Ban Megyn Kelly From Next GOP Debate, Donald Trump Says
Megyn Kelly should be disallowed from moderating the upcoming GOP debate according to a tweet blasted out from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.
Donald Trump maintains that the Fox News anchor has a conflict of interest. He may be reacting to Kelly’s dismissive response to the Sarah Palin endorsement or that she gave a platform to National Review writers about their anti-Trump manifesto.
“Based on Megyn Kelly’s conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate,” Trump’s tweet read.
The GOP presidential debate to be aired on Fox News from Des Moines, Iowa, is scheduled for Thursday evening, January 28, from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern. Fox is partnering with Google and YouTube for the event; the Republican National Committee dropped National Review as an additional partner after the above-mentioned publication.
Perhaps the Donald Trump-Megyn Kelly tweet was lost in the faux outrage on social media about the GOP front-runner’s very bad joke/boast about shooting supporters on New York City’s Fifth Avenue.
This guy. https://t.co/WYBiFqnwnp
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) January 23, 2016
Trump has been feuding (actually one-way feuding) with Megyn Kelly since the first GOP debate on August 6, 2015, when she essentially accused the real estate mogul of being a misogynist.
“Since then, Trump has waged an on-again, off-again war against Fox News, with many of his attacks aimed at Kelly,” Business Insider noted.
In the post-debate environment, the ex-Celebrity Apprentice star has described Megyn Kelly as overrated and a lightweight, among other things.
The moderators at that event were Kelly, Brett Baier, and Chris Wallace, the same trio that will anchor Thursday evening’s forum.
Kelly’s nightly program The Kelly File is a ratings powerhouse, and perhaps second only to Bill O’Reilly, she is the biggest star on the network. Moreover, in glowing terms, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has consistently stood by her in the dispute with Trump, so there’s no way that she would, under any circumstances, be pulled from the broadcast.
“What it will do, however, is provide an edgy backdrop to the final Republican primary debate before Iowa voters caucus on February 1st,” the Independent Journal observed.
With Donald Trump as the main draw, the Fox News GOP debate set an all-time viewership record for a non-sports cable event with 24 million viewers.
Based on @MegynKelly's conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2016
Said a Fox News representative about Trump’s tweet, “Megyn Kelly has no conflict of interest. Donald Trump is just trying to build up the audience for Thursday’s debate, for which we thank him,” The Hollywood Reporter detailed.
In the aftermath of the August debate in which at least some portion of the viewership felt alienated, a change.org petition emerged to bar Megyn Kelly from hosting any future Republican debates, in part because, “Megyn Kelly had a clear agenda: attack Donald Trump. Even if she ‘attacked equally,’ we’re not looking for a hatchet-man; we’re looking for a moderator to thoroughly, and fairly, vet the Presidential candidates…Ultimately, neither she nor Fox News lived up the ‘fair and balanced’ standard.'”
A former corporate attorney, Kelly, 44, has strongly insisted that the two-hour candidate forum back in August was “good journalism” rather than “gotcha” journalism.
The petition has garnered about 55,000 signatures, but only approximately 5,000 additional supporters have signed in the intervening months since that first debate.
Separately, the fiercely loyal “Stump for Trump” ladies, Diamond and Silk, who originally rose to prominence on YouTube for rejecting Megyn Kelly’s line of questioning in the August GOP debate, have promised a counterattack to National Review as soon as the Winter Storm Jonas abates.
.@DiamondandSilk are in the Midst of a Snow Storm. Once it's Over, "Watch out National Review, We're Coming For You! pic.twitter.com/ceOe0FoGdA
— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) January 22, 2016
Whose side, if any, are you on in the Donald Trump-Megyn Kelly GOP debate quarrel?
[Photo by Evan Vucci/AP]
