In a complete 180, Megyn Kelly ripped into President Trump for his posts demanding ABC cancel Jimmy Kimmel over the late-night host’s roast of Melania Trump having “a glow like an expectant widow.”
"It’s very inappropriate," Kelly, 55, declared of Trump’s renewed attack on Kimmel, 58, on Thursday’s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show.
“The president of the United States should not be calling for any private company to fire any employee, especially over free speech,” she added, while noting that she found the joke “out of line.”
On Thursday, Trump, 79, directly called for ABC to cancel the late-night host for the second time in less than a week. It followed similar remarks made by his wife shortly after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which both linked to Kimmel’s “call to violence.” Within days, the Trump-appointed FCC chairman challenged Disney’s broadcasting licenses years ahead of schedule.
“When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Kelly, who previously said she believes Kimmel “would love to see Trump assassinated,” completely reversed course in light of the president’s new remarks.
“ABC set the rules for how we engage in cancel culture. They have lots of examples. They’ve got many scalps on their wall,” Kelly added, a clear reference to the network’s firing of Roseanne Barr over a racist joke in 2017.
“And if we’re gonna go by ABC/Disney’s standards, then it’s not good news for Jimmy. You know, the standard has to be applied even when the person offended is a Republican,” she continued. “But of course, ABC doesn’t really operate that way.”
Kelly’s about-face on Kimmel came during an extended conversation with his The Man Show co-creator, Adam Carolla, who called Kimmel’s inflammatory quip “a pretty typical roast joke.”
“When you make a joke, and then nothing happens—like, there was no shooting. No one made a thing about it before the shooting,” Carolla said on Tuesday, while refraining from wholly defending his former collaborator.
Kelly, who has seemingly aligned with the president in attacking Kimmel, is now calling him out directly. Her reversal comes after Trump has repeatedly raged at Kelly and other conservative media figures whom he deemed disloyal.
“It’s easy! Tucker is a Low IQ person - Always easy to beat, and highly overrated!!! So are Megyn Kelly, ‘Candace’(Really Dumb and mentally ill!), and Bankrupt Alex Jones, who is completely ‘fried’,” Trump posted in response to a CNN segment about his low ratings.
Kimmel has also called out the president for his overly aggressive posts, though the late-night host has especially emphasized the president’s hypocrisy.
“If incompetently presiding over not just one of, but the lowest ratings in history is the reason I should be fired, we should both be out of a job, because you’re not doing too good either,” Kimmel said in his Thursday monologue.
