The End of Mainstream Media – Megyn Kelly on Shawn Ryan Show (Transcript)

So it was a no brainer when you asked me to come here. I’m looking forward to a long friendship, I hope.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow, that means a lot. Thank you so much. And yeah, I love that interview. So I just listened to it again today. But thank you for that opportunity as well.

MEGYN KELLY: Thank you. Although I’ve decided I got to step up my studio now that I’m here. My God, I’ve been phoning it in. It’s unbelievable in here.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. There’s a lot of artifacts. It’s turning into a museum.

MEGYN KELLY: I got to start putting more pressure on my guests to give me things, important things. The best thing I’ve ever gotten from a guest is a signed basketball. Remember when Dennis Rodman went over to, he’s the Henry Kissinger of our time, to try to find peace with Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un?

Well, it’s signed by two out of the three. I got Trump and Dennis Rodman on there with all three of their faces on the basketball.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s cool. That’s got to be a one of a kind.

MEGYN KELLY: Might be the most valuable thing I own.

Introduction and Career Overview

SHAWN RYAN: Right on, right on. Well, let me, I like to kick it off with an introduction. Not that you need one, but here we go.

Megyn Kelly, you were a journalist at Fox News for 13 years and moderated six presidential debates, including the first Republican primary debate in 2015. You hosted America’s Newsroom, America Live, and the Kelly File.

You are the founder of Devil May Care Media and host of the Megyn Kelly show, one of the top podcasts in the world. Your 2016 memoir, “Settle for More,” debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

You have an impressive and varied list of notable interviews, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister, I’m going to butcher that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former President Donald Trump, then Senator Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Senator Mitt Romney, Michael Phelps, and the list goes on.

You’ve won awards such as Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list, and Hollywood Reporter’s Woman in Entertainment Power 100. In 2016, you became the second news anchor in history to be featured on the cover of Vanity Fair.

You are a mother of three, a wife, and a devout Catholic. And one of my favorite things about you is you do not waver in your values or beliefs. And that’s hard to come by these days.

MEGYN KELLY: Oh, well, thank you for that. I can tell my assistant has been here. How old am I?

Bombshell and Standing Up for Women

SHAWN RYAN: But, so I just watched this movie this morning for the first time, Bombshell.

MEGYN KELLY: Oh, wow. You watched Bombshell.

SHAWN RYAN: I watched the whole thing this morning. And wow. I’d always heard about what went on over there, but to see it in that format, what you did is just so commendable. And I can’t wait to dive into that.

MEGYN KELLY: I have a lot of thoughts.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, to me, you are a beacon of light in a lost world for women, especially in this upcoming generation. I mean, they’re just facing so much, and there aren’t too many positive role models in the world left, I don’t think. And you’re a great one.

MEGYN KELLY: You know, I definitely have a strong ethical compass, but I am open minded to being persuaded I’m wrong. I always say it’s delightful to find out you’re wrong because tomorrow you’ll be less wrong than you were yesterday.

But certain core things that you grow up with from the church, from your parents, from your Girl Scout troop, though not today, but back when I grew up, they do communicate certain core values to you that ideally you hold onto throughout your life.

And while different interests may come and go, different judgments may come and go, the core set of values tends to stay the same. That’s at least been my experience.

Though I have to admit, devout Catholic may be too strong, because I think my priest would be sitting at home like, really? I mean, we missed a few appearances at Sunday Mass over the past year, but not too many.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I would love to dive into your faith journey and how that’s all going maybe towards the end of the interview as well.

MEGYN KELLY: Sure.

Advice for Young Women

SHAWN RYAN: But I would love to do a life story on you, starting at the beginning and going through your come up into being a mega news anchor and how you got to where you are today and then maybe some current events at the end.

But I have a subscription platform, it’s on Patreon and there are top supporters that have been here since the beginning. And so one thing that I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question.

And it was overwhelmingly questions about you standing up for women. And so I kind of combined all those questions and I just wanted to ask you, especially being a father of an eight month old daughter, what is the best piece of advice for young women dedicated to rising to the top in today’s generation?

MEGYN KELLY: Don’t think of yourself as a woman. Just think of yourself as a worker and do it a lot of it all the time, without complaint. You know, that you’re not above anything.

I almost called my book “Out Hustled” as opposed to “Settle for More” because I really think that’s the word that explains my success. There’s nothing particularly special about me. I’m not particularly brilliant or particularly talented in one way or another.

I’ve just worked really hard, studied hard, and when I landed in this field, worked really hard to develop the skills that it would take to do well here. And anyone, anyone can do that.

It does require some, each field requires some natural aptitude. You know, I don’t think this work ethic on stage in the ballet would have produced the same rewards for me. But once you narrow it down to “I think I have the natural talents that could make me succeed in this business,” it’s all about hard work.

And so my advice to young women is the same as it is to young men. Get in there, do every job, even the ones that aren’t yours, even the grimy ones that make you feel less than. Don’t leave before your boss. Come in on the weekends.

Volunteer to take every assignment, even if you think it’s beneath you, with a thank you. When you get positive or negative feedback, say thank you. When somebody gives you any sort of critique, explore it. Why? What did I do? How could I do better?

If somebody edits your writing, ask them to have the marked up brief. Let me see it. How did I go wrong? How could I do better? All of it is a learning opportunity.

So I think all of that’s important to becoming a valued employee or star or whatever in your particular industry. But I will also say whatever’s thrown at you by your boss, by your colleagues, by your spouse, by your friend, by your office mate, the response is thank you. Thank you. Great.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. That’s a great piece of advice. Thank you.

MEGYN KELLY: Even if it’s sh*tty. Because now you’ve got this to deal with. You’re figuring out, this is how I deal with a crappy person, an unethical person. This is a lesson to me in how I misjudge somebody as good who turns out to be not so good. Where did I go wrong?

All of it is opportunity. If only you will take an ever so brief time. You don’t have to spend days and years to reflect on it.

SHAWN RYAN: Have you always lived by that philosophy, or is that learned?

MEGYN KELLY: I would say I put that to more use once I hit the professional field as a young lawyer, and then certainly when my first marriage was collapsing. That was a great opportunity to really pause and figure some things out about myself. And thankfully, that happened in my young thirties. So that set me up for a nice long run since then.

Navigating Truth and Misinformation

SHAWN RYAN: Good. I have, this is a personal question. And ever since I started doing this, and I kind of talked about why I started doing it when you interviewed me, but ever since I got into uncovering corruption or the truth space or whatever you want to call it, it’s almost like a beacon out for all the weirdos to try to get on my podcast.

And it gets really hard to determine who is completely full of sh*t and who’s actually not manipulating facts to make it sound like truth. It’s tricky. I think it’s tricky. Do you find it tricky?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes and no. I mean, I have a whole team of producers who I really trust. Some of them have been with me for more than a dozen years and gotten me through Fox and NBC and now this show. So I have complete trust in them.

So they sift through it all. I have more than my own radar to figure out who’s telling the truth, but I still make mistakes, because I don’t, I think, like you, notwithstanding my cynical newswoman background. And you’ve got to be somewhat cynical, given your background, too.

I still trust people. I still kind of love people. My instinct is still to believe, as opposed to doubt, unless you’re a politician, in which case it’s the opposite. I believe almost nothing.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: But when I was at NBC, I had that couple come on my show. I don’t know if you remember this story, but the woman ran out of gas and a homeless guy gave her his last twenty dollars. She filled up her gas tank and it was just such a nice gift by the homeless guy.

Anyway, turned to this whole thing. She and her husband wound up starting a GoFundMe for this guy. All these people donated. It was a feel good story. The whole thing wound up being a fraud. They were all in on it.

Before we knew that, I had the husband and wife on my show because they were under some scrutiny for maybe stealing some of the gold from me. I gave them way too much benefit of the doubt. They were total fraudsters. It was so bad.

But I wouldn’t take it back if I could because I like that part of me. I don’t want to lose that part of me.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get, I just, you know, some of the stuff I worry about is things like the COVID vaccine. I don’t ever want to affect somebody’s decision making process off that was put out on my show and I just, I feel a huge responsibility to that. And so I was just curious how you sift through it.

Reflecting on COVID Coverage

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, that stuff was very tricky. The COVID stuff was very tricky. We were turned on by so many authorities that we were supposed to trust. Yeah, it’s almost like too big to get your arms around what happened there.

And I actually think it’s one of the reasons why people can’t go back there. If you do stories on COVID, they don’t get numbers. And it’s not because in particular, the right half of the country doesn’t have very strong feelings about it. It’s just, pardon the term, triggering.

Yeah, it’s triggering. You know, it’s like people are pissed. Nothing changed. We screwed over our kids and ourselves. A lot of us took the vaccine and feel unhealthier as a result of it. People are worried about their children if they gave it to them. So it’s one of those avoidance things now.

But yeah, I did not get all of COVID right. I think I did okay, give myself a B plus on my understanding of what was going on there. But it’s very hard when you have so many previously trusted entities lying to you.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. Even, I mean, I wasn’t for it, but I brought somebody on and I felt like they were, I felt like the facts, they were against it too. And I felt like the facts that they were pulling were painting a, they were pulling all these facts from all these other things and trying to create a narrative out of it. And I never aired it.

MEGYN KELLY: Oh, wow.

SHAWN RYAN: Because I didn’t. If I don’t believe them, then I won’t air it.

MEGYN KELLY: Smart. So it’s very hard to know. And then, I mean, I’ll take you back to the COVID period where Alex Berenson wasn’t allowed anywhere. You know, he was a COVID vaccine doubter early on. Former New York Times reporter, then he turned an author. And he was saying some interesting things.

I mean, I had interviewed him on Fox and he seemed like a very credible, serious journalist to me. He never struck me as a crackpot. You know, there are some people out there that you just know. So I said, well, let’s put him on. I’d like to find out why he’s so scary to everyone.

And, you know, Alex Berenson turned out to be right about not everything, but a lot. And I thought our duty in putting him on was just research everything he was going to say and find out what the other side was saying so I could tweak him, you know, so that people could make up their own minds.

But somebody like that, I didn’t think it was right not to platform that guy at all. Like, it’s a serious person. He’s not a nutcase. He’s not out there to hurt a bunch of people. But there are some people who are more in the category of what you’re saying. And for me, I just try to stay away from them and let the team do the vetting.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, I should get more team members.

MEGYN KELLY: Yes, you need the team.

SHAWN RYAN: But, but we’ll get there. But so I wanted, I want to start at the very beginning.

MEGYN KELLY: Okay.

Growing Up in Upstate New York

SHAWN RYAN: Where did you grow up?

MEGYN KELLY: I was born in Illinois. My dad was getting his PhD at the University of Illinois. And then before I turned one, we moved to Syracuse, New York. And that’s where I spent pretty much the first 10 years of my life where my dad taught at Syracuse University.

And then we moved to Albany. So I basically just moved from one tundra to another, immersed in four feet of snow every winter, freezing our asses off, but loving it. You know, totally gray, totally freezing. Summers were almost non-existent, maybe a month, and then every other month was snowy with sledding, but I thought it was heavenly.

SHAWN RYAN: And you have how many sisters?

MEGYN KELLY: I had one sister who’s, she was six and a half, almost seven years older than I am. And then my brother’s five and a half years older.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, so you’re the youngest?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Of three.

MEGYN KELLY: I was the only one they really wanted, Shawn. My brother and sister were accidents. They got, my mom had them when she was like 23 and 24. I was the only planned child, which is, which means only coveted child.

SHAWN RYAN: There you go. There you go. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? What did you like doing?

MEGYN KELLY: You know, it’s funny, because I look back now and because, you know, now my husband and I are living such different lives than the ones we grew up with. My kids have a great existence, and we have some money, so they get to do some fun vacations, and they get to go to this camp, although it’s not an expensive camp, but, you know, they’re learning how to sail. I never did anything like that.

So when I was growing up, I literally went through the sprinkler in my mom’s backyard in the summer. Or the highlight was we’d go to my Nana and Pop Pop’s boatyard on the Hudson. I was swimming in the Hudson River in the 1970s when GE was doing all of its toxic dumps. I could have been at NASA, if only I had not taken in that amount of toxicity.

Anyway, but it was great. It was heavenly. Because we’d sit out there. I was joking the other day with my husband. I’m like, you know, I was thinking back, one of my favorite activities was to make mud pies. You know, just mud pies when it rained. And then I said, my second thought was we were poor. Like, how was that my favorite activity? But it was, you know, we’d sneak out.

My grandparents had a stand where they would sell burgers to the fishermen, and I could get a cheeseburger whenever I wanted. And then at night, when nobody was there, you know, none of the customers, my brother, my sister and I would have our friends over and we’d play waitress, where we’d get the little order pads. We’d make ice cream sundaes for each other. We’d have Elvis Presley movies on, or the Brady Bunch, you know, classic 70s TV.

And I don’t know if it gets any happier than that. You don’t need to sail. You don’t need to tennis. You don’t need a yacht club. You don’t need any of that crap. You can do it with mud pies, a little Elvis, and a great cheeseburger. I’ve never lost sight of that. I feel like all that was an important ingredient to becoming a good journalist, frankly.

SHAWN RYAN: Were you close with your siblings?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. There was enough of an age difference that when we were little, I wasn’t that close to my brother. My sister took care of me. She was seven years older, so she was always a caretaker and good to me. She was very funny, and my mom is very funny. All the women in my family have a very strong sense of humor.

And my brother just sort of, I think I was in, he, I was annoying to him, he was annoyed by me because I was always in his stuff. I was messing with his gerbils when he didn’t want me to. I picked up one and his tail fell off. Oh, shit. Buried it in the garbage.

But then when we got older, as soon as I was like 16, my brother and I got closer and my sister and I were always close. And now my brother and I are really close.

SHAWN RYAN: What does your mother do?

MEGYN KELLY: My mom is a nurse and so she spent her whole life nursing at ultimately the Albany Veterans Hospital.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, good.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

Losing Her Father at 15

SHAWN RYAN: And you lost your father at age 15, correct?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Of a heart attack.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How did you get through that?

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, the short answer is my mom. My mom is, she’s really strong and always was. And that sense of humor was very important. You know, she was able to crack jokes almost the night of, not quite, but almost. And kind of taught us how to keep laughing even through the dark times.

It was an odd time of life for me because my dad died December 15, 1985. I was a sophomore in high school. It was sudden, it was right before Christmas and it couldn’t have been a more explosive event on our family.

But at the same time, I was popular that year. I hadn’t always been. I was very badly bullied earlier, but that year I was popular and I had lost some weight. I was starting to look better, my acne was clearing up. I was getting invited to these cool parties with, you know, good looking boys who started to ask me out.

And so for a 15 year old girl, all of those things are great things. And so I remember that year as just feeling such an odd mix of intense sadness and depression and yet happiness and hopefulness about my life and like how it could be and escapism, you know, not in terms of drugs or alcohol, but just like, you know, going to the prom with the junior. Right. Like that’s cool, like shopping for a dress.

Back in those days we didn’t have cell phones, like just wait, waiting for him to call and then he did call. I remember those moments almost as acutely as I remember the sadness around my dad’s death. I think just given the value system.

SHAWN RYAN: Of a 15 year old girl where it happened suddenly.

MEGYN KELLY: So he was only 45 and my mom was 44 and he really hadn’t had any health problems. He wasn’t an exerciser, you know, 1985, a lot of people weren’t. He had a relatively stressful job. He was a professor first at Syracuse and then at SUNY Albany. But he loved his job. He wasn’t heavy, but he did smoke and he drank. Not to excess, but he smoked.

And about a week or 10 days before he died, he thought he was having some heart trouble and he went to the ER and they told him it was heartburn. So he came back relieved. Other than that, there had not been any sort of warning.

And the night he died, it was a Sunday night. My sister was home from college because it was close to Christmas. My brother was still at his college, which was not too far from where we lived, and said good night, went upstairs and I just remember my sister waking me up shortly after midnight saying, wake up, Daddy had a heart attack. And it’s just, it’s like an otherworldly, it’s an out of body experience, you know?

SHAWN RYAN: Wow, that’s sad. You had just mentioned that you were bullied as a little girl. Why were you bullied?

Childhood Bullying

MEGYN KELLY: Why? That’s an interesting question. I think, I think it’s because I had a fairly big, not huge, but fairly big personality. So I attracted attention, which is somewhat dangerous when you’re young. Kind of always. It could be potentially dangerous, but you know, when you’re young, most kids just want to fly under the radar, have friends.

I wasn’t trying to get attention, I just had a large personality. I’ve always laughed that I consider myself now, I’m fairly attractive. Though it’s going downhill as I get older, it’s fine. But I have an unattractive girl’s personality because that’s who I really am. That’s how I grew up.

I was never good looking. I wasn’t a cute child, I wasn’t a particularly good looking tween. It wasn’t until I got later in high school that I was like, I need to work on this. I can do better. Got to lose some weight, I got to get to a dermatologist. I had a big space between my two front teeth. I’m like, I got to get that fixed. I got to put some sun in, in this hair.

And I started teaching aerobics. My brother said, just casually one time, he said, the girls with the best bodies all do aerobics. I was like, that’s what I’ll do. So anyway, I do think it was just, if you have a big personality, you’re potentially a target as a kid.

SHAWN RYAN: How did you, I mean, how would they bully you?

Childhood Bullying and Finding Strength

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I had some bullying when I was in fourth grade that was unpleasant before I left Syracuse, but it was sort of more normal bullying, but it was bad. Like I was at a girl’s birthday party and they all started flicking me, all of them. I was like, kids can be so mean.

And I remember calling my dad and he came to get me early. And when we walked inside, I remember he looked at my mom, and my mom looked at him like, “How is she?” kind of thing. And my dad gave her the thumbs down.

But that’s not—I mean, I remember it. Here I am all these years later. But it was the seventh grade where things got bad. And really, if you could have seen me in seventh grade, Shawn, honestly, I can’t believe those girls picked on me. You know, I had enough problems. Why would they have picked on that version of me?

But they did. And I’ve never named the ringleader, but she knows who she is. And she just turned every person in the school against me. She decided I was out, I was otherized. And I went from having lots of friends to having no friends for almost a year.

And seventh grade is a tough year. That’s 12. You’re very fragile. You know, you don’t really have all the skills you need to deal with that kind of a thing. And on top of that, it was at an era, at a time when, you know, talking to my parents about it was unthinkable.

You know, we weren’t talking about bullying or going to guidance counselors about it. It just wasn’t a thing yet. So I was ashamed about it. So I didn’t want anyone to know in my home. And so it was just an—it was like a year of torture in a way. It was like an extended torture.

SHAWN RYAN: What ended it?

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: They just gave up.

MEGYN KELLY: She just decided one day I was acceptable again.

SHAWN RYAN: So, I mean, there’s a lot of kids that go through this today, especially with the cyberbullying and I mean, it’s a big problem that a lot of kids are dealing with. And so I’m curious if you have any advice for kids that are being bullied. What could you have done back then to end it?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, if I could talk to the 12-year-old version of me, I 100% would say, tell your parents, you know, they can help you. And it doesn’t have to be—you can establish some parameters, like you have to agree not to call the girl’s parents, you know, something like that. But your parents can help.

And I, as a parent, would absolutely intervene if this were happening to my child in whatever way I could. Because while I do think you can learn a lot from some bullying, like some short stints of bullying—I think it actually creates a more empathetic person. Right. You’re less likely to bully, I think, if it happens like that.

But if it goes on and on and on, it can cause real damage. I still think it affects my relationships, really. My friendships.

SHAWN RYAN: How so?

MEGYN KELLY: I’m not good at pursuing friendship. Like, once I have a friend, I’m a good friend, but all the friends I have pursued me.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

MEGYN KELLY: I just—I’m very wary of rejection and getting, I don’t know, hurt. Getting hurt.

Advice for Children Who’ve Lost a Parent

SHAWN RYAN: I wanted to ask too. I didn’t want to skip over the bullying when you brought that up, but I also wanted to ask about advice for people that have lost a parent as a child. And what advice would you have for that? Because there are a lot of kids that lose parents.

And me coming from a military background, there’s—I know a lot of gold star kids. And so every time I get the opportunity to talk to somebody like you that has been through it, I just have to ask.

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I think, number one, lean into faith. Even if you’re not faithful, that’s a good time to start. Just go and sit there. I used to be so comforted just by sitting in the church.

One of my frustrations when my dad died was I couldn’t drive. I was only 15. I just turned 15 a month earlier. So I really wasn’t even close to driving. And so I’d ride my bike to the church and I’d sit there. But I couldn’t get to the cemetery because it was too far away. And I really wanted to sit by the cemetery very badly.

It’s just, you know, you knew physically that’s where he was. So I think young children need that time to say goodbye. It’s not a one or two day process at a wake and a funeral, you know. There will be time of needing to sit with God or by oneself, maybe in a place like a church with the candles and the windows where you just feel it’s bigger than you or by the grave site.

And I think as a parent, I might ask, “Is that something you want to do?” Because I wouldn’t have suggested that to my mom. She could have driven me, but there was no way I would have asked that because she was grieving and I wouldn’t have wanted to upset her, but she would have done it. And I think that’s—maybe a parent could go to the kid and say, “Do you want that? I can drop you off, I can pick you up. I don’t have to be standing there for it.”

I guess I also want to say this is sort of part two. This sounds weird, but there is a silver lining to it, you know. Because I know my friend just lost his wife and he has two young boys. She just died suddenly last September. And he was like, “Can you tell me what to say to them? Can you tell me anything to make me feel better about what just happened to them?” And this is in that category.

The biggest gift to come out of losing my dad was the fact that you understand mortality in your limited time here like no other. You can’t understand it the way someone who’s lost a parent or a loved one at an early age understands it without going through that.

And so, again, if you spend the time reflecting on what it means, what the pain signifies to you, then you can arrive at the obvious conclusion, which is you must make decisions in your life like it’s an emergency. You know, it’s the old “no tomorrow is promised,” but you just know it on a gut level.

So you can’t waste time. You can’t waste time in a relationship that is unhappy, in a job that is unhappy, in a you that is unhappy. You must take active steps always, always to improve your situation.

And the longer you sit around and think, “Well, I’ll meet the right person and I’ll be happier,” or “My boss will finally recognize what a star I am and give me that great role or raise I want,” and it doesn’t happen. The more you get to the point where you realize, “Oh, I have to be the one to change it. No one’s coming to save me. It’s just the MK show, you know. I have to make the changes. I have to do it. Succeed or fail, it’s right now.”

So I wound up a happier person, I think, at 53, than I probably otherwise would have been. I think I probably would have been much more complacent about my happiness if I hadn’t had that loss. And that’s one gift my dad was able to give me.

SHAWN RYAN: I think that’s some of the best advice I’ve ever heard in this room when it comes to that. And thank you. We’ve had a lot of discussions about loss, and that was top notch.

I’m curious. You had mentioned leaning into your faith. Did you ever—do you feel like your father’s ever visited you since he’s passed?

MEGYN KELLY: Many times. Many times.

SHAWN RYAN: Any specific example that sticks out?

Signs from Beyond

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, certainly right after he was gone. We had a lot of signs from him right after we lost him. I mean, they were really kind of stunning. But for me, probably the biggest was when my dad was little—when I was little, my dad used to take us camping, and we’d go to this place on Lake Ontario, and we’d rent these cabins. You know, low rent, but so fun.

I used to call the lawn chair for sleeping overnight inside the house. My brother and sister were like, “She’s an idiot. Great. We’ve got the bed.” And my dad used to play his guitar for us around the campfire all the time when we were camping there.

So there are certain songs that he used to sing to us that are—you know, I will always associate with him in those memories, mostly by John Denver, Neil Diamond, you know, that era.

And one time I was living in Chicago. I was a young lawyer. It was—I wasn’t that young. I was like 30. I was learning how to play guitar. Not well, but I was learning. And I had a book of, you know, sheet music. And I was really missing my dad, you know, at 30. I’d lost him for 15 years. But of course you think about him, and some days you just really wish you had your dad there and you could ask him for advice.

And I was just feeling blue and I turned the page in this guitar book, and there was this song that he used to sing to us all the time. And I don’t actually know the name of it, but it goes, “It takes a worried, worried man to sing a worried song. Oh, it takes a worried, worried man to sing a worried song,” and it goes from there.

And I was like, “Oh, my God.” And I could play it. I learned enough chords that I could play it. And I strummed that guitar and I sang the song to myself, and I cried. And I knew he was there. I knew he brought me that moment. You know, I don’t purport to know how it works, but I know what happened that day.

SHAWN RYAN: I love hearing that. Can I share something with you?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I just had something happen to me a couple weeks ago. I guess about a month ago now. But I had—it’s Gabe again, who we had discussed, you know, on your—when you interviewed me.

But so I went to Vienna and I interviewed this gentleman, Ahmad Massoud, who’s the leader of the Afghan resistance. And he told me a bunch of stuff on the interview that—I get paranoid when I start doing these type of interviews, uncovering corruption. Do you get paranoid about that at all?

MEGYN KELLY: No, but I’m not dealing with that kind of stuff. I mean, you’re in the thick of—

The Paranormal and Faith

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. So anyways, there’s—I mean, there’s—I worry about our own government. I mean, he is the third person I’ve interviewed that said we’re bringing, giving $87 million a week to the Taliban. And so we started a whole movement here. And once the word kind of got out, all of my former colleagues are all texting me, “Do you have protection? Do you have security?” And so then I started getting really paranoid because these are the guys that I used to work with at CIA and Special Ops and—yeah.

And so I got home. And I got home, came into work on June 28th, and when you walk in the front door down there, there’s a big hockey jersey, a Panthers Wounded Warrior hockey jersey. And so when Gabe died—Gabe died of a heroin overdose. And he had started this—he kept telling me he was junked out a lot, and he was telling me that he wanted to start this Wounded Warriors hockey team, and he was going to walk into the Panthers stadium and find who he needed to talk to. And I was like, “Yeah, right, Gabe, whatever. Okay, I hope you do.”

Well, he did it. And when they went to tell him that they were going to fund his team, that’s when they found him in his apartment.

So fast forward, I had mentioned that Gabe’s a protector, and I was really paranoid about this interview, and I was a little concerned for my team. And it was kind of sinking in, what we had just done. I come into the studio here for the first time since we got back, and that jersey was on the ground. And that jersey, I mean, it probably weighs 35 pounds. It’s a huge frame. It’s a framed full-size hockey jersey.

And it was just weird because it had been—I’ve been here for three years now, and that frame has been there for three years. No crack in the frame. Glass is fine. No scuffs on it. Everybody in the office was in Vienna with me, so it couldn’t have been any of them other than my assistant, who I asked, and she didn’t do it.

And so anyways, the day goes by, and it’s just in my head, I’m like, “Why did that fall? Like, what is Gabe trying to tell me? Are you warning me about something?” And so I stayed here late that night. Everybody was out of here. Everybody was out of both buildings that are here. And my—it was just me in the parking lot at the end of the day, and I’m pacing around kind of having a conversation with Gabe in my head. “Just what are you trying to tell me here?”

And I couldn’t figure it out. And I went home and I told my wife Katie about it. “So this is the weirdest thing. Gabe’s jersey fell off the wall. It’s been there for three years.” And she’s like, “The Florida Panthers Wounded Warrior hockey team jersey?” And I said, “Yeah, that’s the one.” And she goes, “Sean, the Panthers just won the Stanley—”

MEGYN KELLY: Oh.

SHAWN RYAN: Cup. And I was like, “Holy—” And I was like, “Today’s June 28th. That’s the anniversary of Operation Red Wings, those rounds that I just showed you up there. I found it on June 28th.”

And to me, I totally broke down and a happy breakdown. But it was—I could hear his voice up there going, “I’m not trying to warn you about anything—”

MEGYN KELLY: Sean. I’m trying to—

SHAWN RYAN: Celebrate. Panthers just won a Stanley Cup. And—but to me, I mean, I wanted to tell that to you after our discussion about faith and that kind of stuff that we had on your show. But to me, that’s like proof. That’s—it’s too many coincidences in one incident to be anything else. And people are always searching for, you know, is there—does consciousness continue? Is there life after death? And to me, you know, it’s like a supercharge in your faith to know, he’s got me. Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: Somebody’s—I feel like there’s no avoiding it. There’s just no avoiding it. It’s just too present, these reminders. If you just pay a modicum of attention, you’ll see it. I don’t know how one couldn’t see it. You know, there’s only so many things you can write off as, “Oh, that’s a coincidence. Oh, that means nothing.”

It’s like, in my life, I just had way too many for me to ever be convinced it’s not him. It’s not an otherworldly force trying to communicate something to me. And I also think it’s just so—there’s so much hubris behind the notion that, “Well, you’re up, it’s over, it’s done.” How do you know? We don’t—we’re so fragile, and we know almost nothing.

I love these big swinging guys who are like—and gals like, “No. It’s just a no.” Okay? I mean, who the hell knows? We need to be humble enough to know that.

I’ll tell you something. Another good one. Not in my case, but my dear friends Allison and Tom Barklidge lost their boy Blake at age 17. I did a story on it. In October of 2021, he died suddenly of myocarditis. And they don’t know if it—I know people are going to say it was a vaccine. They don’t know. He had been vaccinated, but he definitely had myocarditis. And two greater people you’d never meet.

Well, one of the things that they told me was Blake really wanted to go to Clemson. And the dad said, “I don’t know Blake. You know, I’m not sure,” because he’s like, “I’m going to get into Clemson, and I’m going to get a scholarship from Clemson so we can afford it.” And Tom was like, “If you get a scholarship, you can go.”

After Blake died, they called all the colleges to which Blake had applied and said, you know, “He died. Don’t give him a spot. Like, give it to some kid who’s applying.” But something happened at Clemson, and Tom came home one day, and there was the big envelope, and it said, not only is he admitted, oh, here’s a scholarship for him.

So Tom and Allison are just, you know, completely blown away by it. And when we aired this piece of the story, somebody from Clemson was watching. So this guy at Clemson, high up in the administration, contacted Tom, and they started talking. They became friends. Tom invited him to this memorial golf tournament he has in Blake’s honor every year. Blake loved golf, and I went. This year, I don’t golf, but I went for them. And I met this guy from Clemson.

And that day, the guy had been on the golf course, and he gets to one of the holes, and he said, he or the person with him, I can’t remember. But one of them said, “Blake, give us some help. You know, it hasn’t been a great day. We need something.” And this guy, who’s not a very good golfer, hit the only hole in one of his life, and it happened to be on the hole where if you manage to hit a hole in one, which nobody does, you get a—

SHAWN RYAN: BMW. Oh.

MEGYN KELLY: Man. So the epilogue of the story is at Blake’s memorial. Tom Barklidge stands up there, and he says—he tells the story. Everybody’s like, “This is unbelievable.” And Tom says, “And I just want you to know that the one thing I always knew about Blake was that he really wanted me to have a BMW.” Tom said to the guy, “Wow.”

Anyway, the guy got to keep his BMW, but it’s such a great—I just don’t believe for a second that none of those things are—

SHAWN RYAN: Connected. It’s this—like every time I hear this stuff, it’s like a restoration of faith. And, and you know, because I don’t know about you, but mine, it goes up and down, you know, and—and it seems like as long as you are open and paying attention, you know, and not too wrapped up in your own bullshit, all the signs, they seem to be there, at least. At least for me. They just keep coming and coming and coming.

And—and you know, another thing is—that was another—that was a low point. Like the last one that I just told you about was a low point for me. And, and maybe not a low point, but a lull. And like, I just wasn’t really into the faith stuff. I was starting to doubt again. We had had a—we’d had a study at my house and somebody—we were talking about life after death, and somebody had said, “Yeah, well, you know, it’s probably like before you were born.” And I thought about that and then that started creeping back in my head about, “Well, shit, what if the lights just go out and that’s it?” And then that—

MEGYN KELLY: Happens. But that’s somewhat comforting to me. Like, I think about when you’re—when you have your babies, I just think you can tell your babies are still closer to the other side. There’s something just truly magical about them. There’s like a knowing, there’s a—there’s a beauty, there’s a specialness. It’s not just because they’re babies. I just think that you can tell they were—they’re closer to the other side still.

So that statement doesn’t imply that that’s a bad place to be, you know, prior to you being born. It’s just not a conscious knowledge of every day-to-day activity.

SHAWN RYAN: Here. That’s a good—

MEGYN KELLY: Point. I’m okay with—

SHAWN RYAN: That. That’s a good point.

The Path to Law School

Well, moving on. When did becoming an attorney sound appealing to—

MEGYN KELLY: You? Very quickly. You know, I—like suddenly is what I mean. I wasn’t planning on being an attorney. I went to Syracuse thinking I would be a journalist because I had taken a high school aptitude test that said I should be. That I should be a journalist. And my guidance counselor wrote me a recommendation, my only recommendation for college. It was so pathetic. And he wrote, “She says she wants to be a political journalist,” which I actually didn’t even remember.

And then he actually wrote in the thing, “Meg’s very strong in English and social studies. Math and science aren’t her thing.” Who writes that in a college recommendation? It was the 80s, it was a different time.

So I went to Syracuse thinking I would be a journalist, though I didn’t get into Newhouse, which is the very strong journalism school, but I got into the political science school, and before I knew it, I started thinking about political science and government and maybe there would be a role for me. And I said, “Well, I think I’d really—I’d like to be a DA.” And somebody said, “Well, then you got to go to law school.” I’m like, “Oh, I guess I’m going to have to start focusing on my grades then.”

And I did. I focused on my grades. I kept a good GPA, and I wound up going to Albany Law School, which is my hometown, and I had a great education there. I loved Albany Law School a lot. And then, you know, one thing led to another. I never did prosecute cases.

SHAWN RYAN: Though. So you wanted to be a journalist before an attorney and then wound up being a—

MEGYN KELLY: Journalist?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. What, what was the draw to—

MEGYN KELLY: Journalism? It was exciting. I always liked breaking news, you know, like, I see it in my kids here and there, you know, like when Trump got shot, I was sitting in my living room and my little Thatcher, who was 10, said, “Trump got shot.” I’m like, “What?” I thought he was messing with me. And he goes, “He got shot in the ear, but he’s—”

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

MEGYN KELLY: What? Of course I get—I run over to my phone and sure enough, he was exactly right. And then I see him updating the whole family on the family text change. “Trump was shot today. Took a bullet in the ear. Appears to be okay.”

Anyway, I think some kids just have an affinity for being the one to break the news. And I had it. And I did a little like two-day internship with the Albany Times Union when I was sophomore in high school. And I loved that. I loved being on the phone next to the reporter who was on the phone calling his sources and getting the story.

Then I watched “All the President’s Men,” which is full of inspo, and that’s kind of how that ball got rolling. And then I got sidetracked with the law thing. I mean, I never thought that I could go to law school and be a lawyer. I just wasn’t thinking about myself in those days terms. I like “Megyn Kelly, Esq.” sounded so important, and I just had never even considered a life that looked like that, you know.

I just thought I’d be more of a grizzled shoe leather reporter on the beat in the field, breaking news. And then I just became quite dazzled by the notion of being a respectable attorney who people would have to take seriously because I had Esquire after my name. This is the way I was thinking back then. Before I knew it, I had done—

SHAWN RYAN: It. So were you outgoing before? Were you outgoing before you got into—

MEGYN KELLY: That? Yeah, I was outgoing.

SHAWN RYAN: Sure.

From Law to Journalism

MEGYN KELLY: Okay. I wouldn’t consider myself an extrovert, but I’m outgoing. You know, I’m not one of those people who gets totally energized by being in front of a big crowd, like Rush Limbaugh. I saw him many times. I was kind of friends with him. And you’d put him in front of a crowd and, man, he would come alive. You know, the chest would puff out and the voice would start to boom and the pupils would dazzle. It was just—you could see it.

I’m not like that. I can do it, but I don’t know how. That’s—I think what a true natural extrovert is. But outgoing, yes. I’m an easy conversationalist and happy to interact with others.

SHAWN RYAN: So you became—so did you—you never did become a DA?

MEGYN KELLY: Never became a DA. Basically racked up $100,000 worth of debt and realized I was going to make 30 grand a year. With a hundred thousand, I would have been below the federal poverty level. And I was like, I’ve had 25 years of being poor. I don’t wish to be poor any longer. I would like to make some money.

And the thought of making money was so delightful, I can’t tell you. It’s like I remember the prospect of earning a real paycheck because I was going to either make 30 grand a year going with that. I wanted to work in the Manhattan DA’s office, and you had to live in the borough in which you prosecuted. So 30 grand a year in Manhattan.

Or I was getting job offers and interest from firms that were offering me $85,000 a year to start as a young whippersnapper. And I did the math, you know, doing what my rent would be and what the cable would be. And then I remember seeing I was going to have $1,900 left over a month. I was like, oh, my God, I’ve got to do—I would have $900 a month to spend or save or whatever. It seemed like the greatest fortune.

And I realized that still is a fortune for a lot of people. But I remember the feeling of when it was a fortune for me. And I happily shed the dreams of being a DA and went to big law.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. When did you get into journalism then?

MEGYN KELLY: So I practiced law for about a decade.

SHAWN RYAN: A decade?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Wow. Just over nine years.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: So I started, I graduated law school when I was 25 and I left the law when I was 34, so nine and change.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you excel as an attorney?

The Partnership Track and Burnout

MEGYN KELLY: I think so, yeah. I was at one of the best law firms in the world and Jones Day and they—I was on the partnership track. They were telling me I was going to make a partner if I stayed one more year. I tried tons of cases with these great partners there and was arguing in front of federal appellate courts across the country, which is, you know, that’s 11 below the Supreme Court.

I was taking depositions all the time. I was arguing, I was on my feet making arguments in motion practice and doing mini trials and TROs. And I loved it for a long time. But the problem with my out-hustled is you can burn out if you don’t put some self-nurturing in there.

And the law they say is a jealous mistress. And my mistress was very demanding. You know, she did not want me to be with anybody but her. And I just had so many vacations where I had to work the entire time. Never took a weekend, never. I miss funerals, I miss weddings.

I don’t regret it because in the same way I don’t regret the hours I put in, especially early on in my career as a journalist. It all got me to where I am. You know, the people who didn’t do as well as I did in the law or in journalism didn’t put in that time for the most part. Maybe some didn’t. I just don’t know about them.

But the people I looked around, they weren’t willing to make those kinds of sacrifices. I think soldiers could probably understand this, right? It’s like some will go the extra mile every time no matter what, and probably some won’t. Everyone’s going to be a Navy SEAL.

So I burned out. And there was an aha moment when I was considering about whether I was going to take this partnership because they don’t give them out to everybody. And if I took it, it would be at the expense of somebody else. And I already knew I was feeling unhappy.

Looked around everybody, there was an older guy with an ex-wife or two and several kids in private school and they were handcuffed to the place. And I just thought, I can do something else with my life. I can do something that I find exciting. You know, the line I wrote in my journal was, “I am more interesting than this. I am more interested than this.” And I resolved to change my life.

SHAWN RYAN: Weird. I mean, how old are you at this point?

MEGYN KELLY: I was 32 when I had that aha moment.

SHAWN RYAN: So you’re ready to totally reinvent yourself at 32?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Was there any fear?

The Leap into Broadcasting

MEGYN KELLY: Mm, there was a little fear of not getting the partnership. I just kind of thought, wouldn’t it be better to stay and get the partnership than run around the world saying, “I made partner at Jones Day,” which is not easy. And in the end, I just thought it was going to be an unfair thing to do to my colleagues, you know, sort of taking it at the expense of somebody else and my firm, which I loved.

And I—you know, I still have close relationships with some of the people there. I just thought, what—what kind of a way is that to leave? You know, you take the feather just so you can put it in your cap, and then you ride off into the sunset and screw them over.

So, yeah, that was the only scary piece not to get that brass ring that I’ve been working—so. Because when you’re in—I know to the outside world, they’re like, who gives a s*? We don’t care whether you were a partner or not. But when you’re working for it, it seems like everything. So anyway. But then there was the big question of what to do now.

SHAWN RYAN: What? Oh, you didn’t even know what you were going to do?

MEGYN KELLY: No, no. I was like, well, I used to be a telemarketer. I could go back to that. I don’t know. I really didn’t know what to do. But once again, the guitar and the music spoke to me. I was living in Chicago, and I was taking a guitar class. And it just so happened that a gal in my class was a journalist. She was a producer for the NBC O&O out in Chicago.

And I only knew that because the space shuttle Columbia blew up and she missed guitar. We never talked about our jobs. But where were you? She said, “I’m a journalist.” And I said, “Oh, you know what? Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” And she said, “That sounds like someone who’s interested in a career change.” I said, “Maybe.”

So we went out, we started talking about it. The more I talked about it, she gave me hope. I felt old then. Like, I’m 32, kind of long in the tooth, and this is kind of old to start a new career, especially one on camera, you know? She was like, “You’re all wrong. You’re wrong, wrong, wrong. You can totally start, and I will help you,” which is so amazing.

This Meredith is her name. Like, for her to help me, a woman helping another woman break into news, bending over backwards to make it happen. Like, that doesn’t happen a lot.

SHAWN RYAN: I can imagine.

MEGYN KELLY: So she helped me. She helped me get—it’s called a resume tape. And before I knew it, I was cold calling news directors, and I had a job.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Do you keep in touch with her?

MEGYN KELLY: She contacted me after I wrote my book and I wrote all about her, and we had a great come to Jesus moment. And by the way, something else happened because my book, I wrote about the one girl who befriended me during my seventh grade bully year, Heather Shepard, God bless her. And she and I reconnected after my book, and we still text.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, that’s very cool. Wow. So where did you wind up?

Breaking into Television News

MEGYN KELLY: Well, so I convinced this guy named Bill Lord, who’s the news director in Washington, D.C. at the ABC affiliate, to put me on the air one day a week on tape while I was still working at Jones Day. And I said basically, once he agreed to take the meeting, which was really the—like, that’s the big thing. Like, just get a yes to the meeting. I knew I could talk my way into the job.

I was like, “If I suck, you don’t have to air it. I’m going to work for you for free. My law job’s paying my bills. Like, let me work for you for free. I can do a lot of stuff for you legally.” This is before the day of the big legal analyst everywhere. We weren’t really doing that back then, but I was like, “I can cover the Supreme Court. You know, I can—I’ve had arguments all over federal courts of appeals. I know a lot of legal stuff and how to find cases and interesting stories. So just let me shoot a story, put it on tape, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to air it.”

And they had a sister cable station that was local and not as prestigious as the ABC affiliate, or you could just air it on News Channel 8. With all due respect to News Channel 8. So he said yes. And so he gave me one day a week. He did pay me a couple hundred dollars for the one day. And I loved it.

SHAWN RYAN: Really?

MEGYN KELLY: Loved. Was truly one of those “Shoot it in my veins.” It was so great.

SHAWN RYAN: What was it? What was it?

MEGYN KELLY: Everything. All of it. It was exciting. It was exactly the thing that I kind of felt back in sophomore year of high school. You know, it was like chasing a story and calling sources and figuring out what’s true. And then crafting a beautiful story script where you can edit it and make the words just the way you want them, which I always enjoyed as a lawyer too.

You know, we always used to say, “If I had a longer time, I would have written a shorter brief.” And in journalism, you have to write the shortest of briefs. You’ve got, you know, two minutes at most on the evening news to deliver your story and your script that you work on all day. Tighter, tighter, tighter. Get a better sound bite. Even better than that. Upgrade. Get a better video element. Get better sound.

How are we going to open it? How do we ease them in? What’s the moment where we emotionally connect with the audience? What did you make them feel? Is it balanced? Did you offer the rest of the story? Are you biased? Are you taking them too much this way? You know, I loved all of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

MEGYN KELLY: And then it was all so exciting, and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to go on camera and I’m going to do this.” And then instead of being like, “I nailed it,” you’re like, “I’m so much worse than I thought I was.” You know, I thought I was going to be so much better than this.

You just—it’s not something you can be great at until you’ve done it a lot. So in the beginning, you just have to hold onto the promise of it being great in the final product and be humble as you row.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you remember what your first brief—

The First Story and Falling in Love with News

MEGYN KELLY: First brief as a lawyer or first story as a first story? The very first story I had was I was supposed to work on a Friday. That was my one day and hurricane—what was her name? Irene, I think it was. I can’t remember. Irene was a bad one. It was another one. Anyway, it was a hurricane that was coming through Virginia, and I called Bill Lord and I said, “Well, you don’t need me, right? Because I do like legal stuff.” And my first day, and it’s like a hurricane, so…

And he said, “If you don’t already have rain pants, rain boots, a rain slicker, and a rain hat, you better get them, and I’ll see you tonight at five.” I was like… So I went and it was crazy. It was like a scene out of Broadcast News.

I went into the control room and I already have a potty mouth. I just got it. Honestly, my nana swore like a sailor, and all the lawyers I work with swore like sailors. So I’m sitting in the newsroom control room and it’s breaking news. So they’ve got reporters everywhere covering the damage of the hurricane and the blowing winds.

There’s this guy named Eric Hong who was freelancing and they were like, “Get to Eric. Get to Eric.” And they’d say, like, “Eric, we’re coming to you.” And you could see him getting ready. You know, he’s getting ready. And somebody else made a different decision. Like, “No, not Eric. Move on, whatever.” “No, back to Eric. Eric, we’re coming, we’re coming.” And he’d get ready, get ready. “No, forget it.”

And then the one guy goes—the executive producer I later run out—goes, “Eric, you’re dead. WJLA f*ed you.” Like, what’s…

SHAWN RYAN: Happening?

MEGYN KELLY: Wow. But I loved it. It was so fun. It was dynamic and kind of sexy and exciting. Fast paced, no holds barred. You know how, like, when you have to criticize somebody today, the corporate managers will tell you, “You have to say, like, you’re dressing particularly well. You have a perfect record of attendance. Everyone loves what a positive attitude you have. Your briefs suck. We really enjoy the way you clean up the coffee room after you leave.” Right? You have to, like, fold it in there.

News is the opposite of that. Right? They f*ed you and they move on. That’s how it still…

SHAWN RYAN: Is. No.

MEGYN KELLY: Kidding. No. My team and I joke all the time that there’s no time for flowery, fluffy stuff. It’s like, we finished a show and if we didn’t do a good job, I will say to the team, “That show sucked. We didn’t have the facts, we didn’t have the sound bite. We embarrassed ourselves. That was not up to par. It’s not what the audience expects.”

And they’re like, “Yeah.” And then we do better the next day. And then I was like, “That one was perfection.” Right? Nobody cares. They’re not—nobody’s like, “She’s abusive.” They’re like, “God, she’s right. We’re going to be better tomorrow.” But I love that piece of news. I couldn’t do it any other way.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. What? So, I mean, your career sounds like it took off very rapidly. And so how long did you spend at the local station?

MEGYN KELLY: Part time for a year, nine months.

SHAWN RYAN: When did they start paying you finally?

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I was getting my 200 bucks a day for those Fridays I was doing. And then he offered me a second day, which would mean I had to go part time at Jones Day. No, he offered me a second day and then he offered me a third day, which would mean I’d have to go part time.

So that was a big moment because I was really taking a step away from my law job. And I wanted to do it. And I seriously considered, like, whether this is the place for me, like, if I’m good enough to do this. Anyway, long story short, I went part time with them and then they offered me a full time job and that meant leaving the law altogether.

SHAWN RYAN: How did that feel?

MEGYN KELLY: Great. I was fine. Jones Day was so good to me. This guy, Tim Cullen, who ran the general litigation group, which I was in when I first went part time, he said, “I’m scared because this feels like a trial separation and those usually lead to divorce.” And so when I left, he said, “I knew it.”

But they said, “Go with God. We love you.” They said, “If you ever want to come back, come back.” You know, I still have lots of friends there who are far lefties. Jones Day is actually pretty fair and balanced on its politics. But my one favorite partner there, one of them, he’s a far lefty and he’s constantly harassing me on Twitter in like a funny way. But I love that. I love that I have that history with these guys.

Yeah. You know, we were in the trenches together. My trenches, not the real ones like you’ve been in. And the war—like lawyers tell war stories so great. Like, those are… I look back on those days fondly now that they’re in the past.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. When did you—how did Fox come about?

Landing at Fox News

MEGYN KELLY: Well, so when WJLA offered me a full time position, I thought, “Well, you know, if I’m good enough to be full time here, maybe I’m good enough to be full time someplace better than here.” Because while I’m very green as a reporter, I have 10 years of legal experience under my belt. And that counts for something. It’s not totally irrelevant.

And so I had met this guy, Bill Salmon, who was a Fox News contributor at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, the one that they show on Broadcast News, you know, where they go and William Hurt’s character says, “It’s incredible who’s here.” And she says, “Who?” And he says, “Me.” That was me when I went like…

And I met this guy and he said, “Have you considered getting your tape to Fox?” And I said to him at the time, “I’m too green for Fox. I’m not ready.” And he said, “Not necessarily.” And he said, “If you’re too green, Kim Hume, who runs the D.C. bureau will tell you you’re too green, but you have a shot.”

So I sent them—I sent him my resume tape from my nine months at the ABC affiliate. And he agreed to put it on Kim’s desk like he guaranteed he would get her eyeballs on it. And she later had me in. I met with her. Brit Hume came by—her husband, who was the… I can’t remember his title, but he was kind of—he was managing editor and she was D.C. bureau chief.

And they held their cards so close to the vest on an interview of three hours. He did not let on at all how this was going. And I later found out that when I left, they high fived each other.

SHAWN RYAN: No.

MEGYN KELLY: Kidding. Yeah. And they got me right up to see Roger Ailes, and he hired me.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. But you—you applied. Did you apply to several places? It sounds like CNN was…

MEGYN KELLY: Friday. No, I was willing to. I mean, I wasn’t in any way thinking Fox is right wing. And it really wasn’t known that much that way back then. This is 2004. Fox was known as more to the right. But, like, MSNBC hadn’t lost its mind. This is back in the days when it was still kind of normal.

So I was totally open to working there or CNN, but I only had the one connection, which was Bill Salmon, who was a contributor at Fox. So that’s where I sent my tape. I was sitting in the interview up in Ailes’ office, actually, with his number two, and the guy was like, “Everyone wants to work here now that we’re number one.”

And I remember being like, “Holy shit, they’re number one. I’m never going to get this job.” But I did. Then he was off to the races.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. I mean, that had to be—that had to be very surreal for you to be at the number one news station at the time.

MEGYN KELLY: I loved everything about it. I loved seeing Bill O’Reilly walk through the halls like this. You know, amazing, huge cable news host, number one in all of cable news. Cocky, but, like, in a cool way. I just had stars in my eyes for him.

Brit Hume, who was serious and, you know, he took me under his wing and taught me how to be a serious reporter. He’d say to me, “You know what I like about you? You’re not a silly girl. There’s a lot of silly girls running around Fox News. You’re not one of them.”

And it’s just—it was so fun. It was so—these characters were just so colorful. You know, it’s like, how is this happening? I’ll tell you a story that I’ve never told publicly, and I can’t name the names, but I was at one big event, and let’s just say the person next to me on the set—I’ll say this—the person’s no longer there. Had, like, porn up on the laptop. Was, like, talking about it.

It was—I do not think this was harassment. I’m not saying it was funny. I was like, “This is an unbelievable place to work,” since nobody did this at the law job.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Sounds like the SEAL…

MEGYN KELLY: Teams.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. So what was Bill O’Reilly like, but without the…

Working with Bill O’Reilly

MEGYN KELLY: Muscle? Bill O’Reilly was great. I loved Bill. For every year I worked there, except for the last one, he took such good care of me. Like, he was so good to me. He gave me the most amazing opportunities. You know, he had to take a hit from me one day when I was at the Supreme Court covering the Anna Nicole Smith case that went there. Do you remember that?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I do.

MEGYN KELLY: She showed up herself, and she lost all this weight. She looked even more stunning than normal. And everybody was like—well, I had never been so popular, because that was my story that day. I must have done 100 hits from the steps of the Supreme Court, Tokyo. Everybody wanted me, and O’Reilly took me.

And I found out after that hit, he was like, “We need her. You know, she’s going to be a star.” He said something like that. So he offered me to come back because we sparred that night. Even though I was green, he was saying, “She doesn’t deserve any money. She’s a gold digger.”

And I said, “She is a gold digger. But he was happy to have the gold dug. He was totally on board with this gig, and his estate should have to pay. They had a deal.” And we had an argument about how much money it takes to be Anna Nicole Smith explaining to him, and it was funny.

So it was a great hit, you know, because we were laughing and it was substantive, but we were also fighting, and there was a good chemistry. And then he kept having me on and on and on. And then he started building legal segments around me, and then I would go on twice a week, blah, blah, blah.

And then I think he probably helped pave my way into the primetime. You know, it was Roger’s decision, but seeing me on the prime time and, you know, they check the numbers so they can see that you’re going up with the audience. Convinced Roger it was a good move.

And then things changed, and it was just so disappointing. You know, once I—once he saw me as more as competition, kind of became a douchebag, and it went downhill from there. So kind of separate my experience out from, like, all those great years and then that last shitty year thereafter.

SHAWN RYAN: How does the—I mean, what is the competitiveness? Is it all about…

MEGYN KELLY: Numbers? Yeah, but it shouldn’t have been. He should have just been taking credit for me. He should have been like, “You’re welcome, Kelly.” You know, I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just be proud of me. You know, he helped me when I was totally unknown. He helped me build a name and a reputation. He gave me credibility by putting me on his show, treating me like an authority, arguing with me, showing the audience he liked me.

And I was very grateful to him for that and made that very clear behind the scenes and publicly. But once my show started to surpass his, never in the overall—he always beat me in the overall, like the older viewers, but in the key demo of 25 to 54 year olds, which is what they base the advertising money on—he got very competitive. You know, everyone in cable is competitive, but, like, he just couldn’t square it.

SHAWN RYAN: What does that mean? Competitive is that I started doing…

The Fox News Heyday

MEGYN KELLY: Like, subterfuge around my show to block my guests and kind of interfere with our editorial. And we shared an agent and there’s some nasty things happened there. It was just, I was so disappointed because I really felt like I was losing a mentor and a friend.

And we always, you know, part of it was probably born of the fact that we had no competition on MSNBC or CNN. We just crushed them in every way. This is Fox News heyday, you know, this was the heyday for sure, by any measure of Fox. No one was even close to us. We were having 10 times the ratings of our competitors.

So internally, we would look at each other’s numbers, right? Because that’s what’s interesting. Anyway, look, then things got weird after the whole Roger Ailes falling and the sexual harassment things between me and Bill. But it’s a weird thing.

Like, I see him on TV, he goes on News Nation sometimes, and he’s just so talented. Still, he looks older. His voice is a little bit more frail, but he’s so talented. He’s very smart. He’s an amazing communicator. And I just, I still feel sad to this day that, you know, things ended the way they did. There was a lot of other crap, but no, no, no, we’re not friends.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what is the, I mean, what was the, what would you say the culture was like there at the beginning, during the heyday?

Culture and Competition at Fox

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, probably pretty harassy, really. Yeah, for sure. That’s got to be part of the memory. But I just, I mean, professionally, what I remember is excitement, drive, scrappiness. You know, it was like we go to cover a story. I went to cover the Virginia Tech shooting. You know, still the worst on campus shooting that we’ve seen.

And CNN, they had four bookers or producers for every one that we had. They were crushing the field with staff, and we had almost nothing, but we were killing them in the ratings, and it was driving them nuts.

And I remember talking to Geraldo on a grassy knoll as we were sitting there in between hits, and I’m like, “My God, we’re getting our asses kicked in the bookings.” They were getting the biggest bookings, the best guests, and we weren’t. And Geraldo goes, “People don’t watch because of the guests. They watch because of the hosts.”

And I was like, that’s kind of funny coming from Geraldo. Of course he thinks that, right? But he wasn’t wrong. Like on Fox, I think they watch because it’s Fox and they know what they’re going to get, but they also develop a real relationship with the talent.

And even in my current lane and yours, too, your audience develops a relationship with you. And if you’re going to bring somebody on, they’re kind of trusting you to have a kind of taste that resonates with them. So he wasn’t all wrong.

Anyway, I remember scrappiness and shoestring budgets. Even though we were rich, we didn’t act like we were. You know, Roger and Rupert had tons of money. And I remember saying to Kim Hume, I found some of the story writing and production frustrating because I was coming off of my time at Jones Day, where, you know, somebody once explained to me, my old boss said, “You know, we’re American Airlines first class. You know, we give the real silverware with the cloth napkin and the warmed up nuts. Like, that’s the kind of service that we’re providing here.”

And I said, it’s just frustrating to want that level of product, of production and not be able to give it because time is crunched. We don’t have the resources. And she said, “We’re Southwest Airlines.”

So that, but it was, it was a good thing. It kept us, it kept us a little chip on the shoulder. Edgy, scrappy, like, let’s fight, let’s go. You know, bunker mentality. We were always under attack, but it brought us closer together. You know, we were a team. We were part of the same fraternity.

SHAWN RYAN: Good camaraderie, mostly?

MEGYN KELLY: Mostly. Yeah. There were a couple who were, you know, but very competitive.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but mostly very, very good camaraderie. So are all journalists competitive with each other or was it just Bill?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, I faced some more of that when I hit the primetime for sure from the other primetime hosts, but never before that. Before that, I only had really one person who shall remain nameless who felt very threatened by me and behaved badly. But for the most part, people were really cool.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you get competitive?

Perfectionism Over Competition

MEGYN KELLY: Not like that. I’m a weird person where some people think that I’m going to play, like, gin rummy with them and I’m going to be like, “I crushed you.” You know, like Monica from Cheers or Friends. I’m not like that.

I’m not competitive like, I have to be number one in the podcast space. I’m more like, the show needs to be better. You know, like, we have to do a better job. This wasn’t our best work product. Like, I’m frustrated you didn’t cut that sound bite right. I said I wanted it like this, but you did this instead. And then it didn’t flow in the argument I was making. And then when I went to call for the follow up sound bite, it made no sense.

You know, like, that’s, I guess I’m closer to, like, a perfectionist than I am competitive, but in my business, that breeds success.

SHAWN RYAN: So you actually have control of how they cut your segments and all of that stuff over there?

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I did at Fox to some extent. I had almost none at NBC, and now I have entire control on my show.

SHAWN RYAN: Is it still like that?

The Difference Between Networks

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Yes. I mean, on NBC, you are just a presenter. You’re a newsreader. You don’t do it. The producers do everything, which is one of the reasons why it didn’t work out for me. One of the many.

On Fox, you do most of it yourself. They don’t have the staff. They’re like, you know, the reporters write the scripts, the producers do packets for their anchors, and then the anchors have to read the packets, know the news, and ask the questions themselves.

On NBC, they give you the questions, the producers write the questions, and then you’re supposed to just read them like an actress.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Yeah, wow. Like, that’s literally my job. Why would I read your questions?

MEGYN KELLY: Is that most news stations broadcast?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, pretty much all of them.

MEGYN KELLY: I think so, yeah. I mean, when I went over to The View as a guest and I went there a few times, not only were the producers writing the questions for the hosts, like, those women just sit there with their cards and they read the questions off of their cards. They give you the questions as the guest in advance. So you know everything that’s coming your way. I’m like, okay. They’re still purporting to be a journalistic operation.

SHAWN RYAN: So are you serious? So there’s nothing that’s off the cuff, real actual opinions, they’re just told?

MEGYN KELLY: I’m sure there are moments of spontaneity, but everything is very carefully choreographed. It’s all written down on their little blue cards.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. I mean, I don’t even know why I’m acting surprised, because it does seem like that. Yeah, but so were you, did you lean conservative before Fox?

Political Independence

MEGYN KELLY: Not really. I was, you know, I voted, I think in eight presidential elections and I voted for four Democrats and four Republicans. I’m pretty down the middle now. I’m more conservative because the whole world has shifted. You know, my normie views are apparently now far right. Like men can’t become women. Like we should have a border. You know, little things like that.

But I never consider myself and I still don’t ideological. You know, I have my ethical compass. I know what’s right and wrong. And I don’t like team jerseys. I’ve been a registered independent for almost 20 years now. I’ve been a registered Republican and a registered Dem. I don’t want to share a jersey with any of those guys.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I don’t blame you. Yeah, I don’t blame you at all. So at Fox, I mean, your career sounds like it just went almost straight up. Who would you say some of your biggest competitors would have been?

The Climb to Success

MEGYN KELLY: I never saw any competition on CNN or MSNBC. The bosses over there continued to try to hire me and lure me away every contract renewal because, you know, they weren’t getting anywhere. And our ratings were always huge, huge, mine and Fox’s.

And at Fox, I just didn’t look around at my colleagues like that. You know, I never considered it a zero sum game. Roger told me early on, “Other people will try to imitate you. They’ll try to get your look or get your delivery or whatever. And you never have to worry about that. There’s only one you. You just worry about being you and things will work out.” And that was really good advice.

I didn’t look around at the other players on the field and worry about any of them. I just thought, if I can do the best job I’m capable of, I’ll get to where I want to go. And those were always baby steps.

Like when I was a reporter, I thought, well, it’d be great to get bigger assignments. And then when I got bigger assignments, it was like, well, I’d love a chance at anchoring. And then it’s like, what if I could be a full time anchor? And then it’s like, what if I could have my own show? And then it’s, well, what if I get to have, instead of co-anchor a show, my own show, just me. And then it was like, well, what if I could move up to primetime?

And all those things happened. And then I kind of got to the place where I was like, it all happened and the paycheck’s bigger than it’s ever been and I’m enjoying it less than ever. Things have changed so dramatically in year 13 versus year one that now I’m, I guess I’m rich. Okay.

I’ve come to learn a lot of secrets of this place that I never wanted to know. I’m having way too much exposure to the executive suite. People who used to be rooting for me now find me threatening. You know, just, that’s what comes with money and power. And this isn’t as great as I thought it was going to be.

And then, you know, most of the guys around me were like, “What are you talking about? It’s like, you’re powerful and you’ve got this dough.” Like, it’s meaningless to me. I don’t care. Really. I just don’t care.

I, tomorrow could basically go back to mud pies in the backyard if I had to. That’s just who I am. That’s what I was saying earlier. That was an important way to grow up. I think if you need the trappings of big money in journalism, you become a sh*tty journalist. Don Lemon, you take yourself too seriously. You need access to these elite circles. You want to see yourself at dinner tables with stars. You want to go to the fancy award shows. And I dipped a toe into that world just to see what it was like when I got these invitations, and it was horrible.

SHAWN RYAN: Horrible.

Finding Balance and Authenticity

MEGYN KELLY: Why? Because it’s insufferable to be around those people and to have to make conversation with them. I can’t talk to those people. I don’t know how to live in that world. I feel the way probably most of your audience feels like they would feel, where you’re like, I’ve got nothing to say to this bride. I don’t even know how to talk to insert name of A-list celebrity. Unless they want to talk about the stuff that I like, like politics and the world and real…

SHAWN RYAN: People.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. What are we? I don’t even know how to respond. Like, Doug and I would always find the accountant who helped organize the event and wind up talking to him. You know, like the geeky lawyer who got invited just as a favor. That’s where we go.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I can relate to that.

MEGYN KELLY: Right?

SHAWN RYAN: Yep. Wow, that’s interesting. You know, when you were talking just a second ago, you were talking about how Roger told you people are going to try to copy what you’re doing, to steal your style. I struggle with that. Now I see it starting to happen. And when is the first time you notice somebody trying to imitate what you were doing?

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t know. I guess I have seen it here and there, but I don’t really pay attention to it.

SHAWN RYAN: That didn’t bother you?

MEGYN KELLY: No, no. I believed what he said. And I knew what he said was true when he said it. That’s true. Only one person has my combination of attributes. Good, bad, or ugly, they’re mine. You can’t imitate them. It’s, you know, look at Josh Shapiro, this governor of Pennsylvania. Have you heard him talk?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

MEGYN KELLY: He is a wannabe Obama. He tries to talk just like Obama. It’s so obvious. I’m embarrassed for him. I have secondhand embarrassment. There’s only one Barack Obama, and it ain’t you, Josh Shapiro. Find your own style. So, no, I never felt like, oh, she’s coming for me. You know, I just kind of…

SHAWN RYAN: How would they try to imitate you?

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, a lot of people would get exactly the same haircut I had or start wearing exactly the same clothes I had, move over to the same agents I had, start getting, you know, whatever, go to all the same people I went to for, like, clothes, and just sort of…

SHAWN RYAN: Legitimately trying to be you.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, it’s just like, same network.

SHAWN RYAN: How’d that work out? Other networks?

MEGYN KELLY: Both.

SHAWN RYAN: Both.

The Key to Winning: Focus on Yourself

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. When I was in college, I dated this guy who was a great guy, and he was the captain of the lacrosse team that won three national championships at Syracuse. And he, you know, Division 1 NCAA champion. And he used to say, “Meg, you go to the lacrosse games, you can always tell which team is going to win. One team is practicing their drills and throwing the balls around, and the other team’s looking at that team.”

You know, it’s just a good reminder, don’t be that second team. And I don’t even think it’s a good competitive practice. Like, you’re keeping an eye on your competition. No, that’s not the key to winning. The key to winning is to keep an eye on your shit and just keep tweaking it, keep making it better, keep raising the bar for excellence. There’s always room for improvement. We never achieve perfection, but it’s fun to try.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m going to take that advice personally.

MEGYN KELLY: You should.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you.

MEGYN KELLY: And plus, like, who would have the connection that you have with your audience? Shawn? It’s like they fall in love with you because of you. You know, one of these imitators might get an invitation onto the Megyn Kelly show one day, and I’ll have a very nice interview, and they’ll be very nice, and I’ll say, that worked. Goodbye, and they’ll be utterly forgettable.

Only you have this. There’s something special about you, and I mean that to you in particular. Like, there’s something special about you. Very few people have a, like this combination of soulfulness and smarts and depth and humor and introspection, but ability to have conversations about light things and real things. It’s just, it’s, it works. And you don’t need to worry about that other team.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. That means a lot. How did you meet your husband?

Meeting Doug: A Blind Date That Changed Everything

MEGYN KELLY: We were set up, really. So I was a young cub reporter at Fox and he was running his own business. He had started a company from New York, but it was based in Florida. And we were set up on what was a blind date for me, not so much for him.

That’s kind of a great story because this woman who did PR work for his firm sent me an email saying, “Megan, I have no idea what your situation is, but I know this great guy.” She gave me his resume. You know, like, he went to Duke. He went to Georgetown for his MBA, sounded smart. He’s great looking. And we all love this guy. Super nice guy.

And I had just gotten out of my first marriage and I almost deleted the email. I literally had the finger on the delete button. And at the last second, something made me hit save instead.

SHAWN RYAN: Wait a minute. So a random publicist just, what, saw you on the air?

MEGYN KELLY: I guess she got my email. I think she’d done some work for Fox.

SHAWN RYAN: And was like, oh, this woman will be perfect for my boss.

MEGYN KELLY: He was traveling with him on an airplane and they saw me pop up doing a report on Duke lacrosse and that fake rape case. And they got to talking about that story because Doug went to Duke and me and she, you know, I guess he must have said some favorable things. And so she shot me an email like, you know, he expressed interest, I guess.

And it’s just so crazy because if you like, Doug came into my life when he was 34 years old. He did have that nice resume. He was running a company. He came from a very nice Philadelphia family. Not snooty, just like, I mean, a nice, nice family. And he’d never been married. It was just, he’s very good looking. I think I can, the audience will Google Doug Brunt. You will see I’m not just being a proud wife. He’s really a great looking guy.

And I was like, he’s gay. He’s a serial killer. He has a secret wife. That’s obvious. Every lady knows that doesn’t just come to you after you’re divorced. When you’re 34, 35 years old, it doesn’t happen. So I was like, I guess I can give it a try until I find the body’s buried in the basement. But it’ll, you know, we’ll have a good run till then.

And so we went on our first date, I brought a friend who hid in the bar, like she was down at the end of the bar, making sure he wasn’t a freak stalker. And he wasn’t a freak stalker. He’s kind of nerdy, actually, in a really sweet way. And we hit it off instantly.

SHAWN RYAN: How long did it take for you guys to get engaged?

MEGYN KELLY: He moved fast. We started dating in July of 2006. Is that right? Yes. And he proposed to me in September of 2007.

SHAWN RYAN: How’d he propose?

MEGYN KELLY: He took me to the end of the dock in the Jersey town where he grew up going in the summers. And he took off his sunglasses. We were sitting on a bench. He got down on one knee and proposed with a big fake, like, dime store, 25 cent ring.

SHAWN RYAN: Beautiful.

MEGYN KELLY: It was scary. That moment was scary, Shawn, because I was not thinking about getting remarried. I had just gotten a divorce.

SHAWN RYAN: Total surprise.

MEGYN KELLY: Total surprise. He ran it by my mom, and my mom was like, “Have you run this by Megan? Because I’m not sure.” And he was like, “Whoa, what do you mean?” But, you know, it was one of those things like, I’m learning how to play mahjong. Do you ever play mahjong? It’s like, it’s becoming a thing.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, back in, like, Windows 95 era.

MEGYN KELLY: It’s becoming a thing in both of my communities where I go in the summers and where I am at home in Connecticut. And, you know, when you get the little card, you have to say whether you want it or the tile or not, you got it. Like, there’s no do overs. If the tile’s there, you got to click on it or you never get it again.

So it might have been a little early for me, the proposal, but in retrospect, I thank God I said yes because I don’t know if we would have had Thatcher, you know, like my third kid. I had him when I was 42. That’s already kind of old. What if I had waited? Maybe there wouldn’t be a Thatcher, you know? So Doug’s instincts were dead on.

SHAWN RYAN: So you guys have been married for 16 years?

MEGYN KELLY: 16 years.

SHAWN RYAN: Congratulations.

MEGYN KELLY: Thank you.

The Keys to a Successful Marriage

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think the key to a successful marriage is?

MEGYN KELLY: I definitely think it’s using your most generous lens on your partner, trying to interpret all behaviors through the lens of he loves me and I love him. That helps with so many things. And I also think it’s important to say the thing that you don’t want to say. Not to be intentionally hurtful, but we don’t really have a lot of conflict now.

But when I was on Fox in the primetime and Doug was doing more than his fair share of everything going on with the young kids, he was never like a stay at home dad. He always had stuff going on, but he just, he had a job that allowed him to be at home more, and so he necessarily was doing more. He never got resentful, really of me, actually. He was always very supportive. He’s just a cool guy. But I got resentful of him.

SHAWN RYAN: Really?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. I was like, I don’t like that the kids go to your side of the bed in the middle of the night. I don’t like that you’ve shown them all these movies that, you know, I’m not around to see now. You have your own little language with them about the fun things you’ve done. You know, I don’t like when I’m having a one on one conversation with them and you come in and join. I need my own one on one time with them. Get out.

You know, and I didn’t really want to say those, all those things make me feel, even to this moment, like a very petty person, you know, like, here’s this guy, he’s doing all this great stuff. Most women would kill to have a more active partner. I had a different kind of problem, and I didn’t really give a shit if it made me feel small. I needed to say it. We had to clear the air.

And Doug always made me feel better about those things. Always, you know? And then when I finally righted my life and got more balance into where I could be a more active mother, I realized it’s not so thrilling to have them come over in the middle of the night and wake you up. It was, I didn’t know how good I had it. Go father your father.

SHAWN RYAN: How long did it take you to find that balance? Did you find it at Fox or was it, was it after your, your, what would I call it, mainstream?

Leaving Fox to Raise Her Children

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, I left Fox for a bunch of reasons, but the number one reason was I needed to raise my own children. They were seven, five and three when I left. And I hadn’t missed it. You know, I’d missed a lot. Yeah, but I hadn’t missed it. And you know, I don’t, it was just, if people don’t understand that, it’s like I can’t explain it to them. Like there’s only one time that you can raise him. That’s it.

SHAWN RYAN: I feel it.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I feel it all the time.

MEGYN KELLY: Once you’ve missed it, you’ve missed it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I’m realizing how fast it actually does.

The Gazillionaire’s Warning

You have to prioritize. It’s terrifying. You have to. And I remember when I was thinking about leaving Fox, I sat next to some gazillionaire at some event. We were both doing a speech someplace or something, and he was talking about how he spent all of his kids’ 18 years of formation on the road and earning the money, and they have a private jet and all this stuff.

And he was like, “I screwed up. It wasn’t worth it. I wish so much I had done it differently.” And I was like, this is an angel sent to me at this moment in time when I can make a different choice.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

MEGYN KELLY: I had the NBC offer to go do something that, as we now know, was a very poor fit, but in my mind was just an off-ramp. It was like, I can get out of the toxic world of politics, which, if you know anything about 2016 in my life, was extremely toxic for me that year.

I can be with these beautiful people who need me. I can talk about stories that are uplifting. I thought it’d be more like an Oprah type show where we talked about changing people’s lives. And I took it. I was scared to take that leap, but I knew changing my hours and my schedule and my overall setup had to be done.

Living with Fame

SHAWN RYAN: How does your—if you don’t mind me asking—how does your husband deal with the fame and notoriety that you have?

MEGYN KELLY: He’s very good about it. I mean, he said once something like, “Every few months, Meg will say something that upends our life, and then we have to deal with that.” But for the most part, it has more positives than negatives.

People are so nice. Look, I have just a small level of fame, if that’s the word we want to use. It’s like, people recognize me, but they’re very respectful. No one’s ever nasty. I mean, they used to be more when I was on Fox, but the percentage of nastiness is less than 1%. The percentage of kindness is 99%.

And the percentage of intrusions into my personal time that are unwanted is almost none. People are pretty good about reading whether you are approachable in that moment or not. With my kids, they leave me alone. I’ve noticed if I’m with Doug, they usually leave me alone, too. If I’m on my own, they feel more comfortable coming over.

But some of that’s nice. It’s like a little ego boost. They come over, they say all lovely things, then they say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I said, what are you apologizing for? You said all these beautiful things to me. Made me feel good.

But I can go places. I don’t have to worry. I feel like I’m right at a good level where I can pay my bills and I can sort of have a microphone and people want to listen to it, but people are so respectful and it’s not—I can’t imagine how truly well-known people live.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah.

Prime Time at Fox

SHAWN RYAN: Back to Fox. You get your first—I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call it—main show, prime time show.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. So I had a show in the morning and then the afternoon and then prime time.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. How was that?

MEGYN KELLY: The prime time? Yeah, it was great. It was exciting. The night before we went on the air live, we played “Don’t Change a Thing” by INXS. We all danced and then we went out there and did it. And it was great. It was so fun. It was just such a big moment for us all.

SHAWN RYAN: Does your team follow you everywhere you go?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s amazing.

MEGYN KELLY: Same executive producer and core producers. And I love my old EP. I love my current EP too. But this guy, Tom Lowell, was just like—we were in it together from 2007 to when I left in ’17. I mean, just 10 years of insane events. And he was like a blood brother to me. So I love that guy and always will.

And prime time was exciting and just definitely a different level of attention and importance and high wire act. You sit down on the set and you feel yourself—

SHAWN RYAN: Do you get an adrenaline dump?

MEGYN KELLY: Definitely. Every time.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. That’s amazing.

The Struggle Between Career and Family

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. But I was torn during those years too, because we launched the Kelly File two months after Thatcher, my youngest, was born. He was so little. And I would bring him in. It was a new schedule where I worked basically 3 to 11 p.m. You can’t just go in at 8 if you’re doing the 9 p.m. news. You have to prepare a lot, especially if you’re me.

And first I thought this would be so great because my kids are little, they’re not yet in school, I can be with them. It’s not really how it works. Before you know it, they are in school during those hours, and you leave just as they get home.

But my babe was not in school. He was an infant. And I’d bring him into Fox. He’d be with me. I’d be distracted. He’d fall asleep. I’d put him on the little sofa right across from me, and he’d sleep in his little—and I just felt so bad about it. It just felt like the wrong thing to be doing.

It was the first time my professional goals really clashed with my personal goals, because doing the earlier shows, like in the afternoon when my first two were little, I was balancing it much better. I was gone in the middle of the day. I was with them for most of the morning, and I was with them for all of the evening. I put them to bed every night. I was a very present mother.

And then with Thatcher for that beginning first year of the Kelly File, it’s just—he was with me a lot at Fox, but it wasn’t quality time. It’s the first time my heart really started to cry. This isn’t good enough.

I was going on four years, and I was like—Thatcher was three when I left Fox. So I just got to the point where I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this one more bit. One more minute. Not one more minute.

I loved my audience, I loved my show, and I loved my job, most of it. But I love them so much more. There’s not even any contest. And it wasn’t like I had to give up journalism. I could still do something in the field. Going over to NBC, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was something. So it seemed like a good compromise.

The Trump Question

SHAWN RYAN: Can we talk about 2016?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: With you and Trump?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Good times.

SHAWN RYAN: It doesn’t sound like it. I mean, I remember when that happened. And how do you—I mean, how do you deal with that?

MEGYN KELLY: You know, I see it so differently now. I see it as one of my “thank you” moments, for sure. I am a lot stronger and tougher than I used to be, in a good way, not bad tough. And I have a very good perspective on what happened there and my role in it and why Trump was doing that.

But when I was going through it, I lacked that perspective. And so it was more traumatic. Like anything, especially a crisis you go through, the wisdom only comes later. When you’re in the midst of it, you’re just dealing with the fire hose of shit.

So it was highly unpleasant. And the biggest challenge for me was trying to report on him without being a rabid opposition force. I refused to let his negative comments about me ongoing turn me into the very thing he was saying I was—unfair, “I can’t be fair to Trump,” all the other words, whatever.

I just—I was determined to go out there and be fair to him at night, notwithstanding what he was doing to me in my personal life. And I think I did a decent job of it. It wasn’t perfect, but I think I did a decent job of it.

SHAWN RYAN: What—I know what it was, but I just want to ask you—what was the question that you asked that triggered that response?

MEGYN KELLY: It was something like, “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, disgusting animals. Your Twitter account is littered with negative comments about women.”

Oh, and it began with, “One of the things people love about you is you don’t use a politician’s filter. But that’s not without its downsides, especially when it comes to women.”

And I went over the things he said about women, and then I said, “There was once a Celebrity Apprentice contestant who you said you’d like to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? And how will you answer the charge coming from Democrats that you are part of the war on women?”

I love my question. I know people disagree, and that’s fine. They’re entitled to their opinions, too. But I loved it. I thought it was perfect, and I worked on it tirelessly.

And people think that Rupert Murdoch blessed it, allowed it, greenlit it. Absolutely not. I’d love for the people who are mad at me over that question to blame it on somebody else, but no, all the blame goes on me, and that’s fine. As I say, I stand behind the question 100%.

We’re not supposed to be chumming with these guys, we’re supposed to be adversarial. It’s a presidential debate. Let’s go. Let’s get it on. That’s what I thought. And it made electric television. It was spectacular to watch. The highest rated debate in U.S. history.

SHAWN RYAN: Is it really?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Congratulations.

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I don’t know if the record still stands because Trump went on to be, but nothing came close prior to that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, we don’t have very many presidential debates anymore, so—

MEGYN KELLY: No, I’m sure it’s still—I think we’re going to get some still.

The Aftermath

SHAWN RYAN: When he had implied “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever”—I mean, that was pretty much what kicked the whole thing off, correct?

MEGYN KELLY: That he’d been tweeting that I was a bimbo and he’d been tweeting out pictures I did for GQ magazine, that kind of thing.

SHAWN RYAN: How did that—I mean, what did that—what aspect of your life do you think that affected the most?

MEGYN KELLY: Probably the most was internal at Fox. It created just such a shitstorm internal at Fox because Roger was very worried he was going to lose the core base of his audience that had fallen in love with Trump. But he was still trying to hold on to the establishment wing of the Republican Party.

And we were getting so much hate mail. I was getting so much hate mail. It seemed like overnight I went from someone the audience liked to someone they loathed. But the ratings didn’t suffer, which is interesting. My ratings never went down.

SHAWN RYAN: They only went up.

The Trump Debate Question and Its Aftermath

MEGYN KELLY: Really. I know, so it’s odd, but people were very angry with me over that question. They really thought I tried to kneecap Trump. And I understand why they thought that. I just don’t see it that way at all.

Like, if you would ever go back and look at that whole debate and look at that first opening round of questions, we were so mean to all of them. All of them. I basically told Ben Carson he seemed like an idiot and listed all the ways in which he had evidenced that and made him explain why it wasn’t true. I mean, mean questions, but mean in, like, a good way.

Journalists should not be cozy with presidential candidates. They should be tough on them. These should be the toughest A-plus level questions you can craft. That’s what I think a presidential debate should be. Then let him fight. And we did our job. We did our job that night.

And Trump answered that question beautifully. He really did. He was humorous. He was like a bull, you know, like “only Rosie O’Donnell,” which made everybody laugh. And then he said the classic Trump line of “what I say is what I say.” Right? That’s Trump to this day. So it was an opportunity, really for him, and he nailed it.

And if he hadn’t decided to make a thing out of that question, the world would have just moved on. But he did, and I think he did it for a variety of reasons.

And then just like the stress in my life internally, because there are many people who are mad at me over the question, too, like die-hard loyalists to Trump inside the building and outside, because the security situation in our lives went nuts. It was very weird how, like, the threat level started to go up and, like, you always get death threats, sadly, as a public figure.

But these were scary and they were specific. And we kept having to call in security teams and we had to investigate this person and that person and the other person, and do we get a restraining order or. And then strange, odd men showing up to my home in the middle of the night, yelling at me in front of my children. And it was just, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is like, this is next level off of the one question, you know.

And Trump had so many bigger problems in the news. I was the least of his problems. You know, he had people who hated him and were openly espousing it every day. I’m like, why me? And I think there are all sorts of answers to that.

But I was, I was unhappy. I was, as you know, from the discussion we’ve had, I was going into that year kind of unhappy about how things had changed at Fox and my kids and all that. And then I was just getting more unhappy.

So it’s just, you know, there’s a scene, you mentioned that you watched the movie Bombshell. You said that to me before we started. And there is one scene in that movie where Charlize Theron playing me is in, like an edit bay and she’s having a conversation with my fake husband, Doug. And while that scene never happened in my life, the sentiment she expressed 100% did, where she said something like, “I’m allowed to want this to be over.” That’s, that was it. Exactly. “I’m allowed to want this to be over.”

And I did end it. I managed to end it on a good note with Trump. The media turned on me, 180, of course, because they wanted me to be his antagonist. They wanted him to say more things about me because they would make a story out of it every time he did. And they saw it as a surrender by me to him.

SHAWN RYAN: When you say that you think he did it for a variety of reasons, what are the reasons?

Trump’s Motivations and the Women Issue

MEGYN KELLY: I think the first night he was genuinely mad at me. And I now know from everyone, I mean, from reporting around Trump, all these in-depth pieces from people close to Trump, not just his detractors. I mean, you know, that. And even deposition testimony that was given in some of the lawsuits against him and the legal cases from him and others, they knew that the women thing was going to be a problem for Trump long before America knew it, long before I knew it.

I found that issue only because I asked my research assistants to get me, you know, information on everybody. And they came in with, this is this guy’s weakness. This is this gal’s weakness. This is. So I was ready to punch them all where it hurt. And Trump’s was like this. And it was all about women.

Now we’re more used to some of this stuff, but back in 2015, that debate was August 2015. To have a presidential candidate having said that stuff about women and done some of those things with women was like, what? We had had Bill Clinton, I haven’t forgotten that. But I’m just saying this is not the norm.

So I was like, this is going to be a good one, right? To ask him about this stuff. It wasn’t an attempt to take him out. It was like, let’s go, right? Like, let’s go. I’m going to bring my A game, you bring yours. It’s on doing your favorite thing, good TV, let’s do that thing together.

And I think it touched a nerve because it was a soft spot for him. He knew he was exposed, so initially he was mad.

Why did he keep it going for nine months? I think he enjoyed it and he knew it was a good storyline for him and he was right. “I’m not beholden to Fox. I will take on Fox News. I will take on the female anchor. I won’t be controlled by anyone. I won’t bow to any of the right’s sacred cows. I’m for you, not for the elites, the establishment, the so-called bosses of the Republican Party. F* them all. You and I are together.”

That’s what Trump was saying to his fans. And it was brilliant. I was just part of it. You know, he was making me part of that messaging long past the point at which I wanted anything to do with that. You know, I just kind of wanted to do my journalism and I punched him some nights from the anchor desk and other nights I defended him.

In fact, I didn’t really hit Trump much at all. The one thing I remember going after him on was when he criticized the Gold Star family. I didn’t like that. But other than that, honestly, I was defending Trump most of the nights.

SHAWN RYAN: So you didn’t get vindictive?

MEGYN KELLY: No.

SHAWN RYAN: At all?

MEGYN KELLY: No, no. Even though as he continued doing this, my feelings on him personally definitely soured.

SHAWN RYAN: I could imagine. How did your family take it?

MEGYN KELLY: Doug’s feelings soured more. He was very frustrated. He really wanted it to stop. He wanted to defend me, but he couldn’t, you know. I knew that would be inappropriate, it wouldn’t help and it would undermine me. You know, I didn’t need to run to my husband to make it stop. I needed to go to the gorilla himself, as I call Trump. He’s always the 800-pound gorilla. So it was very, it was very hard.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, were your kids old enough to understand what was going on?

Protecting the Kids and Making Peace

MEGYN KELLY: No, no. And nor did I want them to, nor did I want to poison them on Trump. You know, I didn’t want to poison them on anybody politically. I wanted, back then I was really just thinking, I want them to figure out eventually where they stand on politics and politicians and Trump could be president. I certainly don’t want them loathing the president.

So I didn’t tell my kids a lot. You know, they’d see some of the security issues. You know, we went to Disneyland with an armed guard. Disney World. That was weird. He was like following us around on all the rides. So that was strange, things like that. They’d noticed. But no.

So, anyway, finally I had tried to get Trump to stop through Hannity, who did. He was very gracious and tried to help me out. They’re friends. Roger tried time and time again, no. Had other people go to backdoor, no. And then Brian Kilmeade actually offered to send Trump an email for me because he knew I wanted a meeting and Trump said yes.

So I went there, I didn’t tell Roger, and I settled it with Trump one-to-one and he never bothered me again. And Roger was incensed. He was so angry that I went there and didn’t tell him. And I think it’s because he wanted the credit for putting it to bed.

What he said to me was, “You don’t go to him. He should have come to you, or you meet at a neutral spot. You gave up all your power.” And I was like, Roger, I am a reporter. He is a presidential candidate. He does have the power. The nature of this relationship is I pursue him, I need access to him. He doesn’t need me. It’s appropriate in the context of this relationship for me as the reporter to say, may I have time with you? I will come to you. And I would like to bring you this objection I have and ask you to stop this behavior.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. And I think he was actually just mad because he wanted credit internally for having organized it all himself. You know, the come to Jesus and the reconciliation and the new page. But he was so pissed off.

That’s another thing that the movie Bombshell gets wrong, they show Roger really happy about that question. Like, good job. No, he was very angry about that question. And I think we would find out, you know, soon thereafter why Roger was so very paranoid about that particular subject.

SHAWN RYAN: What was the conversation like with Trump when you went there?

MEGYN KELLY: Classic Trump. Funny. He hugged me. He’d been telling people to boycott the show for months. He said he watched it every. He was, he was so magnanimous, warm. It was like none of it ever happened.

SHAWN RYAN: Did it totally disarm you?

MEGYN KELLY: Ah, not totally. I was like, what the f* is going on here? But I was relieved that he was so nice, you know. I didn’t know what to expect. And he’d just been so, I don’t know, just so rough. So I just wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into there.

But he could not have been nicer. He’s like, “Melania loves your show. Get her in here. Melania.” Eric Trump came in. It was like, I can’t believe this is happening. What’s happening? And then he asked for my phone number. And I was like, oh, God. Remember he had just done the thing in that primary with Lindsey Graham where he posted Lindsey Graham’s phone number publicly because he turned on Lindsey.

And I was like, you’re not going to Lindsey Graham me here, are you? And he’s like, “No, no, I promise to keep it to myself.”

And it was really crazy. So crazy, Sean. I walked out. We agreed, like, we’re good. And the last thing he said to me before I walked out of Trump Tower was, “You know, Megan, it’s not such a good thing if they’re not talking about us.” And I was like, oh, my God, was this whole thing for show, like, was he acting the whole time to generate buzz?

And I really don’t know the answer to that other than what I told you. My suppositions about his feelings the night of and then the motivations thereafter.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. There was a scene in the movie where I believe it was your husband seemed disappointed, maybe like you were, you were not being true to yourself, too solicitous of him.

The Media Turns

MEGYN KELLY: Yes, that’s a made-up scene that never happened. Doug always had my back and was on my side. But I think they used Doug sort of as a stand-in for many millions of people who were angry I made up with Trump and angry that I then did a relatively friendly interview with him.

Turning the page, which is true. I mean, I did do that. I did have a goal in that interview. Certainly wasn’t to stir things back up. People were right about that, but it was really just to see if Trump was an empathetic person. If you go back and look at that interview, you see almost every single question is toward that end.

Asked him about his brother who had alcoholism, asked him about his dad, asked him about people who he’s attacked on the Internet. Asked him a little bit about me, but people, what the left, you know, they wanted me to go in there and be like, “You called me a bimbo. How dare you?” That’s not me.

I was enjoying not being his target, and I certainly didn’t want to spend more time mirroring and how I was your target for all this time. So, yeah, people were very angry. And I think that’s really when I lost a lot of the media as like, they just turned on me and never came back over, which is fine. Their love was artificial when it was given, and it was unimportant to me then, and it remains unimportant to me.

But I did think it was a very telling dynamic how as soon as I no longer was Trump’s foil, they were like, wow.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. So it sounds like and looked like from the film and the reports, and while it was happening, that the sexual harassment was just running rampant throughout the entire Fox News organization. Is that an accurate…

The Prevalence of Harassment in Media

MEGYN KELLY: I think it was pretty common, yeah. It was pretty frequent. I mean, you know, this is back before Fox News was patient zero in the MeToo movement. We were a year before Weinstein. So it wasn’t really a thing for people to come forward, for women to come forward like that.

So, yeah, it was prevalent. I would come to find out it was prevalent at NBC, and then, as the world would later find out, it was prevalent at CBS, and it was existent at ABC and CNN and MSNBC. So we were not special at Fox News. We were just first.

SHAWN RYAN: How did it start with you?

Roger Ailes: Mentor and Predator

MEGYN KELLY: I was very young. I was at the very beginning of my career there, still a reporter in D.C. working for Brit Hume and Kim Hume, and very green, but loving my time. And Roger took an interest in me early on.

I think, in fairness to myself, it wasn’t all because he wanted to sleep with me. I think he understood he had somebody who was a lawyer who had potential in this business that was unique and that he really wanted to develop it because above all, he was a capitalist. He wanted to make money.

So he started to mentor me in a great way. He gave me so much good advice, advice I still rely on and miss to this day. And we kind of became friends. He would have me to his house with his wife and with Doug for dinner. And we went many times and I got to know him.

And then he would make bawdy comments to me a lot, which didn’t faze me. You know, I had come off ten years of practicing law. Like I said, we were pretty raunchy in the law. Not quite this raunchy, but you know, salty language. And I’m almost impossible to offend. Really hard to offend. I’m freaking Irish. We don’t offend easy.

So I don’t know, I just kind of—I wasn’t too fazed by the inappropriate comments about women’s looks or “this one’s slept her way to the top,” that kind of thing. I remember getting worried when he said, I’ll spare this news anchor the identification, but he said this anchor, who I admired at another network, was smart. She slept with her boss and that gave her every opportunity she ever wanted. And so she got to the top.

And I remember being like, now that’s different from just bawdy. You know, that sounds like an invitation. And then there’d be more inappropriate comments about me. You know, the initial comments were just about, in general, like sexual. It’s almost like how a groomer, you know, frankly operates.

Then he gets specific about me and he said something about how good he thought I would look in my bra and panties. I was like, all right, now we’re really over on thin ice. In no world is this okay talk between a boss, the most powerful man in news, and a first year reporter.

You know, I knew. I remember thinking, this is so ballsy because he knows I’m a lawyer. He knows I just came off of ten years of practicing law, including employment law. Like, this is definitely not kosher.

But my feeling was he just wanted to have an affair with me. You know, I thought the guy was randy. You know, I wasn’t thinking he’s this massive sexual harasser. It just wasn’t even—that’s not at all how I experienced him. Like, he wants to go to bed with me. And not to sound self-congratulatory, but he wasn’t the first man to behave like this around me.

It wasn’t like this is the first time a man’s ever come on to me and wanted to have sex with me. So I was like, this is tricky because he’s my boss. I’ve got to get out of this. I’m definitely not going to have sex with him or an affair. This is very tricky. But my only goal was get out of it without hurting him. Because I want a career.

You know, my career, which I’m loving, is on the line here. If I upset him or play this wrong, he’s going to feel rejected, which is the worst way you can make a man feel. And if that man’s your boss, your career’s out the window. Especially when you were me with no connections, no history, no resume, no body of work, nothing.

So it was just dancing on the head of a pin to try to just get out of bounds whenever he said something like that. Out of bounds, out of bounds, out of bounds. And for most of this time, I was divorcing Dan and not yet with Doug. So I couldn’t be like, “Oh, you know Doug,” which is a very effective way of telegraphing to a man, “No.” But I didn’t have that.

And I didn’t have a ton of experience in just navigating this particular thing. So it was bad. But I did know that if he was going to fire me, I needed a record because I would have sued him. And so I started keeping a diary every night, whenever I had an interaction with him, very detailed.

I told my officemate, Major Garrett, who’s the White House reporter for CBS News now, and he would later back me up when this investigation came down. We used to sit in my office, we shared an office together, and the phone would light up, and I’m a first year, and I would say, “Roger Ailes.” He’d be like, never got a call from Roger in his career there. Called me all the time.

He kept calling me up to New York, which was also unusual. I would later find out, you know, these long face-to-face meetings were unusual. And I called my lawyer, I called Jones Day, and they opened up a case file and created a conflict. Just in case he ever called them so he couldn’t hire them, so they could represent me if I needed it.

And then I told my supervisor, who I have chosen not to name in the D.C. bureau, but I went to this person and I told them what was happening. And I didn’t want this person, just to be clear, to run to human resources. I wasn’t like, “Let’s make a record. This is inappropriate.” I was like, “Please help me.” You know, I want it to end and I don’t want to get fired, and I don’t know what to do.

And this person told me, “He’s just an unhappily married man and he’s a good man. And if you just stay down here in D.C. and ignore him, it’ll stop.” And that’s exactly what happened. And I chalked it up to exactly what I was told. He’s a good man, but an unhappily married man. And he was looking to have an affair, and it wasn’t going to be with me.

And I kind of skipped the, you know, crescendo of it all. But it came to a peak in his office one day when he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. And I pushed him off of me. It wasn’t violent, you know, it wasn’t like, “I’ll have you.” And I was like, “No.” It was just like he tried to go for it, and I pushed him back. I could smell alcohol on his breath.

And he came at me again. He clearly didn’t get the message. Like most men after one shove off would know it’s a no. He came at me again and same thing. I pushed him away. And I went over by the door to get out. He used to lock the door when not just me, but women were in there. And he looked at me and said, “When is your contract up?”

And it was soon. I remember telling him whenever it was up. And then it came for me a third—

SHAWN RYAN: A third time?

The Third Attempt and Its Aftermath

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. And I pretended to stumble off of my high heel to get away from him. And I ran out the door and I called my Jones Day lawyer in tears, like, “I’m definitely getting fired. This is going to be a disaster.”

And that’s when they opened up the case file and did all that stuff. But ultimately, I did what, you know, my friend and supervisor told me to do, and he did. He didn’t pursue it, and he did not exact any sort of retribution on me. He got past it. He ignored me. You know, I was a peon.

And I just nose to the grindstone for the next couple of years down there. A couple years went by and he promoted me to anchor. You know, the long meeting stopped and I got the anchor job. I mean, I was earning my bones that time. I was doing really solid reporting on big, big cases, so it wasn’t like, “Oh, gee, nothing happened.”

And then he gave me—you know, I worked and I was getting well known and people—there was buzz. I was coming up. And then he made me an anchor, and he never bothered me again. Never. He was always the perfect gentleman with me after that. He had gotten the message.

He still was bawdy here and there, but never about me. He clearly—and then I was with Doug, and he was always respectful of that.

SHAWN RYAN: When did you become aware of all the other women?

Discovering the Pattern

MEGYN KELLY: So I found out that my friend, my closest friend there, Janice Dean, she’s the meteorologist, also had an experience with him. And we kind of laughed, you know, we weren’t thinking he was this massive harasser. We were like, “Oh, men, you know?”

And it was right at the same time mine happened. So I filed that under took a shot with her, too. Didn’t work out with me. Took a shot with her. Didn’t work out with her.

Her story always made me laugh because he took her out for a job interview at a hotel. And not a hotel room, but in a restaurant. And they had a glass of wine, and before she knew it, he was reaching out to hold her hands across the table, which is a weird move on a job interview. And he said to her, “I need to know how you see me.”

And Janice, who’s just the best, was like, “Like a teacher, you know, like a mentor.” Anyway, we used to laugh about that story, you know, it was like, “Ah, these pervy old men.” That was the file it was in.

SHAWN RYAN: So this is similar to getting heckled at the nursing home?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. It’s harmless. Once I got past my thing, which was definitely not harmless, it had the potential to do a lot of harm. It was like, all right, it’s done. I managed it. I don’t want to make a federal case out of it at all.

And neither did she. She wanted her job. He offered her a job. She rejected him. Same. She had the same experience. She rejected him, and he hired her anyway and then left her alone. So we both had it in the file of he took a shot. It didn’t work out. That happens. It’s not supposed to happen in the workplace, with the boss, but it does happen.

And then Gretchen Carlson filed her lawsuit, and we were like, “Holy sh*t.” I mean, that truly was a bombshell, and all hell broke loose. I mean, just that lawsuit was a before and after moment. All hell broke loose.

SHAWN RYAN: How long was the lawsuit going on before you made your decision?

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t remember. I don’t remember the time span. I mean, the whole thing seemed to be maybe six weeks, but I can’t—I don’t hold me to that.

SHAWN RYAN: Were you close with Gretchen Carlson?

MEGYN KELLY: Not at all. I didn’t really like her.

SHAWN RYAN:

The Decision to Come Forward

A few of us did. And in a war between Gretchen and Roger, we were all team Roger. That’s just the truth. She didn’t really like me either. So the instinct was not in any way to help her. But truth is truth, reality is reality.

And while I offer no opinion on her situation and what did or did not happen between Gretchen and Roger, I knew from the second that thing was filed that if I got called in by any investigative body, he was f*ed. Because by this point, I had risen to the top of Fox News. I had credibility. I had no axe to grind. She had just been fired. And I knew that they would believe me and I deserved to be believed.

I just saw that this thing had set wheels in motion that were ultimately going to end in calamity. And, God, it was terrible. It was just terrible because I didn’t want to hurt him and I didn’t want to help her, and I didn’t want to upend my career. And I didn’t want to be known as the face of some sexual harassment movement or lawsuit or to have the fact that I’d been harassed broadcast to anybody.

You know, I was humiliated about it. It’s just, it wasn’t something that was seen the way it is now. You know, it was usually they’d say, “you brought it on yourself,” you know, back then. Only now are we starting to understand, actually, this is really kind of common. And it doesn’t mean you were asking for it. Trust me, I was not asking for it.

I just didn’t want anything to do with it. It was like cesspool of toxicity over there. My life’s going pretty well over here. I don’t want to go in your pool. But one thing after another started happening.

The Investigation Begins

And what happened was I found out that they were going to limit the investigation to only staff that worked for Gretchen. And I found that out after other women had spoken to either me or Janice. So, like, once the lawsuit was filed, women started talking. Me too, me too, me too.

And so Janice and I started to hear, this was widespread. This was not just the two of us. And heard it had happened to, like, some young women. And it was, these were deeply concerning things. And we were like, oh, my God.

And then other women, non-Fox women, came out and spoke, I think, to Gabe Sherman in a piece that was explosive about terrible allegations they were making about him before Fox News. So we were all like, oh, my God. And now I’m re-evaluating everything that happened to me and Janice, re-evaluating everything that happened to her.

And then we found out that Roger had managed to limit the investigation to just Gretchen’s staff. And that was the real moment of reconciliation for me because I knew that would end it. That would have ended it, and he would have been fine. They would not have talked to Janice. They would not have talked to me. They would not have talked to the other women we now knew about.

And I knew women, not only at Fox, but at CNN, like elsewhere, who had worked for him at this point. And it’s just, I betrayed him. That’s how I see it.

SHAWN RYAN: You still feel like that?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. I mean, I know I had good reasons, and it’s not like I would have done it differently, but I still, I have really complicated feelings because I betrayed him. And now I also feel like I let down the women who came after me, you know, who were harassed after I was.

Even though I don’t blame the women who were harassed by him before me, you know, I don’t. It’s just my own thinking, you know, like, if I had done more in that first year as a reporter, if I had blown up my career and just said, “f* it, I’ll go back to practicing law,” I know women, I know actual women who it wouldn’t have happened to.

But at the same time, I didn’t want to hurt him. He’d been so good to me. We’d become friends. He’d really helped me and my family. He’d always been good to me. But it was like, what if he’s still doing it? Am I just going to, like, cash my check and go out there, like, with swagger on the air, like, “I’m fine. I’m good.” It was just an impossible situation. It was so hard.

The Moment of Courage

And I wrote about this in my book, and it’s a true story. The deciding moment was my daughter was little. She was, like, four or five. Four. And she had fallen off the jungle gym a week earlier. I’d been on the road and caught the back of her head significantly and needed a bunch of stitches.

And a week later, she went back at the top of that jungle gym in her dress. She had this white dress with red polka dots and sneakers. And I have a picture of her with this huge smile at the top of the same jungle gym.

And I’m scrolling through my pictures one day, and there’s that picture. And I’m like, look at her. It’s so brave, right? Like, she fell far and really hurt herself. And she’s right back up there. It’s like an extraordinary act of courage for a little girl. And she has this, like, zigzag scar on the back of her head, like a Shazam kind of thing. And I call it her superhero scar.

You know, and I remember thinking, like, this can’t happen to her, to another young woman again. Not here, not right by him, not if my saying something can stop it.

So I called Lachlan Murdoch and I said, “you better get your lawyer on the phone, because I have something to tell you.” And then I told them the story of what had happened to me all those years earlier. And then they hired a real law firm to do a real investigation, and dozens of women came in, including ones to that day, that day that were going through it.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. It’s, I wasn’t expecting that reaction.

MEGYN KELLY: It’s complicated. People are complicated. That’s what my therapist always says. People are complicated.

The Fallout at Fox

And then, you know, internally at Fox, it was terrible, which is another, like, heavy layer of it, because everyone was very angry with me. Some had already been angry because of the Trump stuff. And then it was just such a betrayal that they thought I had committed.

And they didn’t know. People softened after they found out what really was the truth about him. But in the beginning, they just thought I sided with Gretchen and, like, had some nothing with him that I then complained about to try to hurt him. So they were very angry. They thought I stuck a knife in Daddy, you know, for no reason. And he really was kind of like Daddy. He was like, almost like a cult leader there.

So that just, I mean, going to work in those days was, it was crazy. I just felt so heavy. And it was the Republican National Convention in 2016, where I had all these security guards because the death threats and Trump. And it was, you know, it had gone up, and I was getting ready to go on the set for primetime coverage with all my colleagues.

And I saw on the TV screen a report by Howie Kurtz, the media guy, about me. It had leaked that I was cooperating with the investigators, and the whole report was about how I was a liar. They had pulled every nice thing I had ever said about Ailes in the press over the previous ten years. And we’re saying, you know, basically, “she’s got to be lying because look how she actually feels about Roger,” and just painted me as this awful, disgusting turncoat.

They never called me for comment on the report, trying to find out whether it was true. Meanwhile, the Murdochs knew it was true. The Murdochs were talking to me. This is their…

SHAWN RYAN: Network.

MEGYN KELLY: Wow. But Roger was calling the shots. And so Roger told Howie Kurtz to do that, and he did it. And I’m in the hotel room looking at this television like, “is this happening?”

And I, speaking of the angels who come to get us, got a text or call right after this happened from my priest who happened to be at the RNC and saw the report and said, “do you need me?” And I said, “yes.”

And he came over. I’ve never done this before in my life. I’m not one of those people who, like, has a priest who I call and then we pray together. But my priest came over and we prayed together, and I went out in the air that night and it was like, I mean, it was just stone cold. It was rough. And then he was fired the next day.

SHAWN RYAN: You do see all the good that came from that, correct?

The True Heroines

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. I mean, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it because I know that many women were saved from active harassment or, you know, harassment as a result of that whole thing. I played a part in it.

But, I mean, truly, the women who did it were the younger women who it was happening to then, who had everything to lose. They didn’t have money in the bank like I did. They didn’t have a relationship with him. They couldn’t just leave and go get another job at another network. They owed him everything, and they f*ing did it.

They went into that lawyer room and they told the stories not knowing that he would be fired, 100% believing that they would be fired. I mean, that’s guts. When I think about the MeToo movement, those are the women. I picture their faces. Those are the women who did it. Like, that was the goodness of the MeToo movement.

But the movement was so disgusting by its end, so corrupted and unjust and devoid of due process and such a witch hunt that I don’t like being associated with it. I don’t. I certainly don’t want to be the face of it. I’m not proud of the movement. It was politicized and bastardized and used to take down political figures and others with whom some women just had political or business beefs.

But then I, you know, my therapist always says, cognitive behavioral therapy. You have to make a list on the other side. And the list on the other side is, you know, Les Moonves got thrown out of CBS. That was a good one to go. Harvey Weinstein got thrown out of Hollywood. That was a great one. You know, Matt Lauer lost a job that needed to happen.

So there are all sorts of examples I could look at that were not politicized, that I know a lot about, especially the ones in the news industry, more than what came out publicly. And I know that those were…

SHAWN RYAN: Good. I mean, you know, I think…

MEGYN KELLY: I think.

SHAWN RYAN: You just never know how big the impact that you make is. And it just goes so far beyond that. And I don’t, I mean, do you think that’s still going on at Fox today?

The Workplace Today

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t know. I mean, there’s a real dynamic that men and women are attracted to each other and often find a spouse or a future spouse at the workplace. And it’s always been so, you know, you can’t scare humans out of behaving humanly. You know, like, that’s normal for them to be attracted to each other. And they spend a lot of hours at the office.

And sometimes those office romances bloom into beautiful things where there’s a power imbalance. It’s very tough and risky. And I think at least, at least now people are more aware of that, and maybe more bosses are aware that she might be telegraphing to you that she’s okay with this, but she might just be scared, you know, got to tread so lightly there. I think there has been greater awareness been brought to the question.

And look, I definitely am stopped by a lot of women who say thank you. You know, who sort of saw a model for how to get through this kind of thing and then followed it. And whenever they say that, I do think of these young women who I know who went in there because they’re still nameless as they wish to be.

And I see them thriving now at Fox, and I root them on, and I’m thrilled that their careers are going so well. But I know who they are. In my mind, those are the true heroines because they were so powerless. But they told their stories and they survived. You know, they still have their career there.

I do think in, in many ways, it was the end of my career at Fox. You know, there was really no…

SHAWN RYAN: Stain.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. After that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Well, I’m proud of you.

MEGYN KELLY: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: And, I mean, I don’t think you’ll ever know the amount of women that didn’t have to go through that, because it seemed to me like you were the tipping point. And I’ll bet that saved a lot of trauma, not just at Fox, but everywhere, you know, so I hope so.

Complicated Feelings

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t know. It’s like I’m not sure how to file it away. If I don’t file it under the MeToo movement, I do better with it. You know, we had our own thing, and then the Harvey Weinstein thing kicked off, this other thing. But I certainly don’t want to be associated with anything that, you know, what they did to Brett Kavanaugh. Like all these, any political figure now gets accused. Like, that’s all just such…

SHAWN RYAN: BS.

NBC and the Putin Interview

Yeah. And I have two sons and I have a husband, and I hate that. Now it’s like all you need is an accusation. I think we’ve righted that ship a bit. You know, we’ve restored some balance, but not totally.

I want nothing to do with women who want that and who do that and make a Sunday morning regret into a MeToo harassment case that ruins a young man’s life. I completely disassociate myself with that. And I’ve had a long career of reporting on those women and exposing them. Long career.

I was one of the only ones who knew that that Duke rape accuser was a liar. You know, I still get thanked by guys who knew those three guys and by those three guys themselves, for that matter. So I am not on board with any of that. I’m all about due process. So I guess in that way, I’m sort of a chameleon.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you and Gretchen ever develop any type of a friendship or discuss what had happened?

MEGYN KELLY: No, I’ve never spoken to her. Still to this day, she never said anything to me. She certainly didn’t say thank you, which is fine. I did not do anything to help her. And for a long time, she didn’t thank the women who came forward. She made every interview about herself, as she does to this day. That’s all I’m going to say.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. So moving on from Fox, NBC.

The NBC Experience

MEGYN KELLY: That was another lovely experience. This is like destitution derby. All the terrible things that have happened to MK, but no thank you. Back to my motto. You know, that was a bizarre year and a half and a terrible fit.

The one good thing that came out of that is I did interview Putin, which you mentioned the top, and I loved that. That was really cool. I was not well received by the audience, the executives, or the talent. I just kind of went out of the frying pan and into the fire.

You know, I thought it was going to be a better situation than Fox. It was worse in every way, and I knew it was going to be bad. Like, the night before I went there, I think it was the night before I started there, I had this foreboding feeling come over me, and I was, I remember saying something like, “I think my career has already been ruined. I just have yet to have the wave wash over me. I think whatever has been done to me in terms of my ability to be in this business has been done already. And I’m just going to, the consequences are about to come.”

It was a very scary feeling. And I went out there and from day one, you can almost see that uncertainty on me and almost trepidation. When you watch the early shows that I did there and my initial appearances there. I changed my wardrobe because I thought I needed to be more daytime-y. My look was different. My hair and makeup team changed. My makeup guy, he was great, but it was a different look.

It just didn’t work on any level. And in some ways, I was trying to change myself. I was trying to turn the page, get a new chapter.

SHAWN RYAN: Going. Like, come on.

MEGYN KELLY: Reinvent. It’s been a rough f*ing couple years. Come on. Going to see my kids, going to do more uplifting stories, going to take a step away from politics for a while. This is going to be good for me, you know, this is going to be good for me.

And I’ll tell you the one other thing that came out of that year that was really good. I did have a lot of amazing guests on that show who I loved and who were sort of amazing and inspirational. And the audience, the in-studio audience I loved, they were so fun. I made actual friendships in that group. The regulars who would come just, we’d talk about our problems every day before and after the show. And I hated that I never got to say goodbye to them.

You know, when they kick you out of TV, they kick you hard and you just go running. But that ended because it needed to end, you know, at the time. It ended dramatically and in ruination. However, I’ve since become a big fan of cancel culture. It separates you from a place you didn’t belong, a place with different values than your own, you know.

So I got, technically, I wasn’t fired. I just lost my show. But that happened because I made a comment about Halloween costumes and the way it used to be, saying when did it change? And how is it racist? And you’re just not allowed to have that conversation at NBC. You can’t do what we do in this lane.

And let’s just say there were some other things going on there behind the scenes, but really the big picture is it happened because it needed to happen. NBC wasn’t wrong. It was not a good fit. I knew it too. It’s just, what do you do? Do you give up in the middle of a contract? Do you, where do you go? What do you do?

Like a lot of bad will had already been ginned up about me. With some in the populace, you know, some die hard Trump fans who are still angry, some on the left who are pissed. I made up with Trump. It’s just, you know, a lot of different weird constituencies. I kind of got canceled by the right and then later by the left.

SHAWN RYAN: Man. What did it feel like for you to sit down in front of Putin?

Interviewing Putin

MEGYN KELLY: Great. I enjoyed that thoroughly.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Were you fearful at all?

MEGYN KELLY: Only in one moment. He’s definitely had journalists killed. That’s a problem. And we actually had a plane on standby because we were worried that something could happen. Like, we talked about having a plane on standby. I can’t actually remember whether we did it, but we were worried about him and we sat together.

I’ve interviewed him now five times. I mean, a few times I went, I did a couple things, a couple days together, and then I went back and we did more a year later. And it was when I was moderating his economic conference with Prime Minister Modi of India that I got in his face about the chemical weapons in Syria and how Russia had helped fund Assad.

And he got really pissed. He definitely, that was the one thing I asked him. And of all the things that he was genuinely angry about, and you could almost see the switch flip in his head where he went to genuine anger. And I remember being like, whoa, I got to pull back. Like I’ve crossed some imaginary line. I didn’t know was there a tripwire?

And I did pull back and enough that he continued to grant me more interviews and so on. But what a dynamic, fascinating, terrible man.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s, to go over there and put yourself in that situation is that takes a lot of courage.

MEGYN KELLY: It was crazy. Russia was so different. It was so beautiful. And the people were so, so nice and love America. The people there love Americans. Love. It’s not the way it is at the leadership level, but, you know, the women over there, they love a strong man. I mean, American women kind of love a strong man, at least conservatives. I don’t know about the liberals.

SHAWN RYAN: They used to.

MEGYN KELLY: They like the soy boys, but that’s one of the reasons why he’s so popular. And, you know, just the dynamic of the guy was fascinating. You know, it’s like he knew how to manipulate me, or at least I could see when he was trying. He knew how to be angry when the situation called for anger, to be charming when the situation called for charm.

And I have to say, he was very generous with me in terms of the time and no restrictions. He brought me into this weird sort of state dinner between he and Modi, where suddenly I was like the third party between these two giants. Like, oh, my God, what’s going on. What am I doing here?

So anyway, I enjoyed it. I got everything I needed from it. And I actually think not out of the question, I’d go back and interview him again.

SHAWN RYAN: Would you really?

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: He liked the tough questions. Other than that one thing, he liked the tough questions.

Memorable Interviews

SHAWN RYAN: Who were some of the other interviews that you just really enjoyed or got something out of or are proud of?

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, I really love Judge Judy. I do. She’s full of so much wisdom. I always loved talking to her whenever she came on my show.

There was nothing, though, nothing like the wounded warrior interviews that I did at Fox in particular. And now on my show, we do a deep dive every Memorial Day with like a storied vet. And they’re just the best. I mean, they’re just crushers, you know, from Rob O’Neill to Dakota Meyer to Jason Redmond to Marcus Luttrell, like, these are giants, you know, and they, their stories are just incredible.

You, they stay with me like there’s just a special thing about military guys. The ones who have been hurt and the ones who haven’t, they’ve all had trauma. If they’ve served, they’ve had trauma. And there’s a wisdom that comes with it. There’s like a depth that comes after something like that that just takes you guys to this other plane.

And I don’t even know if you know you’re there, but you’re all operating on this other plane that’s just higher. It’s not, you don’t have problems, you don’t have real life, you know, foibles and things. You change. But there’s a level of advice, perspective, thought about our world, about our lives here that you can’t get anywhere else. I’ve yet to get it from anybody else.

And the same was true at Fox. We used to do a show every year to help Tunnel to Towers, you know, which helps severely wounded vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and will also help fallen police officers and firemen and their family. But these are guys who have generally lost three, maybe four limbs and they need houses built for them and Tunnel to Towers does it. And Gary Sinise and his foundation too.

And I would get nervous before those shows because they’re hard. Like it’s sad. You don’t want to ask the wrong thing, you know, it’s like the last thing you want to do is add to their upset, say something stupid that’s going to trigger these poor guys who have been through enough. It’s just like you’re like, it’s hard.

But I would do it. And every time they were so good to me, they would make it so easy. I mean, they would never be offended by something that was all in my head. And then you’d leave, having raised all these money for these guys and they were so grateful. All they want is to walk across the floor.

All that stuff would put such perspective in my life. What are my stupid problems even now? Look at all the stuff I’ve been whining about. What are you saying? You’re so weak. These other guys, they have actual problems. They have life-altering injuries that they wake up thinking about and have to deal with all day, every day. And they have kids and they have bills to pay.

So like, for me they were important too. Because you, you know how they say, like touch grass, that’s touching grass, you know, that’s get over yourself, you know.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I don’t think that about you. I mean, it’s all.

The Cost of Perspective

MEGYN KELLY: Perspective. You got to stay in touch with that. The reason we do the thing on Memorial Day every year is because I think we’re getting away from that as a society. And we don’t just do a Memorial Day. I’m just saying that’s like a big one that we’ll do.

We’re kind of like, as we’ve turned against our military leaders, I feel like we’re forgetting about our military men and women. When I was on Fox, we used to highlight military members all the time. Granted, we had two wars going on, so it was a little different posture, but those guys are still around. As you well know, many suffering still need our help. Kind of like the forever wars are over. So we’re good.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the media doesn’t do a very good job of bringing it up anymore, you know, so thank you for doing what you’re doing.

MEGYN KELLY: Oh, I mean, I’ll give a shout out to one of my competitors, and that’s Jake Tapper. He does a very good job of remembering our service members, and he has a charity that raises money for them every year. I always try to participate in it, but it takes a lot of work and effort, and he does it religiously.

He’s very good to the troops. And I know people don’t like him because he hates Trump, but I like him and I really appreciate what he does.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting him once. Seemed like a really nice guy. We spoke together at the National Press Club for the 13 families. You know that gold star families from…

MEGYN KELLY: Abigate. Yep. And the ones that President Biden forgot to acknowledge, forgot.

SHAWN RYAN: Exist. The same ones. Man.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Yeah. That was dark.

SHAWN RYAN: Yes, it was. Still is.

Moments That Stay With You

MEGYN KELLY: There was one interview that I remember as well that, like, there’s so many over the years, but this news reporter was killed on the air by a stalker. She was attacked at her newsroom, I think it was, and she was killed by the stalker. Very young girl. Young woman.

And her dad came on my show that night to talk about it. And the one thing he didn’t want was he didn’t want to see the setup package, you know, telling the audience what happened. And of course, we had done 15 different things to make sure that he did not see the setup package.

But something happened and he got it fed to his ear. And when he started the interview, he was upset, he was angry, rightfully so. And I just remember that feeling of, like, oh, my God, like, we let this be poor man down on the one thing he needed. I felt so bad.

But he managed to get through it and I managed to sort of get him able to talk. And like, those are the things you remember, the ones that affected you emotionally. I guess that’s sort of the theme of my answers. I got Judge Judy, who makes me laugh, makes me so happy. The military guys who make you feel grounded and give you perspective and then something like that where you had a massive failure and you upset somebody you did not want to upset.

You know, it’s not easy. This job’s not easy.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there, I mean, do you often regret asking the wrong question maybe? Or do you?

MEGYN KELLY: No. Pretty much never. No. I mean, it’s, I think the audience is so forgiving. They know you’re only human and you’re going to say dumb things. And I think it’s like you get judged on the body of work, you know.

I think, you know, I’ve been in the business for a long time now, so people know generally who I am and what I stand for. And if I have a bad day or a bad show or if I say the wrong thing, I deliver the news in a way that wasn’t true, which I will always go correct. They know that. They know I’m not a dishonest broker.

I’m not there for clicks. I’m not even there for love. I’m there for respect and in service, you know, that’s what I’m there for. So I don’t know. I’m pretty forgiving. If I, when I say something dumb or that I don’t feel that’s my bigger sin, that, like, I say something like, yeah. And then you’re like, nah, I don’t really feel like that. Did I really mean, yeah, I don’t know if I did.

Getting Off the Couch

SHAWN RYAN: Well, after you, how long was it after you left NBC that you started your show?

MEGYN KELLY: So I left NBC in October of 2018 and we launched the show September of 2020. About two years. I wasn’t sure I was going to go back into the business at all. Now you can hear in the story just the arc of, you know, how it went from so amazing to not so great.

I was like, I don’t have to do this. Maybe I’ll hang out my shingle again. You know, I could do some sort of law helping people or something else. I could reinvent myself another time. And, you know, what did it, what got me off my couch? It was the post George Floyd behavior.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what did it.

MEGYN KELLY: The country losing its mind. I was like, these are lies. These are all lies about the police, about us. And they’re lies that are tearing at the very fabric of America. And I need to say all the things that need to be said to correct them.

My brother is a cop and a great cop. Now he’s retired, but he was a lieutenant in Albany. And this guy was such an honorable cop, the entire time he was in service, he was beaten to within an inch of his life by a gang. They broke his neck. He was in the hospital for a long time. Never came out bitter. Never complaints. He was so upstanding.

And to hear these people smear cops writ large as just all racist, you know, or all bastards, as they were saying at the time. I was like, it’s on. Bullshit. Bullshit. I couldn’t believe those protests where they were making people say black lives matter. This is America. We don’t make people say anything. That’s not us.

And at the same time, we’re in the COVID lockdowns, which I wasn’t that excited about. I was pissed off about them, and I was more like, I don’t know what to believe. I’m kind of irritated. And then we got to the mandatory masking, and I was like, all right, it’s on. You know, I don’t like being told by anybody that I have to do this or have to do that. I have a fairly strong libertarian streak in me.

So I was like, I’ve got to get off the couch. I must get off the couch. And so we launched the show with me sitting in my kid’s playroom with just a little desk and a microphone and three people. We actually took a picture of the screengrab. It was just a couple of us like, well, here goes nothing.

And I said to my therapist again, I was like, what if nobody listens? And he said, he’s from South Africa. And he goes, “Well, I’ll listen, and Doug will listen, so you’ll have two.” And that’s, you know, now here we are four years later.

SHAWN RYAN: So you felt a sense of service?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. Yes. I was awash in actual facts that summer about the cops shooting deaths, race relations in America. Then the COVID stuff came on, and all of it, I just became a student of. I mean, I was reading nothing but Shelby Steele and Glenn Lowry and listening to all sorts of podcasts from people who were, you know, fair and balanced. Thomas Sowell. Not his podcast, but his books.

I was listening to Heather McDonald. I was going to leftist sources to hear what, what are your accusations like, what are you saying? I was reading their data to see if they had a point. I was reading Roland Fryer at Harvard, and with studies that he was putting out, I was trying to really educate myself on what’s real. What’s real.

And once you do that, it’s just so clear. My God, the cops, they make 10 million arrests a year. They have 30 million pullovers or interactions. They make 10 million arrests a year. And in, you know, that year that we were looking at 2018, there were a dozen shootings of unarmed black men, and unarmed included people who had a glove box with guns who were trying to run down the cop. That’s in the 12th.

We were being lied to on a massive gaslighting scale, and nobody was talking about the truth. They were too afraid. So that’s how the podcast was born and where we got our, you know, tagline, “No BS, No Agenda, No Fear,” and the rest is history.

SHAWN RYAN: I always wondered that. And, you know, even during the interview, it sounded like, I mean, now you have all the time you want with your kids.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t, I mean, it’s not great to make assumptions, but I’m assuming you didn’t need to go back to work after that.

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I would’ve had to change some things in my lifestyle, but, yes, I would have been just fine.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And so there it is. Felt a sense of service.

Finding Her Voice

MEGYN KELLY: Oh, yeah. And look, it was, it took me a while to really hit my stride. Like, I knew I was going to report facts about these tough issues, and I did. But I wasn’t sharing really my opinions as much as I do now.

And I had on Mark Cuban very early on. We sparred about his big commitment to DEI and Black Lives Matter, but was just fine taking all the money from China, who are genociding the Uyghurs. But human rights matter. Yeah, okay, so we had a feisty exchange on that.

But Mark Cuban said something that was very right to me, and I didn’t realize it at the time. He’s pressing me on my opinion. And I was like, I don’t have to give my opinion. You know, I ask the questions, I don’t answer them. And he was like, “Oh, no, not on this. Not on a podcast, not in this forum. You’re going to have to give your opinion.”

I remember being like, what does he know? He knew a lot. He was right and I was wrong. And now look at me now. Now you can’t shut me up. I kind of owe him an apology over that.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

SHAWN RYAN: Where do you think when did the media turn to all the lies? When did that happen?

MEGYN KELLY: 2015.

SHAWN RYAN: 2015. How does, I mean, how does it, what happened?

MEGYN KELLY: Trump. There is such a thing as Trump derangement syndrome. He really just, he literally drove them crazy. He drove them crazy, continues to drive them crazy. And they’re just so agenda driven.

You know, I said, I’m not ideological. More journalists should be able to say that. It’s not great to be an ideological journalist. It’s really not. You’re much better off if you really don’t like either side and you’re not in love with one or the other.

All these people when Joe Biden was stepping down. “I love him. I love the man.” We shouldn’t get out of the news business. Stop that.

The End of Corporate Media

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. You know, we shouldn’t love our politicians. We should be kicking the tires on our politicians, you know, all of them. Trump, too. Like, if you’re a fan at home, you’re a voter. That’s one thing. If you’re a member of the media, that’s not your job. You’re not a cheerleader. You’re not there to help him.

So I had a real problem with the fact that they all sacrificed their objectivity to get him, you know, to bring him down, and despite their personal beliefs, like, could never check it. It’s fine to actually privately root for somebody and want this candidate to win or that’s human. But to show it, to openly try to make it happen every night on the air is something very different.

And they started doing it in 2015. They declared openly that they would now no longer be objective, that they would say Trump is a racist, Trump is a sexist, Trump’s an Islamophobe. That’s opinion. That’s your opinion. You’re saying he’s a racist because you’re also saying that he said there are fine people on both sides at the Charlottesville rally, which is a lie.

So your first fact is based on a second underlying faulty fact, which makes you wrong. So you’re much better off if you’re going to offer an opinion, saying it’s an opinion. In my opinion, he’s a racist, he’s a sexist, he’s a whatever. That’s not what they were doing. They were reporting night after night that he was these terrible things that he’d say, said these terrible things, and they continue to do it.

What’s happening right now with JD Vance is a good example of it. Of course, he had to be crucified because he has too good a story with the working class. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin are too important not to hurt him. Trump has to be kid gloved for a little while because he just got his head almost blown off. It would look bad, but here’s this nice fresh meat who happened to say some things that were provocative on cable news about women. Get him. Because we need women. We’re Democrats. That’s how we get elected. So unleash the hounds. He said this stuff.

What did he say? I went back. We did a deep dive. You know what was happening when JD was saying that? There was a rising conversation on the Internet and elsewhere around Mother’s Day by these leftists that we don’t need children. More and more women are choosing not to have them. More and more women who have them regret it. Deep thought pieces from mothers on how they regret having their children and how you really might want to rethink your decision to have them at all if you’re somebody who hasn’t. And you had AOC coming out there and saying it might be environmentally unsound and irresponsible. One third of women polled said they felt the same, according to Pew Research.

SHAWN RYAN: Is that real?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. A rising tide of children are bad, they’re irresponsible and they ruin your life around Mother’s Day. So JD Vance goes out there and says defensively, these people are nuts. They sound like sociopaths. We should not be ruled by childless cat ladies who don’t think children are worthwhile.

And when pressed about, like he was making a point about they want 16 year olds to vote. And he said, if we’re going to give 16 year olds the right to vote, then we should give their parents a heavier weight to their vote and the single people will have less of a weight. He said it was a thought experiment. It wasn’t like, I have a policy proposal. Single people without children shouldn’t have their vote counted as much as the married people.

That’s what happened with JD Vance. He was, and he said, I understand people who want kids and can’t have them. That’s tragic. And my heart goes out to them. And you know, a lot of people just can’t do it, IVF, whatever, which I believe in. But I do think net net it’s better to have kids because I think it helps ground you and it gives you a better perspective on life and your problems and especially if you’re going to run for office. You know, it gives you something real that you can think about and you have real skin in the game in the future.

None of that is controversial. But you didn’t get any of that context, the lead up, what he was responding to, or his fuller explanations about what happened. You just got, he hates people who don’t have kids. He wants to make women have children. That was an actual headline that he wants to make them have. So the media lies. And in particular, they lie about Republicans and certainly anyone who’s a MAGA Republican.

Living in the End Times for Corporate Media

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, is this the end of mainstream media? Are we seeing its demise right now?

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. Yes. We’re living in the end times for corporate media, I guess we’ll call it. They’re not mainstream. Is it mainstream to go out there every day and say that guys should be allowed to punch women in the face at the Olympics and pretend they’re women? That’s not mainstream. 70% more, really. But 70% of the Americans polled say they don’t want it. They don’t want men and women’s sports or boys and girls sports. That’s not mainstream. You and I are the mainstream. They’re not.

Is it mainstream to say open the borders and give amnesty to them all? Like they’re, I hate that term because it’s just, it’s a misnomer. But, yes, we’re living through their, the end times for them, which is a glorious thing. We should be celebrating that. That’s one of the few great things we have to think about right now in public life. That and the Supreme Court are the two things I wrap myself in like a blanket when I go to bed at night.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think the final nail in the coffin will be?

MEGYN KELLY: If Trump wins again, that’ll be the end. Yes, because they’ll do the same thing they did the first time. Everything will be negative. He will be the devil incarnate. They will find their oppositional, you know, media roots again, which they totally forgot during the Biden years. Hello. We have a whole White House press corps that didn’t figure out he was being visited regularly by a Parkinson’s doctor. You think they’d miss that with Trump?

In fairness to them, Trump didn’t put out his logs. But my point is, they had no interest in finding out anything bad about Joe Biden. So I do think they’ll just drive more people away, but they’re already dying. Like you saw what happened when CNN tried to launch its digital property. It closed within a month. Hundreds of millions of dollars closed within a month.

Their ratings right now in primetime, they’re pulling in half a million. I mean, I know you dwarf that in your numbers, and I certainly do as well. When I was in primetime at Fox, I was getting like 4 million a night and like a million in the demo. Sometimes well over that. Yeah. Like, CNN’s never seen a million in the demo unless, like, it’s the Trump assassination or some massive, massive breaking news.

CBS just fired, they’re saying she quit, but she obviously didn’t, its main evening news anchor Norah O’Donnell, and they’re replacing it now with, like, a cast trying to look more like local news. They’ve been in third place forever. They’re never getting out of it.

The Today show has, their ratings are in the basement. They’re pulling no numbers whatsoever. They used to be a behemoth. That was where everyone wanted to work. It was like hashtag goals. Now they get maybe one fourth of what they used to get. They make no news. They’re totally irrelevant. What was the last news Savannah Guthrie made?

SHAWN RYAN: I have no idea.

MEGYN KELLY: Of course you don’t. What was the last news, big interview Robin Roberts had?

SHAWN RYAN: Who knows? I don’t ever watch it.

MEGYN KELLY: Who has more influence, Wolf Blitzer or Ben Shapiro?

SHAWN RYAN: Ben Shapiro.

MEGYN KELLY: It’s just a new world. So they’re well on their way to the end of their Kevorkian experience. Trump was the doctor. But they’re the ones who hook themselves up to the machine, and they’re almost gone.

The Future of News Media

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think happens? I mean, does it just dissolve into nothing? TV’s just done?

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t know the answer to that. I know the almighty dollar rules. So if they’re, when they stop making money off of these people, they will shrink as they have been. Mass layoffs already, and eventually they’ll have to find either a new model or close.

I would love to see it turn into a resurrection of local news, which is important. You know, reporting is important. We need journalists, honest journalists. Sometimes they do amazing things. You know, look at the whole Boston Catholic Church scandal. That was amazing journalism. And they, we know about that story because of those reporters. So I don’t want to see it go away altogether. And I do think it’ll reinvent, as you know, to steal a line from Jurassic Park, life finds a way.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think it will be reinvented from companies like CNN, MSNBC, Fox? Or do you think it’ll be, do you think it’ll be some of these newer?

MEGYN KELLY: I think Fox is going to go away because at some point, Rupert’s going to pass. He’s an old man. And I have my doubts about whether Lachlan really wants to run a news channel. You know, I think he really wanted to run the movie company which then was sold to ABC. And I think he was probably disappointed about that. I don’t think he ever thought he would be sitting at 1211 Sixth Avenue in Roger’s old crappy office doing news. And indeed he’s chosen not to do that.

So I don’t know, not sure about what Fox will do once the succession kicks in. It’s not going to happen imminently, but I think eventually it goes away.

CNN, they’ve got to be the closest to death because they have no numbers, none. Doesn’t matter who you put in there, doesn’t matter whether they try to do fair and balance now or not. No one’s watching. Jeff Zucker killed CNN and it has not been able to resurrect.

MSNBC, I think they’ll probably hang on longer because there isn’t really a strong left wing echo center outside of cable. You know, shows like mine, like they were born because conservatives and just right leaning independents, fair minded independents needed alternatives. Like they couldn’t get facts anymore on ABC, on NBC, on CBS, on CNN, on MSNBC. And even Fox has its own agenda as people have now seen. So like we had to rise up. You know, it’s Darwinism.

The left has its choices. You know, you could go hardcore left MSNBC or soft porn over at CNN. So they don’t have as much of a, as robust a presence in our lane. So I guess that would suggest they’d hold on a little bit longer. But not CNN because it has no numbers, it’s not a business.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you, what do you think is going on in the world? Everything. I mean, you’ve been in news for a long time. You have a great pulse on everything that’s happening. And I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this.

Optimism in Troubled Times

MEGYN KELLY: Ever. Well, in our lifetime. I don’t know. I’ll tell you this about me. I don’t really—I’m not in any way—I don’t have a conspiratorial gene at all. And I am fairly optimistic in my worldview, so I may surprise you, but I think old patterns just repeat themselves and we usually wind up okay.

I think it has been worse than it is now. We’ve had two world wars and somehow we found our way back to stasis. And you know, right now we’re not—we don’t have thousands of troops over in Iraq, they’re getting bombed all the time, losing limbs. We don’t have anybody in Afghanistan. Those are good things. We’re not living in a world where we’re worried about bin Laden bombing us every time we see the evening news.

You know, in many ways things have gotten better than they were 20 years ago. We’re divided as a country for sure. We had civil war once. We were pretty divided back then. The media sucks. The media used to be 100% partisan. You couldn’t pick up a paper and ask for just objective truth. You only read what you wanted to read that would reinforce your worldview. And then the other side did the same.

That’s how it used to be in America. It’s okay if you read that knowing what it is, you can figure out what’s what. Our founding fathers did and so did a whole bunch of generations that came after them. Europe—it moves to the right and then it moves to the left, and then it moves to the right, then moves to the left. Net net, it’s a leftist kind of place.

America’s not. We’re still more of a center-right country. We just have a bunch of lunatics running right now that have captured the left. But they’re starting to get the cobwebs out of their eyes. The normies on the left, the center left. You know, you listen to James Carville. We can work with him. He’s not a nut. He’s going to vote Democrat. He’s got the same principles that he used to have and the left used to have.

I just think they’ve gone so far, there’s no answer but to see things settle down in a more normal place. America is normal. We’re not crazy lunatics. Look at the Midwest. Go visit the Midwest. My two best friends live there. I see them all the time. They’re normal. One’s very liberal. She’s not woke. She doesn’t believe in any of this crap. She can’t believe what’s happening in the news when I tell her.

Too much proximity to the news can actually drive you a little batty and you can think these problems are bigger and more widespread than they are. So that may sound Pollyannaish, but I would bet on us. And I think we’re actually living in a relative time of stability. Mind blowing.

SHAWN RYAN: Right? It is. I mean, I see the stuff going on and it—it just—it really bothers me. I don’t know. I feel like I’m center of the road but lean conservative. But you know, the last couple years, I just—I don’t—if you have—if you love kids, if you—I just don’t know how you can go that—

MEGYN KELLY: Way.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. At all. And it’s, it’s—I mean, how much of that population, how much of that left demographic is—is for the—

MEGYN KELLY: Shit? I think it’s a far fewer number than they would admit. I think most of them are—

SHAWN RYAN: Afraid. How can they vote? How can they vote that—

MEGYN KELLY: Way? I mean, most leftists vote for abortion. They’re obsessed with abortion on the left, man. That’s a big issue for them. They love abortion. So that’s their top priority. And they’re voting based on that.

SHAWN RYAN: Man. Like, what’s happening to these—

MEGYN KELLY: Kids. I—

The Left’s Priorities and the Culture War

SHAWN RYAN: Know. And, and love bombing them into, into the LGBTQ—LGBTQ element, op, whatever they’re calling it today. I, it’s, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like there’s a recruitment going—

MEGYN KELLY: On.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. In—

MEGYN KELLY: School. It’s grooming, it’s—

SHAWN RYAN: Dark. How can they, like, how can you be for that shit? How can you be for—

MEGYN KELLY: Maps? Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Right. Minor attracted persons. How can you be for that? Are they uninformed? Do they not know this is—

MEGYN KELLY: Happening? I think most don’t know about maps, that’s for—

SHAWN RYAN: Sure. How can they walk around in their cities and see what they’ve turned into? Well, they aren’t. They all come here to—

MEGYN KELLY: Tennessee.

SHAWN RYAN: Everybody. Every state I go to, every state we go—

MEGYN KELLY: To. But you see Gavin Newsom cleaned up the homeless encampments like—

SHAWN RYAN: That. Yeah. You know, Xi Jinping must be coming to—

MEGYN KELLY: Town. Yeah, exactly. But even, you know, Oregon now is rethinking its open air drug markets. It’s like they go so far left they eventually are forced to correct.

I’m very worried about the same things you’re worried about. I’m definitely worried about the 10 million plus illegals who are running around and we don’t know where they’re from. And we’re never going to get them out of here, especially if Trump loses. But I’m deeply worried about the children and the trans thing.

We are—this is like the time when we used to lobotomize people who were a little slow. Like we were lobotomizing people who were just a little slow. What a stain on our record as Americans and on the medical community. And we’re kind of doing that right now. It’s the same thing to children. We’re not lobotomizing them, but we’re sterilizing them. We’re chopping off their body parts. We’re ending their sex life. Any chance at a normal sex life?

Most people don’t realize if you go from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones directly, you’re probably going to be sterile and you’ll never achieve orgasm. What in the actual—and they want to tell us that’s informed consent that a 12-year-old can give. It’s barbaric. It’s evil.

So I too am very concerned about these issues. It’s just that if I zoom out, I see positive trend lines in most of these things. I like the fact that immigration is coming up as number one on leftists list of concerns now, not leftists, but liberals. I like the fact that we’re polling at over 70% on whether boys should play in girls sports. I think things like what happened at the Olympics will help because that’s an international event that everybody—

SHAWN RYAN: Watches. And this story, the Last Supper or a man beating a—

The Trans Athlete Debate

MEGYN KELLY: Woman. Not the Last Supper. Christians will always be the group it’s okay to bash at every international event, but that’s because we don’t run around murdering people when you make fun of Jesus.

No. What happened with the trans boxer? Intersex. Whatever. It’s man. You have XY chromosomes. Welcome to manhood then. They’ve done deep studies on people with the XY who say they’re intersex and they have all the testosterone advantages that an actual man with a penis and no female genitalia, which is a weird problem to have. And all sympathy to this person, but too bad you can’t box with the women. Sorry. You have a testosterone advantage. That’s why you got kicked out of the world championships last year. And so did the other guy.

It’s just outrageous. And I do think that being such a public and watched event will help. You know, we still have people like Megan Rapinoe out there saying it’s not happening. They’re not taking medals, they’re not endangering girls, they’re just not informed and they just revert to their woke proper speak. We’re not allowed to say anything bad about the trans people. She’s so worried about protecting the fake girls, she’s forgotten about the real ones.

So, I mean, the biggest thing right now for people like you and me, I think, is to just remind people that you—it’s okay to speak up and you must. It’s okay not to use their forced language on pronouns. And you must or you are part of the problem.

And once you stand up, once you ask the question at your school board meeting or of your potential new school principal or at your office or wherever you’re able to do it, so many other people will feel empowered to do the same. They’ll feel emboldened that they’re not alone. And you’ll get tons of “me too. Thank you for asking that. I loved your question.” And then you find out, oh, my God, it’s okay to have this opinion right now. You’re just told you’re not. It’s not okay to have that opinion.

So that’s starting. You can talk about this issue so much more freely than you could three years ago, thanks largely to Elon Musk, God bless him and his ownership of X. I realize so far hasn’t been a great financial deal for him, but he—he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for what he’s done.

So I see shoots of grass, Sean. You know, it’s like, I don’t—I don’t see us as at peak in the problem. I see us as like past peak and now on our way to solving it.

SHAWN RYAN: Man. I hope you’re right. I’m a pessimist. So—so I just—it just—it just—it just bothers. I think about it all the time. Especially—especially the maps, the pedo stuff that they’re trying to normalize and the—and the—just the kids, man. Like, everybody says this, you know, but I don’t—I don’t—I don’t f*ing care what you do as an adult. If you want to do that surgery, then go ahead. I could care two shits, don’t care. But an eight-year-old. An eight-year—

MEGYN KELLY: Old. Well, on top of that, like, you can do what you want as an adult to your body. Stay out of my locker—

SHAWN RYAN: Room.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. Stay out of my—

SHAWN RYAN: Bathroom. Yeah, okay. I’m not cool with—

Boundaries and Body Autonomy

MEGYN KELLY: It. It’s like you want to do your thing in your house. All right? Kim Kardashian put a bunch of fat in her ass. It looks huge. Who am I to judge? People seem to like it. There are people down in Texas, in Texas, getting all their genitals removed and their belly buttons just like a cyborg. I don’t know what—they leave, like, one area for you to do your business. No genitals. Great. Good—

SHAWN RYAN: Luck. When did this start—

MEGYN KELLY: Happening? As Joe Biden says, this is the one saying of his, I like “good luck in your senior year.” Wow. Yeah. So, okay. But I’m sorry, if you’re a man, you’re not coming into my private space—

SHAWN RYAN: Period. How do these conversations even—I can’t even believe we’re happy. Every time I have this conversation, I can’t believe I’m having the f*ing—

MEGYN KELLY: Conversation.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Where does this shit stem—

Faith, Annulments, and the Catholic Church

MEGYN KELLY: I mean, that one stems from sick men who decided to go into these spaces, decided that they would exploit our empathy for a very small section of the community which legitimately is confused on gender. These people, it’s a teeny, tiny amount. They’ve been around forever. The vast majority of them never bothered anybody.

You know, I actually see Caitlyn Jenner in this category who says they always had this thing. You know, they made a choice to live life as man and then kind of came to grips with this gender identity crisis. But Caitlyn Jenner’s not trying to sneak into little girls spaces.

Now, Caitlyn will admit that he used female bathrooms, and I think he still uses female bathrooms. And I think he’d be perfectly happy to sit here and listen to why I object to that. He’s just so reasonable, I think, in the way he talks about this issue.

And I’m not trying to be disrespectful by calling Caitlyn he, but I really think it’s critical. It’s not just a preference. It’s critical that we do it. Calling anybody she when it’s a he makes you actually part of the problem. Pronouns are rohypnal. They dull your sentences to the problem. You cannot win an argument saying he, saying she needs to stay out of the women’s locker room.

So I don’t know, it is almost—I’ve become almost a single issue voter on the trans thing now. I just don’t know. You just saw Jennifer Aniston tweeted out about JD Vance’s childless cat lady comments. I don’t know if she saw that. She came out and said, “Oh, how could you help? Your daughter never needs IVF, which you oppose.” Lie. He doesn’t oppose IVF. He signed on to the Ted Cruz Katie Britt bill protecting it in all 50 states.

So she wanted to stand up for childless cat ladies because she’s one of them. What has she said about the women? What’d she say about the girl who got her face punched out by the man in the boxing ring? Zero. What has she said about Peyton McNabb who’s suffering permanent nerve damage and brain damage from getting hit so hard in the face and the head by a volleyball player in North Carolina? Nothing. What’d she say about that girl who got all of her teeth knocked out in a field hockey game by a boy pretending to be a girl on her team? Zero.

So I don’t give a shit what she thinks about JD Vance and childless cat ladies. She masquerades as some protector of women. She’s quite the contrary. She’s never stood up on any of these issues. This is the one she comes out on. You don’t want childless cat ladies to be offended. That’s where you’re going to plant your flag. I have no tolerance for it.

Hollywood is awful. I can barely watch their products anymore because they have—it’s not even no morality. They’ve really crossed over to evil in a lot of their beliefs.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I think they’re on their way out too.

MEGYN KELLY: That’s true.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, my kids are going to—I don’t even know what the hell they’re going to watch or do at this point.

MEGYN KELLY: But the Darwinism thing will save it.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you feel like any of this is biblical at all?

MEGYN KELLY: I’m not there yet. No. I don’t know. I just don’t think about the world in those terms. I don’t think so. I just think we’ve been through worse. We’ve done worse to each other even than this.

SHAWN RYAN: How is your faith journey going?

MEGYN KELLY: It’s doing okay. I put the annulment papers to the side for now.

SHAWN RYAN: Really?

MEGYN KELLY: I’m going to pick them back up. But it was bothering me so much, I just decided to table it.

SHAWN RYAN: I watched a clip of you, and I think he was a bishop asking about the middleman. And the answer seemed to be, “Trust the process.”

The Middleman Question

MEGYN KELLY: Well, all my Catholic viewers say the same. Right. And then people who are not Catholic are like, “You don’t need the middleman.” I did have somebody make a good point to me about in favor of the middleman that I’m stewing on, which was a priest who said to a friend of mine, “People complain, ‘Why do I have to deal with the middleman? I want to get an annulment, or I just want my divorce to be recognized by God. I don’t want to have to do anything, actually, after I’ve done the legal thing.'”

And he said, “But those same people, if a family member is dying, I’m their first call to get in there and give last rites.” And that’s true. You know, my sister died two years ago, and when that priest came in there to give her the last rites, it was an important moment. I was relieved he was there. And I have never said so many Hail Marys right in a row. It was intense.

So maybe it’s just the way I’ve been raised, my Catholic background. He’s not wrong. The middleman was important to me in that moment and I believed. So that kind of opened the door back up to me just seeing it through, you know.

I don’t—nothing harmful, I think will come from seeing it through. Something could potentially harmful happen if I don’t see it through and I’m wrong that I’m already absolved. Right. What if I’m not absolved and I actually do need—I don’t know. These are the thoughts you go through because you got these crazy messages being handed to you by religious figures.

But that sounds crazy, right? That I would need a man to tell me I’m good with God after having a divorce that was totally legal and finding a new man who I love and making three beautiful children, living in love and harmony with all of us. Sounds crazy that I would need anybody to pass any judgment on that.

But you know, we’re all raised with these beliefs. It’s a form of indoctrination. Right? You go every Sunday and you hear the same messaging and you go to Sunday school and then you go to confirmation and CCD, all the stuff. And it’s very hard to just say, “Well, that no longer works for me, so I reject it.” It’s baked in there.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I get it. Have you read the whole Bible?

MEGYN KELLY: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Me neither. I’ve listened to Bible in a Year a couple times. I don’t think that counts. Father Mike Schmidt.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, I’ve listened to it. I don’t think it says anything in there about a middleman.

SHAWN RYAN: Ever.

MEGYN KELLY: I think you’re right. I think that’s a man-made creation. I hope my priest doesn’t watch this. What if he watches it? Then he says, “Reject it,” when I submit the papers. Oh, crap.

I don’t know. It’s like back to our earlier discussion. I have every belief, every in God and in higher power and in something more for us on the other side and on the last side, you know, before we got here. As I said, I just haven’t figured out how I interact with it, what’s really required of me.

Near Death Experiences and Faith

SHAWN RYAN: Have you ever heard of John Burke?

MEGYN KELLY: No.

SHAWN RYAN: He wrote—great, now I’m going to have a brain fart. He wrote a book about NDEs. About what? NDEs, near death experiences.

MEGYN KELLY: Love those.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. He wrote a book called Imagine Heaven and I cannot remember the big one that he wrote, but it’s all about NDEs. And he went all around the world and he interviewed over 1,500 people from different countries, different religions, all about their near death experiences and puts together all the commonalities.

It is—I interviewed him because I’m digging. I want to know.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And you know, the one common thing that happens to all of them is they get the opportunity to accept Christ even if they don’t believe. And I guess the only reason I’m even bringing this up is that it may be something you want to look into because he just has an amazing way of describing all these experiences, putting the commonalities right in front of you. And he even talks about people that have hellish—he calls them hellish near death experiences where they actually go to hell and everybody gets the opportunity to accept Christ.

MEGYN KELLY: Wow. I will read that. I love those stories. I did a lot of those stories when I was at NBC and they were always stunning. You would just not be able to move afterward. And it’s always somebody who didn’t believe before, a scientist, a doctor. It’s amazing to listen to those stories.

I guess when I’m listening to you—and Father Mike is Catholic, he definitely urged me to get the annulment. I’m a rule follower in general. I don’t like people telling me what to do, but once there’s a rule, I generally follow it, you know. And so I wrestle with that because it’s like, this is the rule. If you—I like it to be clean, it’ll be all clean. If I get an annulment, it will be clean. And I can make sure all the boxes are checked, that I need checked, that these authority figures have told me must be checked.

And I realize this is not exactly free thinking. Back to the earlier point. There’s a reason for that. You know, belief in many ways is not free thinking. You know, just the acceptance of God could be mocked as it is by people like Bill Maher and others as crazy talk. So if you start to go down that lane, you know what else gets thrown out the window? What else is silly that you believe?

I’m really kind of stuck. So I’ve decided to hold, like I said. And right now I just kind of see it as the one way has no disadvantages and the other way might. Unless I read your book and it tells me I get a second chance to clean it up at the end.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s already been—it’s already cleansed. That’s the whole thing about Jesus. He’s cleansed us all already. He knows we’re all shitheads and he’s already forgiven us. All you have to do is accept him. That’s it. That’s all you got to do.

MEGYN KELLY: But then—and stop going to Catholic Mass?

SHAWN RYAN: No, no, I’m not trying to get you to stop going to Catholic church.

MEGYN KELLY: Well, but I mean, that’s what would continue happening, and I would feel—you know, you’re not supposed to take communion. You’re not allowed to give confession. There are all sorts of rules that you’re supposed to comply with over there or just be a sinner.

SHAWN RYAN: Wait, over where? In the Catholic church?

MEGYN KELLY: In the Catholic Church, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. There are a lot of rules.

MEGYN KELLY: It’s not a religion for wusses.

SHAWN RYAN: I was there.

MEGYN KELLY: You were?

SHAWN RYAN: I wussed out. Will you give it a try?

MEGYN KELLY: Oh.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, no. I was raised Catholic. And then I lost it. But I just—I didn’t lose—I just lost faith, you know, after—I just wasn’t a great person. The SEAL teams will do that to you. But I found it, and, you know, I found it again. And, man, I just love—I just love exploring it without the rules because it just—man, it just opens you up to so much more, and, I don’t know, I just want that for you.

The Annulment Process

MEGYN KELLY: Yes. It sounds amazing. You know, you probably gleaned from the way I talk about my approach to my business and my life. It’s definitely more me to say, “These are the five things that need to get done, and I will get them done. I’ll get them done better than anybody will get them done. I will out-hustle everybody else’s annulment.” Right. Stupid.

It’s just my general default makeup. Right. Going, taking it easy on myself and letting myself kind of off the hook doesn’t sound like me.

SHAWN RYAN: How would you be letting yourself off the hook?

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t have to go through the shame and the hassle and the difficulty of getting the annulment.

SHAWN RYAN: What does that entail?

MEGYN KELLY: You have to confess very intimate secrets of your life and your marriage, your first marriage to a stranger. I mean, and you have to write tons of stuff, and you have to get witnesses to write in about your marriage. You have to dredge up all this stuff. My poor ex-husband had to be brought into it, too. He was fine. He was cool with it. He was, you know, on board.

But I just feel like, wow, they really make you work for it. And then you may or may not get it.

SHAWN RYAN: What if you don’t get it? What happens then?

MEGYN KELLY: I’m definitely going the other route. I’m going to full bore. I’m going to get Father Mike on and we are having it.

Faith, Scaffolding, and Finding Your Own Path

SHAWN RYAN: Out. I don’t know. I just can’t trust religion. I can’t trust it.

MEGYN KELLY: I have to say, it’s like, I think the relationship is between me and God, me and Christ, and all these other places, whether it’s the Episcopal Church or the Catholic Church or the Evangelical church, are just vehicles to help me express and be in the relationship. It’s just like the scaffolding.

So I don’t, I guess I just don’t ask questions like that. I never have up until I bumped into the feelings I was having when I had to comply with some of the more, I think, ridiculous rules. You know, as I said, I’m not devout, so I don’t comply with a lot of the other rules. I do eat meat on Fridays during Lent. I just don’t think I’m going to get punished for that. Like, things like that. I’m not that observant. I go to Mass. I believe I’m raising my children Catholic.

But the scaffolding has been non-objectionable to me for most of my life. It’s only now that it’s becoming objectionable. And so that’s leading me to figure some things out. Right. Like I told you, I tried some different scaffolding over at the Episcopal Church and that didn’t go well. We went to a Methodist church in Manhattan. It was like a variety show. That was a no. Might have just been the place we went. Because the pastor had blue hair and mohawk. I’m like, what’s happening?

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting. I mean, have you noticed this wave of Christianity just moving across the globe here? Have you seen, did you see the party? The party at, what was it? I think it was Georgia State. It looked like a, it was all these kids tailgating at a football game. And I mean, it looked wild. It looked wild. They did a big story on it.

MEGYN KELLY: Wait, were they…

SHAWN RYAN: They were getting baptized in the back of trucks. Like hundreds, maybe thousands of kids.

MEGYN KELLY: What? No, I have not seen this.

SHAWN RYAN: You haven’t seen that? No, it’s, it looks, it’s just awesome. It’s cool to see.

MEGYN KELLY: Wow. Thank God. Praise God. But that’s the solution.

Biblical Signs and Modern Times

SHAWN RYAN: You’ve got that. You’ve got all these people coming out all of a sudden getting baptized with massive audiences. I mean, it’s, I see it all the time and I don’t know, that’s, I’m kind of, I guess I’m kind of going back to, sometimes I just think some of the things that we’re saying is, it’s…

MEGYN KELLY: Biblical. In what way?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, I think it’s, I think it’s interesting that the letterhead on the Biden’s letter to Trans Visibility Day on Easter, you know, that was what, that was implemented, what, nine years ago or something, and it just fell on Easter, but they still put the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny and the letterhead, the mocking of the Last Supper that we just saw at the Olympics, the wave of Christianity, like, I’m talking about the dismembering kids, the confusion of genders, all these.

I just look at all these things and I don’t remember, I mean, it’s like I was saying earlier, we just have never seen anything like this, and it makes me wonder what we’re actually up against.

MEGYN KELLY: Well, what’s the end conclusion of that? What’s the end conclusion? Yeah, like, so, well, the end times are…

SHAWN RYAN: Here. Oh, I don’t know.

MEGYN KELLY: Maybe. Like, where does that assumption that this is biblical take you?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it takes me there. It takes me to, this is good versus evil.

MEGYN KELLY: I’m using that word more than I ever have in my life.

SHAWN RYAN: It takes me to good versus evil. I don’t know if it’s end times. I mean, I do know that people have thought that, you know, throughout history that it’s end times, and it hasn’t been. But there sure seems to be a lot of signals happening.

MEGYN KELLY: I think we need to make the studio brighter. You come, it’s beautiful, but you’re in the dark room too much.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, you might be right. I’m just saying, put some windows in.

Fighting the Fights We Can Fight

MEGYN KELLY: It’s good. The children are good. That’s a plus. The grass is good. I sound like JD. Your wife is good.

When you start to feel like that, I think that’s not healthy thinking. That’s a dark place to be, and it’s just too overwhelming. You can’t do anything if it’s biblical. What can you do? Somebody else is totally in charge and it’s not going to end well. Or will, if you’re a believer. But anyway, my son Thatcher was asking me the other day, he goes, “When Jesus comes back, does that mean we all die? Those of us who are, like, alive and here, we die. So we shouldn’t be rooting for him to come back soon, right?”

It’s a good question. It’s kind of complicated, but I think let’s fight the fights we can fight. Let’s manage these things one thing at a time. Let’s not take on biblical. It’s too big and daunting.

We can speak out about the trans insanity. We can encourage people to find faith and to do the baptisms in the back of the truck or wherever is necessary. We can speak up against the things that we know are wrong, like bringing all these illegals over who are going to hurt Americans and take lives, and then let other people see that it’s okay to talk about these things in, yeah, harsh terms to make their point, elect the right people.

We can even take electoral losses like we potentially could suffer this year. God forbid. I mean, God forbid I had to say it, but, and find some good in it. Remember that the country was never so woke as when Trump was in office. It gets more woke when they have him as an adversary. I’m not rooting for this. I’m just saying there will be a silver lining that we can focus on and exploit if things go that way.

There are things that you can do, and I think that’s the key to staying okay. And, like, well, otherwise, it’s just too overwhelming.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I’ll take that advice. I’ll lighten it up in here a little bit, but, well, Megan, we’re wrapping up the interview, and I think it’s good to leave it on a positive note, so, and like I said, I’m a pessimist, so I can go down the negative road. But one last question.

MEGYN KELLY: Okay.

Guest Recommendations

SHAWN RYAN: If you had three guests to recommend for my show, who would they be?

MEGYN KELLY: Three guests? Well, you’ve probably done all my favorite military guys. I’m…

SHAWN RYAN: It’s…

MEGYN KELLY: Likely. Yeah. I’m going to go ahead and guess that. Kelly J. Keen. She’s a Brit. She’s a warrior on the trans stuff. She’s been everywhere. She has these rallies. They throw tomato juice all over her. They attack her. She’s been punched in the face by all these trans insanity people, and she just keeps going.

She’s totally opened my eyes on it. And so she’s lived an interesting life, and she’s right in the heart of battle and will really open your eyes on a lot of this stuff. Like, she’s been studying a lot longer than we have, so I would vote for her. You already did Tucker. He’s a great interview, as you know. Fascinating. Have you done Trump?

SHAWN RYAN: No. Would you want to do Trump?

MEGYN KELLY: I’ve been trying to get Trump.

SHAWN RYAN: That would be a great one for you. I’m trying to think of which guests align with your mission. Hmm. Now I’m realizing how many shallow people I know.

SHAWN RYAN: Positive note.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah. I think, what about Father Mike Schmitz? Now that we’re talking about it.

SHAWN RYAN: I would definitely interview him.

MEGYN KELLY: He’ll do it. He’s cool. He’s so relatable, and he’s got real life experience. We call him “Father What a Waste” because he’s a very good looking guy. I know that’s not important to you, but, you know, wouldn’t be bad to sit across from him for a few hours.

He’s thoughtful and reflective, and you can have this conversation with somebody who actually knows what they’re talking about. See if you might, maybe that’s the reason we’re together. Maybe you need to have that conversation with him. Not to bring you back into the Catholic faith, which is to offer, you know, some insights.

SHAWN RYAN: I would love to do that.

MEGYN KELLY: This is, this may be a little out there, but have you ever talked to Charlie Kirk?

SHAWN RYAN: No.

MEGYN KELLY: All right, let me tell you why I like Charlie. He’s a whippersnapper. He’s like, in his young 30s. He is loathed by most establishment Republicans. I know because they’re a lot of all my friends. And every time he comes on, they’re like, “Ew, we hate him.” I love him. He’s really loathed by the left. Didn’t go to college. Was Don Jr.’s bagman, like, assistant in 2016.

SHAWN RYAN: No kidding.

MEGYN KELLY: Started Turning Point USA and now he’s a juggernaut. He is hosting conference after conference to generate enthusiasm amongst young people for conservative values and letting them know they’re not alone. He knows Trump like a Trump whisperer. He can explain all things Trump to you. He’s got a great sense of humor and an encyclopedic memory.

And he’s in the lion’s den all the time, like fighting these wars and not giving two f*s what people say about him. And he’s on to the next big thing. He’s tireless. He never takes a vacation. He never, never gives up. If he’s dealt a blow, it doesn’t seem to land in his mind. And he’s damn entertaining.

Like the way he talks about the news. He makes me laugh. He makes me think. He says exactly the thing I wanted to say, but I didn’t know I wanted to say it until he had said it. And I love talking to him. So there you go.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, thank you.

MEGYN KELLY: There’s a variety. Sorry. That took so much thinking. I was really just trying to curate my list for people you would actually enjoy.

Closing Thoughts

SHAWN RYAN: I appreciate that. Well, Megan, thank you for coming down and sharing your story. And I’m just so happy that we connected and once again, I just want to say thank you for being a beacon of light for young women today. Extremely important and very noble.

MEGYN KELLY: Thanks for having me. It’s been a true pleasure.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you. Best of luck.

MEGYN KELLY: I appreciate it.

SHAWN RYAN: No matter where you’re watching Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please, like, comment, subscribe and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you’re feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify.

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