Kelly and Kristen: Who Gotcha’ed Trump?
A tale of two very different interviewers and their one-on-ones with their interviewee.
Megyn Was Nicer, Sort Of
Megyn Kelly’s interview with Donald Trump was superficially positive. We’ve seen how the media can shade content negatively — shifting it to mitigate any positive that might accrue to him.
Trump, if nothing else, has starch; he holds up under the bright lights. This is not a man who caves regardless of context. We must believe he will handle prosecutors in ‘these indictments’ as he has shown time and again with journos like Megyn Kelly or even those Keebler Elves on a debate stage.
Kelly is famous in part for the gotcha question she lobbed at Trump back in August 2015 in the first Republican debate hosted by Fox News – her then employer.
Bret Baier, one of three debate panelists asking questions of the candidates, asked the first question and then Megyn fired her Fox-sanctioned salvo, “Mr. Trump, you speak your mind, and you don’t use a politicians filter – however that is not without it’s downside. You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals…”
Trump interjected before she could finish, “Only Rosie O’Donnell!”
“No it wasn’t. Your Twitter account – for the record – it went well beyond Rosie O’Donnell…has several disparaging comments about women’s looks…Does that sound like someone who has the temperament to be president? And how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who will likely be the Democrat nominee, that you are part of the War on Women…” Kelly continued.
“I think the problem this country has is being politically correct…This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore…we lose to China, we lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border… and we don’t have time for political correctness….What I say is what I say…but you know what? We need strength, we need energy, we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around. That I can tell you right now!”
Relive the drama here:
That was eight years ago and the mention of political correctness as something Republicans scoff at sounds quaint next to the terrifying woke agenda that has taken hold since.
Both parties softened their views toward each other in the years since with each issuing statements to that effect in the months leading up to their big sit down. The feud is now water under the bridge and that might be due to the fact that Kelly left Fox News and now has her own podcast The Megyn Kelly Show. It has 1.6 million viewers. She is free of the Fox corporate big shackles.
Trump, for his part, continues to show he is that ‘my door is always open’ happy warrior. He goes into the proverbial lion’s den every time he sits down with a Megyn Kelly just as he embraces anyone from the political class here and abroad who is open to meeting with him. He’s always telling us how much he likes leaders like Mexico’s President Andres Obrador “even though he’s a socialist.”
Kelly’s Post Script Counts
More than listening to Trump (click the video at top of this article) expound on Biden’s potential impeachment, the fake indictments, Ron DeSantis saying he is too old to be president, immigration and the dust-up over whether he built 50 miles of wall or 500, Operation Warp Speed under his tenure, Covid, and gender ideology which has seeped into every corner of the culture, Kelly’s post script to the interview perhaps revealed that ever-present negative slant we’re so accustomed to.
Kelly appears on camera before and after the interview providing an introduction and summation of her thoughts which she calls her ‘color reporting’ or her ‘behind-the-scenes look’ at how the interview ‘really’ went down. Then she invites author and pundit Victor Davis Hanson to give his two cents.
The good:
“To be fair,” Kelly muses, “Trump gets credit for even sitting down for an interview with me and submitting himself to ‘tough questioning.'” (It was not particularly tough.)
She gives herself high marks for fairness, “There was good flow and you always want that.”
She laughingly admits that Joe Biden would never allow himself to do such an interview and says, “I wish he would…I wish I could interview him [Biden].”
The bad:
Then she shifts gears and tries to present a funny ‘behind-the-scenes’ peek into the fact that Trump keeps room temperatures on the chilly side ‘but he’s wearing a wool suit’ and while ‘I am always cold, wore a little dress, and I was freezing.” “I mean I was turning blue and my teeth were chattering!”
Trump either noticed or she told him and admitted, “Trump was gracious to offer turning up the heat.”
Still giggling she warns Trump whom she just broke off meeting with that he will be ‘fact checked.’ (Sure he is quaking in his boots.)
Another inside look Kelly shares with her audience: “The president is a TV man. He wants the shot to look right. He said get rid of the Diet Coke can in the background…”
What Mr. Hanson Said
In closing, she sought feedback from author and political pundit, Victor Davis Hanson.
He thought the interview was fair and tough too. “He sounded vigorous,” he said, “You would not know it’s been seven years since he first ran.”
He then quickly lamented that ‘Trump probably wasn’t correct saying he was way ahead of Biden in national polls’ – inferring he lied. Kelly quickly rationalized that the polls are always off especially national one and that Trump is probably ‘way ahead’ and at any rate Trump’s polls are much higher now than in the other two cycles.
Hanson inexplicably tries his hand later on at painting Trump with negative spin with regard to two things: Trump’s decision to not debate; and his belief that Trump ‘does not have a strategy to beat Biden’ in the general. “Biden’s strategy is rather sophisticated,” he says.
Regarding the debate, Hanson equivocated. It was a good idea; it was a bad idea. “He has to get his message out,” he decried.
At one point Hanson slyly remarked, referencing a potential Biden impeachment, “Biden is probably more culpable than anything Trump did.”
He warns Trump that his people need a better strategy to beat Biden because ‘he has the media and all these agencies behind him.’ “Trump is huge…he’s like Gulliver but the Lilliputians have strings that can tie him down.”
All of the above was so much damning with faint praise. Some undercurrents to consider:
Even though the Diet Coke was removed from the frame – Kelly nevertheless put it back in the frame by mentioning it.
Was the A/C blasting to prevent Trump from sweating on camera? Likely and that the implication might be – he’s a sweaty mess.
Both Kelly and Hanson hit same motifs as any other media personality and that is: Trump lies.
Hanson touched on the old trope that he needs better people around him. He may be brilliant but the other side is even smarter is the thinking.
No mention of election fraud by the way as an obstacle in the race.
He also smears with a broad brush – that is, ‘Well Trump may be less culpable than Biden’ — but the inference is — ‘Trump still did bad stuff.’
It was not a particularly tough interview. Trump was Trump. He bests anyone. Trump does not accept these invitations like Megyn’s to prove he can withstand tough questions. Kelly was there however to prove she could be fair, and in the interview itself she was.
Her after show was the real story.
Welker, the Interrupter Mechanism on a Gatling Gun
NBC News had just named Kristen Welker the new host of Sunday program Meet the Press replacing former host Chuck Todd when she sat down with President Trump this week.
As an aside, Trump referenced both the Kelly interview and the MTP interview with Kristen Welker at this Dubuque, Iowa event yesterday, bellowing:
“I call it Meet the Fake Press! Kristen Welker took over for Sleepy Chuck Todd. She was a little nasty but not too bad. They got great ratings. The Fake News was mad.”
In this tale of two interviews, Megyn Kelly compared to Welker’s The Intruder was ‘fair and tough.’ Welker adopted the same ‘gatling gun’ style MSM journalists have taken when interviewing Donald Trump, namely NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Katy Tur, plus Lesley Stahl at CBS, and CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.
Aside from the fact that all of these interviewers are women, it would be impossible to miss how every single one of them would ask a serious — often probing question — of the president, only to rudely interrupt him ostensibly because they either did not like the answer he gave, or they were simply trying to rattle — as Kelly put it — the ‘flow’ of the interview. There is a third reason and that is to establish a damaging narrative.
Barbara Walters, who Trump sat down with dozens of times over decades and who he talks about even now, they ain’t. (Link to Meet the Trump’s with Barbara Walters–November 15, 2015.)
Nor do they exhibit the easy-going professionalism we saw when Tucker Carlson met with the former president on Spaces at X. That interview broke the record for number of views for a video at 255 million. To compare or to remind if you have already seen it and you probably have, here it is:
The upshot of Kristen’s and others like her chronic interrupting (psychologists call out as a real emotional issue) is that the narrative they seek to air is never challenged. Each interruption is propulsive — it moves the get Trump storyline forward.
He answers a serious question seriously and they say it’s a lie…followed by but let me ask you about X.
He says they are lying – they say you know that’s not true…but let’s talk about X first.
He provides evidence of wrong-doing by Biden and others. They say there is no evidence….but let’s move on, Mr. President, we have to get to X.
On certain topics like the border, immigration, and even issues like his handling of covid, the audience might not suffer from not hearing Trump’s full answers. Afterall we hear what Trump has to say all day, if we are paying attention. We know his answers as cold as he does.
On more sensitive issues like abortion, Kristen hammered a narrative that got away from her. In other words, she either outright lied or she was unaware of certain facts surrounding current abortion law.
For eight minutes Welker harangued Trump on abortion. Listen from 24:00 to 32:00 minutes.
In this lengthy back-and-forth Trump gets the better of Welker and it seems to be due to the fact that she has been so overly coached to disagree with whatever the president says — even though it agrees with a position she takes — that she is too stupid to realize she was boxed in.
It is absolutely mind-boggling to hear the president plead the case that ‘Democrats don’t want abortions at five, six, seven months or live birth abortions’ while correctly citing that in some states namely Virginia and New York State live birth abortion are or were condoned.
Welker repeatedly denies that Democrats are for late-term or live-birth abortions over the course of this 8-minute segment.
Her denial aligns with what Trump expounds on. He was saying, “We’re going to negotiate a time limit – probably 15 weeks – it will be something everyone is happy with…” “This is a 50-50 issue, Kristen, Democrats don’t want to kill babies.”
But whenever he interjects the example of the former governor of Virginia or the New York State legislation, she balks saying things like, ‘Democrats writ large don’t want that….’ and Trump offers, “Yes they do and it’s on videotape.”
“But but but but,” she stammers, “does it bother you that women’s lives will be at risk [after Roe]?”
Trump underlined again that late-term and live birth abortions are coming from the radical Democrats who want abortion on-demand as it is called. She flatly denies that reality. Welker simply cannot bring herself to nod in agreement.
It’s just more Trump Was Right.
RESOURCES
Walters interviewed Donald Trump in November 2015; she gave her last interview in 2016 before retiring. Wikipedia entry for Barbara Walters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Walters#:~:text=Walters%20continued%20to%20host%2010,final%20public%20appearance%20in%202016.
