Megyn Kelly said CNN and other media outlets are partly responsible for the violence that broke out in the Capitol on Jan. 6 because journalists couldn’t check their “personal feelings about” former President Donald Trump.
“Part of the reason we saw what happened at the Capitol here two weeks ago is because there had been a complete lack of trust in the media, and people don’t know where to turn for true information. They don’t trust the media anymore. And it’s a major problem,” Kelly said in an interview with BBC Newsnight Saturday.
“They hated him so much they checked their objectivity. And it wasn’t just CNN. All of them did. They just couldn’t check their own personal feelings about him,” Kelly said.
She added that “the media destroyed itself” but that Trump “certainly helped.”
Kelly, who worked at Fox News during the 2016 election cycle, said she first thought Trump was wrong to ridicule CNN before his presidency, but that over the last four years, the outlet’s reporting has proven Trump was “right.”
“I remember listening to all of [Trump’s] disparaging comments about CNN when he first became a national figure as a presidential candidate, and I watched a lot of CNN even though I was on Fox. And I was like, ‘This is unfair. CNN may be a little boring, but it’s fair, and it’s factual. It’s not biased against Trump.’ Then they spent the next four years proving him right — proving me wrong,” she said.
“He’s been called a narcissist… [but] you don’t become president of the US if you’re not a narcissist.”
Speaking to @maitlis last night, journalist @megynkelly says Donald Trump’s temperament “sullied his legacy on his way out of the door” https://t.co/tQ874THGUx#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/GSxRbrqBKP
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) January 20, 2021
The House voted to impeach Trump for the second time on charges of inciting an insurrection after the siege of the Capitol. Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is slated to begin on Feb. 9.
