By Florida Bill Megyn Kelly is now confirming that she is jumping ship from Fox News and boarding NBC's multibillion dollar cruiser. We are seeing teary-eyed emotion and pathos as she makes her TV goodbyes, and thanks Fox News and her colleagues for their professional help and friendships.
But Kelly is overlooking the big, blustering twittering monster, now America's 45th President, who really was the one who lifted her from obscurity to the mountain top. Without "The Donald" she was just another comely blonde face on the tube. He certainly deserves a robust thank you.
Can anyone ever forget how she carved him up on the debate stage, sending him into a twittering rampage? He tweeted to the world that she was an "incompetent bimbo" and "crazy" and sought to destroy her and drive her into a dark professional hole from which there was no climbing out. Now, after the dust has cleared, Trump has become the 45th president of the United States, and the strident, little-known Kelly has acquired celebrity status and a job at NBC earning an estimated $20-25 million dollars annually. Almost as good, she will have license to assess the performance of her nemesis on an even bigger stage, and to finally roll out her liberal leanings which she had endeavored to keep in a closet for the past dozen years.
From a material standpoint, the 46-year-old Kelly has hit it big. As a young lawyer, she earned a respectable living as an associate in a Chicago law firm for five years and then in 2004 made a career change landing a job on the Fox News stage. In her book, "Settle for More," she tells of her move from the law into TV where she rose in the ranks and eventually, with the backing of Big Dog Bill O'Reilly, became the host of her own talk show, "The Kelly File."
It was in spring of 2015 that the billionaire real estate mogul, without ever having held or run for public office, announced his candidacy for the biggest office in the USA, in fact in the world. His initial presence on the campaign trail did not provide any real connection with Kelly, whose show was going along with average popularity. She was just another talking head on a station with nothing but other comely, engaging talking heads.
In February of 2016, Kelly, not yet a media heavy hitter in her own right, was tapped to serve as a moderator for the opening debate among the 17 Republican candidates. Perhaps she was assigned to join moderators Bret Baier and Chris Wallace at the media table to break up the appearance of an all-boys club.
Record breaking numbers of viewers tuned into the opening debate with GOP hopefuls, who, for the most part, were politicians with strong records of political achievement. Trump was pretty much the odd man out. To many he was a TV actor and an amusing throw-away candidate who denounced illegal aliens and promised to "Make America Great Again."
The game changer, at least for Kelly's career, was when, displaying the finesse of a well-prepared prosecutor, she tore into Trump for calling women "slobs, pigs and disgusting animals." She demanded to know whether such barn yard descriptions of women were appropriate for a person seeking to become President of the United States. It was a sledgehammer of a question and it set Trump back on his heels. But Trump soon turned to his greatest weapon, Twitter, and the verbal assault on Megyn went viral.
The smoking-mad Trump tweeted that Kelly was an "incompetent bimbo" who was out to get him. In a later interview he charged she had blood coming out of her eyes and "coming out of her whatever," a reference widely construed to refer to her menstrual period. It was crude and explosive, and as the months passed, Trump repeated his Twitter attacks on Kelly. Kelly simply made no reply. Her patience was extraordinary and she drew kudos for her ability to withstand such an attack on her and on women in general.
Everyone wanted to interview her and she was a guest on late night talk shows hosted by Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon. Her picture graced the covers of magazines such as Variety, Vanity Fair and the New York Times, and her celebrity and recognition spiraled upward. Her "Kelly File" show increased in popularity and mentor Bill O'Reilly was said to be green-eyed as his protege surged in the media firmament.
After Kelly and Trump both became household names, they decided to bury the hatchet on a publicized special show on Fox News on May 16. Trump indicated he would cease his attack on Kelly, and Kelly seemed to accept this as an apology of sorts.
Along the way, Kelly reportedly received a significant advance for the authoring of her book, and then, according to insiders, began discussing and considering offers to leave Fox at termination of her contract. Her popularity at Fox now approached that of the Big Dog's and she signed autographs and gave interviews and was a even a guest on the Howard Stern radio show, with its dominating "breast talk."
In November, Trump was elected the nation's 45th President and the news of his surprise victory was conveyed to Fox viewers by Kelly on the election desk in the early morning hours. Along with being attractive and smart, Kelly's credentials now included a most unique relationship with the most powerful man in the world. Her star had reached unprecedented heights at this point.
I expect that Kelly had offers from all of the network stations, as well as CNN. Fox News was so anxious to keep Kelly that it reportedly offered her a $100 million four-year contract. That puts her in the realm of NBA stars.
NBC's package surely matched the salary, but also provided their new star with a morning presence and her continued involvement in watching and reporting on the actions of the new President.
Trump, as is his style, has frequently noted that Kelly was nothing before he got involved with her, which seems to be pretty accurate. However, a true media big-shot like Kelly is not about to ever publicly acknowledge a debt to someone in the political arena, especially someone she covers daily, so don't look for a "Thank you, Mr. President," anytime soon.
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Interesting comments, Bill. I think Kelly was more than another pretty blonde talking head at Fox -- she had a 9PM ET one-hour time slot immediately following the Big Dog at Fox and was appointed a moderator for an early Republican primary debate -- but Trump certainly made her a media superstar and vaulted her into the Big Bucks by prolonging their spat vis Twitter. I too was disgusted by Trump's boorish allegation of her menstrual instability, also by his earlier (but later revealed) recorded remarks about groping women. These incidents lend credence to the alleged Russian intelligence report of his horny conduct in Moscow.
ReplyDeleteI admire Trump's prompt, sometimes clever, Twitter replies to his critics, but hope he henceforth restrains his penchant for crudity.
Charlie, as you noted correctly, Megyn was more than a pretty, blonde face on the tube. She was making a significant salary, and she had her own show at a good time. Her pick as a member of the Fox panel for the debates was recognition by her bosses that she was smart and tough, but perhaps more importantly, the station demonstrated "political correctness" by picking a woman as one of the panelists at a time when females all over were claiming insufficient attention and recognition of their talents, every bit as good as their male counterparts. She handled the Trump verbal assault adroitly and was swept up with admiration from women all over and from networks looking to one up Trump. And so she is, as you said, a super star, and I predict that we will be hearing plenty from her in the future as she sticks pins into the big red head. Trump's huge uncontroled mouth is either his greatest asset or his greatest negative. In the past election and in the past eight years, the country appears to have taken a right turn. Republicans control the executive, legislative and judicial branches in Washington; governors' offices in more than 30 states, and the legislatures in 75 per cent of the 50 states. With all that GOP support, I expect that the nation will come around to tolerating Trump, even liking him,at least to some extent. If it hadn't been for the electoral college system, we might have had that fool as President. Hillary won the popular vote by 2.8 million, and she won New York, California and Illinois by 6.9 million popular votes. But for the electoral college, voters in California and New York, would be deciding every presidential election in favor of the Democrats.
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