 7th of September 2021. It airs weekdays at noon Eastern on the talk radio channel Triumph, with a video simulcast for subscribers.

  The numbers grew quickly. In July 2023, her YouTube channel drew 116.8 million views, more than NBC News at 78 million and CBS News at 83 million in the same month. By November 2025, the channel had over 4 million subscribers, and the show ranked among the top ten podcasts in the United States. It did this with a small team.

  Opportunities beyond the studio followed. In early 2023, Kelly said she had to join SAG-AFTRA for a secret project. On the 30th of November 2023, she revealed it on her show. She would appear alongside Danny Trejo, Roseanne Barr and Adam Carolla in Mr. Birchum, an adult animated comedy from the Daily Wire that debuted in early 2024.

  On the 18th of February 2025, she announced a second podcast, AM Update with Megyn Kelly, which premiered the next day. Where the main show relies on guests and debates, AM Update is a daily digest of the major headlines. On the 10th of March 2025, she won the iHeartRadio podcast award for Best Political Podcast.

  That same month she launched MK Media, a podcast and video network. Its first lineup was Next Up with Mark Halperin, The Nerve with Maureen Callahan, and Spot On with Link Lauren. Her longtime producer Steve Krakauer oversees production. After Party with Emily Jashinsky joined in June 2025. On the 6th of May 2025, her podcast ranked third among right-wing podcasts by subscribers for the first quarter. It had the fastest year-over-year growth at 176 percent, and she was the only woman in the top ten.

  Time has named her to its list of the 100 most influential people twice, in 2014 and again in 2025.

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• 8. Views and Breaks

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  Kelly has been a registered independent voter since 2008. In 2015 she told Variety that she had voted for both Democrats and Republicans. In April 2024, she said she had voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and would do so again. She tied the choice to transgender issues and cultural changes that she said were affecting her children. She described it as a vote of principle rather than personal preference.

  On her show in 2025, she described how far she had moved. At Fox and then NBC, she said, she was center-right. Now, by today's standards, she called herself "pretty conservative". She credited the change to her critics, saying their "woke ideology completely radicalized me against them".

  Her positions on gender are among her sharpest. In 2023, she said she had shifted from supporting "preferred pronouns" to opposing them, citing their link to gender-affirming care for minors. She said she would still approach transgender people with empathy. She also opposes including transgender women in women's spaces and sports. She has appeared at a fundraiser for Moms for Liberty and at Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit.

  On guns, her stance is mixed. After the August 2025 shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, she said broad reform would not work in a country with so many firearms. "The bad guys are the ones who get them," she said, while "you would just be disarming the law-abiding ones". She backed flagging people with serious mental health histories, adding that she was "more to the left on that issue than a lot of my conservative friends". She has also called for "more good guys with guns on soft targets".

  The relationship with Trump broke again on the 2nd of March 2026. On her show, she criticized his military action against Iran. Referring to four service members killed in the 2026 Iran war, she said she did not think they died for the United States. "This is clearly Israel's war," she added. That day, in a phone interview with Rachael Blade of The Inner Circle, Trump said Kelly and fellow commentator Tucker Carlson "aren't MAGA".

  Two weeks later, she defended Joe Kent, a former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, as the administration moved to investigate him. Kent appeared on her show on the 20th of March 2026 and said he had no regrets about breaking with the administration over the war, though he feared retaliation. He also alleged that the administration had not done enough to investigate the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

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