This F*cking Guy: Megyn Kelly

Welcome to another episode of this fucking guy, the show where we spotlight one fucking guy making America worse and explain why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. And I'm Alyssa Mastermonico, the other host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. There are some stars who are known for their ability to reinvent themselves, like Madonna, Beyonce, David Bowie. There are others who can't quite make it, not come across as though they're clout chasing ponies. Like the cracker barrel logo, or Justin Timberlake. And today's fucking guy. Some irrespected journalists turn perpetually apoplectic pod Karen, Megan Kelly. At first glance, Kelly is a woman of infinite ambition. But looking closer, she's the JoJo Siwa of the right. Willing to dawn, ideology like egregious blonde utalk curl hair extensions, if set extensions get her more money and attention. Which to be fair is what most people in media are trying to do. But most people, even the phonies, are better at feigning authenticity than Kelly is. And to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we should be careful who we pretend to be. After this, many iterations of Megan that look a lot like opportunistic pretending, I don't even know if Megan Kelly knows who the real Megan Kelly is. I just hope at this point when she looks in the mirror, she doesn't think she sees Charley's there on, but more on that later, Charley's there and would never with the extensions. Megan Marie Kelly, which is spelled M-E-G-Y-N, because it's short for Meg Geinecologist Kelly, was born on November 18th, 1970 in Champaign, Illinois. The youngest of three children, her dad Edward was an education professor at SUNY Albany. Her mom Linda was a nurse. Her dad's job moved the family to a small suburb of Albany called Delmar when she was nine. Delmar is known for its treeline street, small town feel, and about 20 years ago was named one of the best places to live by CNN Money magazine. How do people in Delmar feel about her now? Well, Kelly was inducted into Bethlehem Central High School's alumni hall of fame a few years back. But after she made her insane comments, defending Jeffrey Epstein last November, a petition garnered more than 800 signatures to have her name removed. Somewhere between Megan getting inducted in 2021 and Megan losing her marbles in 2025, her high school scrapped the alumni hall of fame entirely. But in high school, Megan lived the 80s suburban dream. She had big puffy, aquanet hair. She was co-captain of the cheerleading squad. Somebody who knew her back then tells hysteria that there were no indications that she would grow up to be such a jerk. She was a popular cheerleader, but she wasn't a mean popular cheerleader, although that's not her original nose. When her dad died when she was 15, the family had to scrape by on her mother's salary, but that didn't stop Megan from dreaming big. In her high school yearbook, she set her three goals where college government wealth. She once took a career aptitude test that determined that the ideal job for her would be news. But Syracuse University disagreed. She was denied admission to the school's broadcast journalism program in the 80s and was forced to settle for studying political science instead. After Syracuse, she went to SUNY Albany for law school. She did normal law school things like edit the law review, alongside slightly less normal law school things like sit on a panel that reviewed sexual misconduct complaints against faculty members. Kelly has said that this experience made her want to be a prosecutor until she discovered what prosecutors make. Megan wants money, remember? So she became a corporate lawyer and did a little aerobics instructing on the side. She even appeared as a backup extra in an ab-focused workout video. I looked for this footage, couldn't find it. I'm sure it was great, though. I'm sure it was like '90s' tactic. Megan had it all. Good job, abs, a doctor husband named Daniel Kendall, a new nose at some point. According to the Daily Mail, she and the anesthesiologist had a beautiful church wedding in Chicago 18 days after 9/11 in 2001, followed by a reception at the Waldorf. The couple were picked up in Rolls Royce. Not even Osama bin Laden could stop Megan Kelly's wedding reception. That's ambition. Eventually, Megan's law career propelled her to conservative Goober mega-firm Jones day. And for clients was experienced. The credit reporting bureau. An inspiring story of a teacher and a nurse's kid from Albany growing up to stand up for the big guy. Megan hated corporate law because everybody hates corporate law. It's miserable. Of her decision to quit the legal profession, she said, quote, "I knew it was time to get out one day. It was around my six-year practice when I was driving home on the Kennedy in Chicago. It was 3 a.m. Tears were pouring down my face. I was so exhausted and I thought to myself, what if I just had a car accident where I broke a bone. I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want to die. But if I just broke my femur, that would keep me out of work for a good three months." Honestly, relatable. Who hasn't fantasized about getting hit by a car during a bad week at work? Except maybe me once. By the early 2000s, the woman then known as Megan Kendall was ready to move on to the exciting world of local news. As the story goes, Kendall and a friend produced a demo tape of her doing her best journalist impersonation and started cold-calling local station managers. It must have been a pretty good demo tape, as in 2003, local ABC affiliate W.J.L.A. TV hired her as a general assignment reporter. Among the stories she covered in local news were Samuel Alito and John Roberts Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The station's news director Bill Lord later told a profiler that he'd literally never hired somebody off the street with no journalism experience before. Is Megan Kelly enough? 2004, Megan Kelly would say this is an insane conspiracy theory not worthy of discussion as there are no facts to back it up. 2026, Megan Kelly would do five different shows on it and somehow figure out a way to call Megan Markle a bitch in the process. The local station was in the process of hiring Kelly for a full-time job in 2004, but she got restless and she just sent her tape to the Fox News Washington bureau chief Kim Hume, the wife of Anchorman, Britt Hume. These all seem like very ambitious moves, like going to the NFL con by an after-getting second place in a local, pun-pass and kick competition. Richard Hume was impressed, writing in Time Magazine years later, he'd say of Megan. She was a lawyer and new to the business, but her tape displayed as full a set of the qualities of a network correspondent as I've ever seen. Great looks, strong voice, authoritative yet cheerful presence and obvious intelligence, in other words, limitless potential. As Hume implied, Megan had something special working in her favor. She was hot. And Fox News chief Roger Ailes was indomitably unstoppably horny when Hume set Ailes then Megan Kendall's tape Ailes, finely attuned journalistic sensibilities and penis had a positive reaction. Here's what he told one reporter years into her Fox News success, but before her testimony about Ailes' sexual harassment would be instrumental in bringing him down. Quote, "She's obviously a beautiful girl, beautiful woman and very intelligent law degree, a lot of credentials there. She has an excellent voice and a lot of people overlook voice." Roger, it's her voice Ailes. Not long after her hiring by Fox News, Kelly's first marriage would end. As she and her first husband had been pretty mom about the forces driving them apart, but years later, on two separate occasions, Kelly implied in interviews that she'd been cheated on, but not by her current husband. So it sounded like she was implying that her first husband had been the cheater. Yes, which is what prompted her ex to speak to the Daily Mail, clarifying that cheating wasn't what drove them apart. And rather, it was just a clash of personalities. He told the Mail, quote, "I wanted a wife and she wanted a wife. We both needed someone to cook and clean and support us. She has very much a type A personality. I couldn't imagine her staying at home. She needed more of a type B husband. Sometimes with two professionals, it doesn't work out. We were both working extremely hard and both excelling at what we did." Print that, Evie Magazine. The entire birth rate crisis in this country is due to the fact that everybody wants to have a wife and nobody wants to be a wife, because wives get all the shitty jobs. Absolutely. So, freshly divorced, Kelly, the upstart Fox News contributor, had a star-making moment in 2006, when a 27-year-old stripper accused three duke lacrosse players of raping her at a party where she'd been hired to provide entertainment. The accuser was black, the accused were white, and most national news coverage treated her accusations as though this was yet another case of entitled racist white boys praying on a marginalized woman. But as more information came to light, the prosecutor's case fell apart. Kelly had been among the first national news personalities to question the woman's narrative, and when the players were exonerated from the rape, but not the racism, she went from being a figure of national scorn to one who had taken a risky stance and was proven correct. Ails was Kelly's most powerful champion at Fox, but he wasn't the only sex pest that would help develop Megan Kelly, journalist. During her early years, she would often appear alongside another famed sex pest Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly would use the diminutive terms "miss Megan" and call her an "anchorette" during these affectionately adversarial appearances. In a 2010 interview with GQ featuring a photo of Megan awkwardly posing on a chair as though letting out a giant fart, Kelly said of O'Reilly. He really looks out for young women. That's a fact. Now looking out for young women is an odd way to say he was harassing them. In 2017, O'Reilly was dismissed from the network after the New York Times revealed that Fox News had settled half a dozen sexual harassment lawsuits for the bow-tie spinning amount of $45 million. O'Reilly was on tape calling female colleagues and appearing to masturbate on the phone, among other gross things. But I digress. A couple of years into her Fox News tenure, an internet entrepreneur named Doug Brunt convinced a mutual friend to set him up on a date with the sassy blonde Fox News lady he had a crush on. In 2008, Kelly and Brunt were married. Kelly had their first child, a boy named Yates. In 2009, a second child, a girl named Yardley in 2011, and their third, a boy named Thatcher in 2013. Those are horse names. Also, as a fellow hard driving lady who waited in until the very last possible second have children. In the moments before my eggs shriveled into tiny little pellets, I completely respect and support that timeline for motherhood. Wait until the last minute, that's what I say. But imagining being pregnant and going through childbirth, her third time at age 43, is making me want to jump ass first into a vat of ice. Not to mention, she was still ascendant at Fox during those years. She got her own show in 2010. How did she manage to continue climbing at Fox while having three babies in six years? Well, Alyssa, Fox News is maternity leave policy, meant that she was able to recover from childbirth and bond with her babies without endangering her job, as all women should be allowed to do. Wow, the same kind of policy that Fox News personalities rail against the rest of the country having guaranteed access to. Absolutely. The second reason, the second reason Megan Kelly was able to have the high powered career and the family at the same time without losing her marbles was that in 2011, Douglas Brunt sold his company so that he could stay home and write novels, while packing the kit's lunches and doing things like school pickups and diaper changes in bedtime. So Megan Kelly has what cultural conservatives would characterize as a wife. Yes, and feminists would call a decent husband. During this time, Kelly hadn't gone full asshole yet. She was still Megan 1.0, the formidable, self-styled, independent voice of reason, alongside other more strident Fox News personalities. The start of peak Megan Kelly 1.0 came on election night, 2012, when a pompous and delusional Karl Rove insisted that the Fox News decision desk projection that gave Ohio to Obama, and thus handed him the election, was flawed. And then this happened. Karl Rove is now here, along with Michael Barone, who's been back there with the decision desk. And we'd like to refer to this as Cage Match 2012. Bring it, go. We got half the precincts in Cuyahoga County still. I just-- there are some Republican suburbs in Cuyahoga County. But the precincts that are in her about 68% of Obama, was about 68% of Obama four years ago. So I'm just raising the question of our responsibility to call these things when it appears to ordinary Americans that we are not leading the pack for the sake of leading the pack. Now, this is not a Cage Match, as you-- No, it's a respectful discussion. It's going to be between 2,000,000 guys. The next fall, her prime time show The Kelly File launched. It quickly became a huge hit. During these years, Kelly sometimes had moments that caused feminists to scratch their heads before offering reluctant applause. Like in 2011, when a conservative radio host named Mike Gallagher whined to her colleague, Chris Wallace, that Kelly taking maternity leave was a racket. After she returned from leave, she ripped a new one on her show. Would you care to explain those remarks, Mr. Gallagher? Maternity leave? It's a racket? Well, first of all, everybody on your show, their rats and traders. I kept saying, when this first hit the fan, I said, please tell me, I want to get to Megan. Did she hear it? Is she aware of it? No response? It was crickets. So everybody-- You know, not only that, but I gave a couple of views this over the summer to some publications. And the reporters all asked me about it, saying, how about this pinhead, Mike Gallagher? And I said, yeah, he is. Right. What a moron I think to say. Well, I mean, let's-- well, are you going to disagree that there is-- Now, again, I'm on my knees-- Are you doubling down? No, no, no, no, no. Are you not taking those remarks back? Is maternity leave according to you a racket? Well, do men get maternity leave, Megan? I can't believe I'm asking you. Guess what, honey? They do. Yes, they do. It's called family medical leave-back. If men would like to take-- Right. --three months off to go take care of their newborn baby, they can. I mean, he deserved all of that. He was a idiot. He walked into a buzzsaw. He really does. He really did. But whenever journalists ask Kelly the million dollar question of the 2010s, are you a feminist? She'd deflect and claim that her accomplishments can and should be viewed separately from her gender. Except she'd use her gender and feminism when it suited her and kind of dance around the word feminism when it was trendy to do so. She also appeared in a PSA with a motley crew of other women advocating for, well, I'm not sure what exactly. One of the most heartening parts of this past year for me has been the outpouring of support I received from women. Together, we can get to a quality. Together, we can raise our voices. Together, we can stand up to anything and anyone. It's a weird one. The name Megan Kelly was paling around with a word feminist and off a lot during the second Obama term. But when a GQ journalist profiling her asked her point blank if she considered herself one, right after he made a comment about how viewers could see her legs through her glass desk, she had this to say, quote, "I don't really love that word. That connotes a harshness and almost a shrillness that I find unattractive." The writer pressed, "What is it about that word?" And Kelly said, "Hmm, I respect women like Gloria Steinem who paved the way, but when you say feminists now, there's the message that if you're sexy and you acknowledge that part of your personality publicly, then it's somehow in a front to women." And I reject that. Girl, that's not what feminism is. What? Where did you get that definition? I'm like, on. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] hysteria is brought to you by Quince. The best summer pieces are the ones you end up wearing on repeat, comfortable, versatile, and somehow right for almost every occasion. That's why I love Quince. They make elevated essentials using premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk without the traditional retail markup. Quince's 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops are the pieces you'll reach for all summer long. They're lightweight, effortless to style, and start at just $32. 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Start your free trial at shopify.com/asteria. (upbeat music) She was not a feminist, but Vanity Fair declared her an improbable feminist icon in a piece that surely went through vetting by Megan's people. During interviews around this time, she'd cite general interest role models like Oprah Winfrey because in her words, "In all her years coming up, she never wallowed in any sort of victimhood." She didn't play the gender card and she didn't play the race card. She was just so good we couldn't ignore her. That's my example. Just get to the table and then do better than everybody else. End quote. Kelly also expressed admiration for Hillary Clinton during those years, or as she said in one interview, "I'm proud of women and politics on both sides of the aisle because I think there's still a general approach to female candidates where people try to tar them as either nuts or sluts." Women who talk like this sound, just as silly as Hollywood nepo babies who claimed they earned everything without their parents help. Megan Kelly wasn't lying during those soft, focused, girl-power years. She wasn't a feminist. She was simply self-righteous. She was living a life that was only made possible by the work of feminists and cared deeply about feminist issues that affected her personally and let people call her a feminist if it got her on stage with Cheryl Sandberg. Back in those days, Megan Kelly was even an ally to trans people, even interviewing Laverne Cox, the first trans actress to be nominated for an Emmy. In Houston, I helped fight back an ordinance that would have allowed men in ladies rooms. And we defeated that ordinance in a Democrat city, two to one. - A lot of men in the ladies room. - Probably some Democrats will not accept this thing. - A lot of trans women in ladies rooms. - Pardon? Pardon? I don't want an eight-year-old granddaughter walking into a bathroom with a 30-year-old man there. And no one else does. Anyone who has a grandmother, mother, a wife, a sister, daughter, granddaughter doesn't like a woman. And she would never know that this is, What if that man looks like a woman and she would never know this thing? I don't think I'm missing anything. - No, Megan, look, this laws like this would allow any man at any time dressed any way to go into a bathroom because they feel like a woman. - She was woke, she was kind of woke. If it seems like we're being uncharacteristically effusive, it's not because we're trying to throw shine on Megan Kelly. We're setting you up to see how eagerly she ships into whatever iteration we'll capture the biggest audience. - Kelly's career wasn't all conference feminism fist pumps and giving show venous the sass, while Roger Ailes' leg cams loomed just out of frame. She also had a few bloopers that foreshadowed the worst impulses of the dark Megan 3.0 of today. Like this 2015 primetime interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Dugger, the perventals of the hit reality show 19 Kids and Counting, which was yanked for mayor after it was revealed that one of the Dugger children, Josh, had molested five girls, including some of his own sisters when he was between 12 and 16 years old. - You do not view Josh as a pedophile. - No. - What I'm asking you is, can you understand the critics' reaction to this news? - I can understand that, but I think we've never. I know that every one of us have done things wrong. We're, that's why Jesus came. I feel like this is more about, there's an agenda, and there's people that are purposing to try to bring things out and twisting them to hurt and slander. - Many critics found Kelly's interview to be egregiously enabling. Apparently, when the news of Josh Dugger's first round of predatory behavior toward children broke, Kelly had never even seen an episode of 19 Kids and Counting. Josh Dugger was subsequently caught in the Ashley Madison hack, which revealed that he'd been using a dating service tailored toward married people trying to have affairs. And, in 2021, he was caught with a cache of child sexual abuse materials. He was convicted of possessing and distributing CSAM in 2021 and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. - I'm glad Megan gave his parents a chance to make excuses for him, though. Let's not forget about the racism, either. Well, Megan 1.0 would go viral for being slightly less insane than other people on Fox News. She frequently stepped in it on issues of race. In 2010, for example, Megan glombed onto stories about the so-called new Black Panther Party. Two members of the fringe group had been charged with voter intimidation after standing outside of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Even though charges were dropped, conservatives went nuts, conspiracy mongering, even implying that Attorney General Eric Holder was somehow in cahoots with the new Black Panther Party. - After she was let go from NBC, which don't worry we'll get to, a former Fox News contributor named Christian Powers characterized the disappearance on Kelly's show to discuss the new Black Panther Party as one of the most bizarre of her career. - I'll tell you, because you clearly don't know the facts of this case. - They got an injunction-- - I actually don't know. - They got an injunction against Samir Shabbaz barring him from appearing at any polling station forever more, any place. They then downgraded their own injunction after they won it and said, you know what, we changed our minds. He's only barred from going to Philly and only through 2012. Moreover, they got an injunction against two other members of the Black Panther Party and the party itself. - They then got to get injunction all together. - So don't tell me that they did all they could and don't tell me there was no vote for you. - I'm curious if you were this outraged with the push-in demonstration of the poll rating all of them. - Because there are no decisions. - Sorry, are you? The Bush administration, the GAO did a report. - Oh, back to the Bush administration. - Okay, I can't stand any more of this. It's un-listenable. It's like, "Christian up and move to Italy after that." Kelly would also frequently have Mark Furman on her show to offer his legal analysis prior to his time at Fox. Furman was best known for being a racist police officer whose habitual use of the N-words screwed up the LAPD's chances of convicting OJ Simpson of the murder of his ex-wife and another man. In fact, if there's one constant in Megan Kelly's career, it's her comfort at nibbling at the corners of and sometimes taking big ol' chomps of racism. - Santa Claus should not be a white man anymore. And when I saw this headline, I kind of laughed and I said, "This is so ridiculous." Yet another person claiming it's racist to have a white Santa, you know? And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white, but this person is just arguing that maybe we should also have a black Santa home. - Kids, Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we're just debating this because someone wrote about a kid. - If you were a young kid and you were African-American and your Santa Claus was white, it would affect you when you went to school. Maybe you wouldn't feel that you were part of that tradition. - Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn't mean it has to change. You know, I mean, Jesus, it was a white man too, but you know, it's like, Megan, we have, he was an historical figure. I mean, that's a verifiable fact as is Santa. I just wanted kids watching to know that. - So my point is, how do you just revise it? - What a weird thing to say. - She took that so seriously. - Perhaps the sound of all the racism got lost in between the sound of Cheryl Sandberg whooping about girl power or media reporters like the Washington Post's Dan Zach. Writing in a 2013 piece, Megan Kelly is very easy to like. Megan Kelly is a good and decent person. The story of On Air, Megan Kelly is a story of off-air Megan Kelly, end of story. Well, it wasn't the end of story because that article ran on December 11th, 2013. The same day that the Santa is white comment but before it aired. And the article now contains a footnote noting as much. Even when she was getting glazed, the racist at the core of the sheltered suburban girl was always on the cusp of peaking out. - But her daily show, "Fotter Clips" were eclipsed in 2015 when Kelly got into it with then-candidate Donald Trump. Hosting the first debate of the Republican primary, Kelly opened with a heater. - Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. In particular, when it comes to women. You've called women, you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slabs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account is. - Only Rosie O'Donnell. (audience laughs) - No, it wasn't. (audience cheers) Your Twitter account? (audience cheers) - Thank you. - For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell. - Yes, I'm sure a lot. - Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks. You once told a contestant on celebrity apprentice, it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton who is likely to be the democratic nominee that you are part of the war on women? - He's gone old. - Yeah, he's gotten really old. I mean, that's not the main takeaway here, but like. - No, no, but he is liquefying this before our very eyes. Trump recalled the event later, characterizing Kelly is having blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. - Hmm, what's that mean? - Gross, yuck. Apparently before the debate, Trump had been doing that weird thing he used to do with some female journalist with Kelly. He'd cut out newspaper articles about her and send them to her with his signature on them. Sometimes he'd call her to say he'd enjoy to segment she'd done. He used to do this to one of my former co-workers. - Really? It's a predatory. - It's super weird. So he was hitting on her and he was mad that she didn't reciprocate. - I mean, in 2016 Roger Ailes, the Robert Redford to Megan Kelly's Michelle Pfeiffer. A nice up close and personal reference. - In 2016 Kelly's mentor Ailes was exposed as a sex pest by Gretchen Carlson, another fox blonde, when Carlson filed a public lawsuit. She took a giant risk by filing the suit alone and putting her name on it and putting herself on in public, which forced the hands of other women at the network who had been keeping quiet in order to preserve the relationships with Ailes. It wasn't until Kelly reluctantly admitted to lawyers that Ailes had harassed her too that the case took on more weight and Ailes was eventually ousted. - This whole fracas was dramatized in the 2019 film Bombshell. Academy Award winner Charlize Theron played Megan Kelly, which is very flattering casting for Kelly and an insult to serial killer Eileen Warnos. - Good monster reference. Now, look, maybe Eileen Warnos was right. That's all I have to say. Now Kelly did not like Gretchen Carlson and in this case she tried to have her feminist but not feminist hero cake and eat it too. Carlson was the one who showed actual bravery in the situation. Kelly had covered for Ailes and publicly praised him for years until she was basically dragged kicking and screaming into the fray. She's never made her disdain for Carlson a secret. In 2025, she said, "I didn't like Gretchen Carlson "who was kind of looking for help in a way. "The whole question was, can he be this thing "who she has alleged he is? "And I was really not inclined to help her "and stick a knife in him." - Kelly didn't detail the harassment publicly until months after Ailes had been shit canned and of course when she did that, she put it in her memoir, "Settle for More," for which she got a multi-million dollar advance. - She always settles for more money. Staffers at Fox grumbled about how she'd ridden Carlson's co-tails to try to position herself as a me-to-warrior, only after the dam had started to break on Ailes. The Ailes business and her ensuing self-congratulatory book tour led some Fox colleagues to call her me again. But lucky for Kelly, after the 2016 election, lots of mainstream media outlets went a little bit crazy trying to over-correct for what they perceived as a failure to understand or reach Trump voters. And Kelly's refusal to cave to Trump's bullying gave media execs the impression that Joe and Susie America would like to see more of Kelly. - One of those media execs was NBC Chairman Andrew Lack. Lack offered Kelly a bonkers contract worth 69 million dollars. that promised to basically plaster Kelly's face all over NBC News. Morning Show? Yep. Sunday News Magazine? Sure! Why not? Special reporting on things like elections? Also, yes. Interviewing Vladimir Putin? Sure! Give it a whirl, kid! Now, Meghan 1.0 had styled herself as a sharp, lawyer-ly, staunch, independent, who cared nothing for ideology beyond puncturing bullshit. Meghan 2.0, or NBC Meghan, or Morning Show Meghan, was done with politics entirely. She was wearing pastels, her makeup was soft her, her hair was bouncy her, but her time at NBC was not great. Her evening news magazine sucked, and nobody watched it. At today, she replaced Cameron Hall and Al Roker, both of whom are black. Given her history of saying idiotic things about race, this was a bad look. And as a Morning Show host Meghan Kelly had about as much charm and bounces, Baroness Schrader, stiffly trying to play ball with the Von Trap children, even Meghan 2.0's voice was oddly different. Hey guys, it's great to be with you Matt and Savannah. So, as part of this forum, President Putin will be taking part in a panel, and I am lucky enough to have been asked to moderate that. This was whiplash-inducing because it seemed so fake. This woman who had turned her good debate question about sexism, and just such a big part of her personality that it took up multiple chapters of her memoir, was within a matter of months pivoting to exclaiming "OMG" at Mimosas, and trying yoga on TV for the first time. Okay, Meghan. She also pissed off Jane Fonda, who to be fair probably came into this interview situation, not exactly stoked to be talking to Fox News darling Meghan Kelly. You've been an example to everyone in how to age beautifully and with strength, and unapologetically. You admit you've had work done, which I think is to your credit, but you look amazing. Why did you say I read that you said you felt you're not proud to admit that you've had work done? Why not? We really want to talk about that. One of the things people think about when they look at you is how amazing you look. Well, thanks. Good attitude, good posture, take care of myself. But let me tell you why I love this movie that we did our souls at night. Rather than plastic surgery. Fonda was asked about the exchange days later, clarifying, "No, it wasn't like I was upset. I was stunned. It was so inappropriate. It showed she's not that good an interviewer." Oh, out dagger. I felt that one. Rather than just let it go, Kelly fired back on her show and insulted Fonda's patriotism using a very fresh topical reference from the early 1970s. Look, I gave her the chance to empower other women, young and old on a subject which she purports to know well and she rejected it. That's okay. But I have no regrets about that question. Nor am I in the market for a lesson from Jane Fonda on what is and is not appropriate. After all, this is a woman whose name is synonymous without rage. Look at her treatment of our military during the Vietnam War. Many of our veterans still call her Hanoi Jane. Thanks to her radio broadcast, which attempted to shame American troops, she posed on an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down our American pilots. She called our POWs hypocrites and liars and referred to their torture as understandable. Even she had to apologize years later for that gun picture, but not for the rest of it. By the way, she still says she is not proud of America. I wonder if she ever had issue with what Donald Trump said about John McCain. She's so worked up about. Yeah, interesting, interesting. The audience didn't like Kelly Stick either. In her first year on today, ratings slumped and never recovered. The only story she seemed to get some traction on were related to the Me Too movement, which was at its fevered height during her short-lived stint at NBC. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent scandals of the era happened at NBC. And Kelly's enthusiastic glomming on to the Matt Lauer story didn't exactly help her in-house reputation. It's almost fitting that what ultimately put Megan Kelly's NBC morning show out of its misery is another one of her classic Megan Moments. And by that, I mean, casually saying something stupid about race. But what is racist? Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on black face and Halloween, or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween. Like, back when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character. There was a controversy on the Real Housewives of New York with Luan, as she dresses Diana Ross. And she made her skin look darker than it really is. And people said that that was racist. And I don't know. I felt like, who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don't know how like that got racist on Halloween. I don't see that she's walking around. I haven't seen it. Mm-hmm, huh. I can see why she got rejected from Syracuse's broadcasting. That's a hell to die on. Yeah. It's just like, it's like deliberately, it's deliberately stupid. Yeah. By the way, the person we spoke with who grew up with Megan in Del Mar New York, which is actually a pretty liberal enclave. That person said that she'd never seen a Halloween costume in town featuring a kid in black face. Like, never. And she and Megan grew up together. Megan's full of shit. Lots to unpack here. Note the all-white panel. Note the fact that Kelly's bad show shoved aside two black anchors. Note her entire racist CV. Her NBC colleagues slammed her comments in a smattering of coverage, gleefully skewering Kelly and sued. It seemed like in those days you couldn't open a website without coming across a Megan Kelly takedown. According to one such takedown after the black face comments, Kelly's executive producer was heard sobbing so loudly that other NBC staffers could hear it through the floor. NBC Nightly News featured a segment explaining why black face was bad. And the next day, Kelly opened her show like this. Good morning everyone and welcome to the show I'm Megan Kelly. And I want to begin with two words. I'm sorry. You may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and Halloween costumes. And that conversation turned to whether it is ever okay for a person of one race to dress up as another. A black person making their face lighter or a white person making theirs darker to make a costume complete. I defended the idea. Saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed okay. Well, I was wrong and I am sorry. One of the great parts of sitting in this chair each day is getting to discuss different points of view. Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen. And yesterday I learned. I learned that giving you a tree of black face being used in awful ways by racists in this country. It is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise. She learned, she learned. She practiced on black faces bad. She practiced that in front of a mirror. It wasn't enough to save her show. And as her team negotiated her exit seeking the entire value of her bloated contract, her agent at CIA dropped her due to a conflict of interest. And then another agency, UTA, refused to take her on because of the whole black face thing. Eventually, she got the entire value of her contract, tens of millions of dollars to suck on TV for less than two years. But had to sign a non disparagement clause that kept her from shit talking NBC sense. Weeding up to the dismissal, she'd been trying to make nice with Fox News again. She went to the mat for Brett Kavanaugh when Democrats were making the outrageous ask that sexual assault claims against him be thoroughly investigated before he was handed a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. But it wasn't enough. Kavanaugh got his confirmation. But Megan Kelly had burned her bridges at Fox and failed to build any at NBC. Time for Megan 3.0 to emerge from the chrysalis of every woman like ability. Thanks to a little help from her then pal Ben Shapiro. In late 2020, Shapiro encouraged Kelly to go independent. And so she set up her own media company, Devil May Care Media, where she has quickly risen the podcast ranks by appealing to the worst people in America. Megan 3.0 has barrel curls. She's wearing a halter top. She sings swear. She doesn't fucking care. She's a human guitar riff. She's old enough for the Denny's senior discount with a swagger of an 80s teen sassing the security guard after being caught shoplifting belly button rings from clairs. She's rich enough to buy a minor league baseball team but insists on getting extensions. They look like they were applied in a beauty school in Myrtle Beach. That's a choice. I'm sorry. The old Megan can't come to the phone right now. Ah, she's in her reputation era. Look what you made me do, leftist. Her story is brought to you by Honey Love. 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Experience the new standard in comfort and support with honeylove. In 2024, Kelly finally buried the hatchet with her best friend, Naomi Donald Trump, and announced she was voting for him. He got mocked by the left for saying he would be a protector of women. He will keep the boys out of girl sports and where they don't belong. At times, asked her about her previous comments about Trump possibly being a sexual predator, Meghan 3.0 said, "I don't know whether that happened or it didn't." But do I find that a deal breaker for a possible politician? Not really. Okay, cool. Now she's dispatched with the empathy kabuki. In January, she claimed that women protesting eyes were obese and unattractive, and chided that she didn't think any of those people were having sex. If you're having positive interactions with men, you're going to bed with them and they're treating you well. You're not going out there and looking at all these men as the devil enemies who you want to hurt and kill and stop. All of them have deeply unhappy personal lives and it's manifesting on the streets of Minneapolis. We're here on a nail and on a nail. Guitar riff, Meghan, damn, you're such a badass, you're such a badass, and you're also the same age as my grandma was when I was in kindergarten. You're old enough to have babysat me, Meghan. This is unseemly. Somebody get this bitch a leather jacket. Yeah, leather jacket with like thunderbirds across the back. Meghan 1.0 aimed to be the most canny person in the room. Meghan 2.0 aimed to be the friendliest. Meghan 3.0 is the cuntiest. Her takes are so predictably cruel that they're boring. It's like she knows that the only way to break through the noise is to scream the most offensive thing in the loudest possible voice, like after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preddie in Minneapolis by immigration enforcement officers. When she claimed that she didn't feel sorry for them because people who don't want to get killed by federal officers should stay home. I know I'm supposed to feel sorry for Alex Preddie, but I don't. I don't. Do you know why I was shot by Border Patrol this weekend because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. It's very simple. If I felt strongly enough about something the government was doing that I would go out and protest, I would do it peacefully on the sidewalk without interfering via a whistle, via shouting, via my body, via any other way. I would make my objections known by standing there without interfering because interfering is where you go south. And if you do anything, anything that resembles resisting you're in serious trouble. She's so bad. What does she feel about January 6? Yeah. I don't know. There is no cohesion. She's just hatefully chaotic. Yeah. Meghan 3.0 seems even more desperate to get attention than ever. It's hard in a crowded field, but Meghan is a striver. While her podcast has no trouble attracting an audience, it's near the top of the charts of the right-leaning podcast. She's never part of the national conversation for saying something incisive or smart. It's just for acting like a cunt or glomming onto topics that everybody is already talking about, offering nothing of value beyond more noise. It's cheap. She's constantly trying to pick fights with female celebrities in a way that feels frankly a little boring. She lashes out at figures like Michelle Obama, who she called a bitch for some reason. And Meghan Markle, who she seems to genuinely be jealous of, indulging loony theories about her like in this clip where she speculated that her pregnancy belly was fake. I think it's one of those conspiracy theories on the internet. And there are many people who long before today are convinced she used surrogates and that her pregnancies were fake, one or both of them. And this is the only time that I've actually indulged the theory. Because if we can show that video again, that belly looks very abnormal. That it looks very strange. If you look up close in the video and I encourage people, look at this. It looks like there's like a bag or like some sort of something shoved up under a dress. It does not look like a pregnant belly. It looks all bumpy. It's very strange. Okay. So let's just like humor the premise. Okay. So does she think that if Meghan Markle had a fake belly, that she was just taking paper bags, putting them in a pillowcase and taping them to her stomach? Meghan Markle, if she was going to have a, a fake belly, she's smart enough to engineer this huge plot to get a prosthetic. She helped kill the queen allegedly. If she's smart enough to do all those things, if she's so wily, then why would she not be wily enough to get a like a moonbone or like a gun drug prosthetic? Her fixation on Markle feels kind of pathological. Her YouTube channel even has created a super cut of her best takedowns of Meghan Markle. It's an hour and 18 minutes long. It's unbelievable. How she truly, she created this whole racial fire storm for the royal family. She sat with Oprah. She clearly injected the issue of race. They were concerned about the color of my baby skin turned out to be BS. Among her other racism claims, it got so bad and it turned out to be so untrue that they weren't going to give Archie the title because he was part black, a lie. All this stuff was exposed as lies. That Harry, when he went on his book tour, had to disavow that she even said it. She never accused them of racism. No, she didn't. Oh, it was about unconscious bias, unconscious bias. Oh, okay. I thought she loved Oprah. I know, she took a hard turn on Oprah there, didn't she? Kelly has gotten more racist, louder, angrier. Honestly, I hate using this word. I think it's often deployed in a sexist way, but she's a real Karen. At her big age, she's still complaining that Emily Radikowski's essay for New York magazines of the cut is too slutty. Did she just complain that in her imagination, people protesting ice were too ugly to fuck? Like, do you want people to fuck or not, Meghan? Like, look at her having a connection about the Super Bowl halftime show. To get up there and perform the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America. Who gives a damn that we have 40, 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States? We have 310 million who don't speak a lick of Spanish. This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country, not for the Latinos, not for one small group, but for the country. This attitude. You and Great Britain have lost your culture. You seated your culture to a bunch of radical Muslims who came in and took over, and now it's gone. We're not allowing that here. Whether it's Hispanic, whether it's Muslim, it's not happening in the United States of America. That's why President Trump was elected. Football, that kind of football, is ours. They call it American football. And the halftime show and everything around it needs to stay quintessentially America. Okay, so if Meghan Kelly says that feminism is shrill, holy shit. I'm sorry. Go spend time with your kids. Fox News personalities have always served as semi-attractive avatars for scared old men, but Meghan 3.0's entire appeal is based on the fact that rotten-sold losers enjoy watching somebody who's richer and prettier than they are, saying their ugly thoughts out loud. Turns out that all that posturing about caring about survivors of sex crimes during the during the next session. Megan's 1.0 and 2.0 was also an act. When Pundit Mark Halperin was exposed as a sex pest in 2017, Kelly had initially presented herself as a sympathetic ally to the women he'd pestered. After all, she also had dealt with harassment at work. But then in 2025, she gave Mark Halperin his own podcast on her network. Okay. She's also dabbled in Jeffrey Epstein Apologia. Here's something gross and weird. She said in November 2025. This is this person's view, who was there for a lot of this. But that he was into the barely legal type. Like he liked 15-year-old girls. I don't know what's true about him. But we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, I was under 10. I was under 14 when I first came within his purview. Look, you can say that's a distinction without a difference. No, it's not. I think there is a difference. There's a difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old. Not just whatever. It's sick. Her daughter is around the same age as many of Epstein's victims were, but it's also like, okay, what's your point? Arguing semantics about a sex trafficker, the fuck? Also, 15-years-old is not barely legal in any state. But don't take it from us. Take it from a 14-year-old girl taking down Megan Kelly. Here's the part you seem confused about. Under federal law, anyone under 18 is a child. No asterisk. What you said wasn't factual. It was minimizing. It was making abuse sound like a technicality. And Megan, here's the part you really need to hear. If a 14-year-old has to get on the internet and explain to a grown adult with national platform, that children are children, and there's no age-review suddenly becomes less bad, then the problem isn't confusion. It's corruption. If my voice makes you uncomfortable, good. It should. Because the minute adults start defending predators by debating the age of a child, you're not protecting the truth. You're protecting the predator. And you shouldn't need a freshman to tell you that. Yes. Good for her. Scoobble up. Oh my God. Embarrassing. Embarrassing. Did you forget that Megan Kelly used to be one of the few voices at Fox News who acknowledged that trans people are human beings worthy of dignity and respect? Well, the body snatcher who switched brains with Megan Kelly in 2020 disavows not only pronouns, but the very humanity of trans people. Here she is in 2023 doing what can only be described as a villain monologue. They say pronouns are a gateway drug. They open the door to these lies that lead to real harm, to real females. I have resolved to base my conversations around gender on the same tenets that already governed my life, truth and reality. I will not use preferred pronouns. A decision motivated by a growing alarm over women's rights and the safety of children. I will speak to a trans person kindly and with empathy. In their presence, I will likely try to avoid pronouns altogether as I have no wish to intentionally provoke or upset anyone. But I will not take this gateway drug anymore because I have a daughter. Because I am a woman, an adult human female. Because for far too long, I failed to see the harm and therefore helped cause it. My favorite part of that is when she's like, I'll be nice to trans people to their faces, but behind their back, I'm going to like, view them into my eyes. It's like a gateway drug, Erin. It's a gateway drug. No, whenever Megan seems like she's running out of energy, she falls on one of two things. Attack a younger, hotter female celebrity, often a black woman, or open up the throttle on an anti-trans screen that seems sourced from such deep right wing forums that normal people who aren't way too online would have no ability to understand. They sound like a rant of a person you'd move away from at a bus stop. The New York Post explains, quote, the engraving is a meme used in transgender and furry subculture. A reference to being surprised by genitalia when someone is dressed up in an animal costume or in drag. Oh. I see a bulge. It's actually a man. It's not a woman named Luna. It's actually a human. It's not a dog. Did she hear herself by your dog ears? Lance twigs. I'm sorry, like this is a, this is a sick, sick group. This is like a whole other issue. I mean, it's connected, but it's a whole other issue. How the left tries to normalize this shit. They are allowing kids to go to school dressed as quote, furries with the ears and the tails. It's a mental illness that should not be indulged, not least because of which it is potentially contagious. It is part of a social contagious. Oh. It's sick. What is that? So dramatic. It seems at Megan 3.0, maybe on the verge of molting into her next skin. In recent months, Kelly has played footsie with Candace Owens, complimented Nick Frentess, and cozyed up to the sort of human woman haters podcast listeners who probably were among the masses who were sending her death threats back when she was play acting and having a feminist spine. The Candace Owens thing is wild. As during her book tour, Kelly had openly cried with Erica Kirk on stage in Glendale, Arizona. And yet when Owens released a series of videos called "Bride of Charlie" that implied that Erica was a sex trafficker and a fraud, she just let that lie. Yeah, it's, it's really strange to watch a person's frontal lobe disintegrate in real time. But I feel like that's what we're watching with Megan Kelly. She's much more of an immature asshole now in her sixth decade of life than she was as an upstart 30-something local news reporter with plucky self-confidence to pitch herself to Fox News. Wisdom and poise are supposed to come with age, not shrill rants about Haitians in front of a backdrop reminiscent of a heavy period. Yes, on one hand, it's clearly an act. But on the other, even if behind the scenes, Kelly is the same whipsmart ex-loyer as capable of cracking a joke as she is poking holes in an argument, watching her flail around trying to catch as much of the lowest common denominator as possible, all in the name of what more millions of dollars to add to the pile that NBC threw at her to get out the door, it's all just so undignified. I'm going to pull a quote from a 2013 puff piece on Megan Kelly. This was back when media reporters were faunting over her, quote, "Motoration is a theme of Megan Kelly's favorite film, the 1971 Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory, a poster of which hangs prominently in her home. She loves the magic of it, the possibility of it, the eye can change my life of it. She loves watching greedy little Varuka Salt disappear down the trash shoot, another bad egg bound for justice." Hmm. Any lessons there? Any lessons there, Varuka? So there you have it, Alyssa, Megan Kelly. Where do we think she lies on her matrix of fucking guys? Okay, well, scheming sociopath, an opportunist, right? Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah. Maybe the strongest one we've seen yet. I think so, because yeah, who knows what Megan 4.0 will be? Maybe she'll just be a woman screaming on a street corner. It's not a far jump point. I wish she had known. If that's what gets ratings, she's going to do it. She is going to do it. Well, Erin, that about wraps up the time we have for this episode of this fucking guy. If you like what you've seen, hit the like button, share with your friends, and leave us a comment if you've got an idea for a future fucking guy subject. And if you're not already subscribed, there's no better time than now. This episode was written and researched by me, with a writing assist from Alyssa Master Monaco. All the rest of our credits, as well as links to our sources, like Christina Katarucci's slate piece, and Dan Zach's poorly timed Washington Post profile, sorry, Dan. They could all be found in our show notes. Trust me, guys. The bibliography is always a fun read. Be care, be well. Santa is a furry. And fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. Visteria is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Caroline Reston, Claire Fogarty, Kendra James, Adrian Hill, Alyssa Master Monaco, and me, Erin Ryan. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Rachel Gayeski, Dylan Villanueva, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, Jay Banks, Charlotte Landis, and Jordan Cantor. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.