Trumpism is now the sole voice in the Republican Party, and few people demonstrate that better than Megyn Kelly.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Kelly was one of the few journalists who were willing to hold then-candidate Trump to some kind of standard. She famously quizzed him about his boreish and insulting treatment of women, and was roundly criticized by the Right for daring to voice a valid concern. Back then, her response (as per the NYT) was that she wasn’t going to “apologize for doing good journalism.” Nowadays, she is calling young Hollywood actresses “pig” (as per Hollywood Reporter) for posting negatively about the former, and soon-to-be, president.
The spat between the Snow White star and the former Fox host began when, on election night, Zegler used Instagram to post pretty strongly about her disdain for the results, stating “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace,” and “there is a deep deep sickness in this country.”
Zegler has been a target of right-wing cry-bullies for quite some time, mostly for having the audacity to not be white despite being cast as the titular character in Snow White, and also having opinions about the original that weren’t entirely glowing. So, it makes sense that Kelly would jump on this, and in the process show that she is willing to trample over those concerned about women’s healthcare and reproductive rights so she can continue to be a media darling for the right, and keep the cash rolling in.
Zegler did post an apology afterwards in which she said she regretted adding to the atmosphere of hatred, stating as per THR:
“Hi everyone, I would like to sincerely apologize for the election post I shared on Instagram last week. I let me emotions get the best of me. Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding, and I am sorry I contributed to the negative discourse.”
Calling a young woman a pig for having opposing viewpoints is very much in the Trump playbook of responses, which again goes to show just how much his particular brand of toddler-like screeching and unadulterated hatred has taken control of the Republican Party and its media ecosystem.
Aside from attacking young women on behalf of Trump, Kelly also appears to be working overtime on producing propagandistic tweets to help the former Apprentice host and convicted felon. The media personality posted about the Kamala Harris campaign paying a $1 million fee to Oprah Winfrey for an interview the famous host did with the vice-president earlier this year, stating that it was “grossly unethical.”
Of course, Oprah’s shadiness and close personal links to some truly terrible and abusive people means that anything she does should be looked into. And, ethics in politics is important, so potential breaches should be called out. Yet, Kelly seems to have ignored the egregiously criminal nature of Trump’s entire operation, once again proving that anything vaguely resembling the left in America must be saint-like, while conservatives can get away with putting potential child traffickers in positions of power.
Outside of his attempted destruction of the U.S. political system, Trump has been involved in some truly iconic scams, from the multi-level marketing game (legally not pyramid schemes, for totally legitimate reasons) to the comically criminal Trump University. He is also, of course, a convicted felon, and has been found in civil court to have been a sexual assaulter. And these are just the crimes that have managed to cut through his shield of lawyers and wealth. There’s barely enough bandwidth on the internet to go into the rest of the highly credible yet not proven in court accusations against him, which again range from rape to treason.
Yet, Kelly remains quiet about this. It’s never a good sign when people who once were willing to speak out bury their heads in the sand so deeply an ostrich would be embarrassed to be with them. Yet that’s what the conservative personality is now doing, only peeking out to attack the young women she once claimed to want to defend.