Megyn Kelly was a star anchor on Fox News during the Obama era before decamping for NBC News with a huge contract and tremendous hype. That tenure flamed out spectacularly after she defended the use of blackface, and she was sent packing with every cent of her $69 million contract. Since going independent with her eponymous podcast, Kelly has been free from the shackles of basic civility imposed on her by broadcasting (even Fox News has some on-air standards).
The authentic Kelly was on full display on her podcast Monday, when she offered a cruel and catty assessment of the body of a young woman she believes is the “Jane Doe” who said she was gang raped by seven men at a Cornell University fraternity house in the fall of 2024.
“I’m just going to be honest, she’s not the most attractive gal,” said the star MAGA media personality. “She’s extremely beefy in her arms and her legs. She has a whole video online talking about her cankles.”
In a bifurcated world where belief or disbelief in the very concept of sexual violence often falls along political lines, Kelly has, predictably, fallen in with fellow conservative ideologues.
In a puzzling move for someone who has claimed to be a journalist, Kelly has implied that the identity of Jane Doe is “out there,” which is not true. Malevolent actors on Elon Musk’s X and other rancid corners of the internet have claimed to have identified Jane Doe, though the person they’ve named — a young woman that Kelly referred to as “extremely beefy” — didn’t graduate from high school until spring 2023. Court documents filed by Jane Doe’s attorneys state that she was an 18-year-old freshman at Cornell in the fall of 2022. These can’t be the same person.
But Kelly believes she has found the real Jane Doe, and rather than focus on the substance of the then-20-year-old female student’s allegations — that she met a friend at a fraternity house amid a night of partying, was plied with alcohol and ketamine, and was sexually assaulted by seven of the frat brothers after her friend invited 57 of his frat brothers via Snapchat group chat to join in — Kelly attacked her physical appearance. (The defendants named in the lawsuit have denied Jane Doe’s allegations.)
This is misogyny — women-hating, plain and simple, from a woman who has leaned on her femininity when it suits her.
In a bifurcated world where belief or disbelief in the very concept of sexual violence often falls along political lines, Kelly has, predictably, fallen in with fellow conservative ideologues. Like others on the chattering right, she has criticized the timing of Jane Doe’s civil action, alleging that if she — as in, Megyn — had been drugged and gang raped, she wouldn’t wait weeks to go to the police, or years to file a lawsuit. Kelly further alleged that Jane Doe must have wanted to have sex with seven men that night, over the course of seven hours; felt bad about it afterward; and sought moral redemption through revenge. For somebody who has, by her own account, never experienced anywhere close to what Jane Doe allegedly experienced, Kelly sure seems confident in her own insight.
There was a time when Kelly was lauded as brave for reporting that her former Fox News boss and professional champion, the late Roger Ailes had repeatedly sexually harassed her. (Ailes “categorically” denied the allegations.) But even then, Kelly wasn’t the tip of the spear; her hand was forced by a bombshell lawsuit filed by her fellow Fox News host Gretchen Carlson. Carlson won a $20 million settlement from Fox but lost her broadcasting career. Kelly got a book contract memoir and a huge NBC News contract. Nevertheless, back when Kelly was piggybacking on Carlson’s bravery as a Woman Supporting Women
, she welcomed the feminist-adjacent accolades her bare-minimum stand garnered her. She even devoted multiple chapters of her 2016 book, “Settle for More,” to denouncing Ailes’ behavior.
But that was then, when Kelly still had ambitions of remaining a mainstream media figure. Since going independent, she’s drawn a substantial MAGA audience by leaning into her authentic awfulness, including bizarre screeds about the bodies and lives of female celebrities much younger than she is and with zero demographic overlap — like Meghan Markle and Olivia Rodrigo. (Guess what those two women have in common.)
Kelly was a lawyer before embarking on a journalism career. She’s not stupid. But she is a hypocrite, wearing the mask of a feminist standing up to sexual harassment when it suits her.
She minimized the crimes committed against the teenaged victims of Jeffrey Epstein, observing last fall that he victimized 15-year-olds, not 8-year-olds. (Kelly has a daughter about the same age as the girls that Epstein groomed and molested.) She gave Mark Halperin, credibly accused by five female co-workers of being a habitual creep during the height of the MeToo era, a show on her podcast network. (Halperin denied “some of the allegations” but also apologized for “conduct that was often aggressive and crude.”)
About a week after immigration enforcement officers shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Kelly had opinions on the bodies of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters, deriding them as “fat, unattractive, gross people who were too chicken-s— to actually sign up” for the military. She then added, “I don’t think any of these people are having sex. I really don’t.”
Kelly was a lawyer before embarking on a journalism career. She’s not stupid. But she is a hypocrite, wearing the mask of a feminist standing up to sexual harassment when it suits her, while viciously attacking women — including victims — with a sociopathic level of vitriol and a complete lack of empathy when it gets her attention.
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