Megyn Kelly’s first interview for NBC News was a debacle

Aaron Rupar/Think Progress

Megyn Kelly’s first interview for NBC News aired on Thursday morning’s Today show as part of a person-on-the-street segment from Saint Petersburg, Russia. The former Fox News host ostensibly chatted to everyday Russians to get their thoughts about the Putin regime’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

The first person Kelly talked to during the segment is a man she simply identifies as “Russian broadcaster” Sergey Brilev.

“There is a lot of kindergartenish stuff going on,” Brilev says. “It’s humiliating — self-humiliating for such a great country as the United States of America to think that your election was decided in Moscow.”

WATCH: @megynkelly is in St. Petersburg where she’ll speak with Vladimir Putin pic.twitter.com/K8kWKmSYIs

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 1, 2017

What Kelly doesn’t tell you is that Brilev is “a top executive at a state news agency who played a key role in one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda efforts,” as Media Matters reports.

More from Media Matters:

Brilev is deputy director of Rossiya, a Russian state-owned television network, where he anchors a weekly news program. He is also affiliated with the Kremlin-founded Russian International Affairs Council. State-run news outlets like Rossiya serve as propaganda outlets that are allowed to exist in order to promote Putin’s worldview. “Brilev is a Putin man,” Helena Goscilo, a professor at The Ohio State University who specializes in Russian culture, confirmed to Media Matters in an email.

Brilev is perhaps best known for his role in Direct Line with the President, the annual live broadcast in which Putin takes phone calls from Russians. The program “was presented to the public as a spontaneous exchange, [but] evidence point to the fact that it was thoroughly prepared and scripted,” writesMichael Gorham, a professor at the University of Florida who focuses on Russian communication, journalism and culture, in an essay for the 2012 bookPutin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon.

According to Gorham, Brilev was a “trusted newsreader” who anchored the first seven broadcasts of the program and subsequently “received the state Friendship medal… for [his] service.”

Given his intimate ties to Putin, it’s not surprising that Brilev would publicly tamp down the notion that Russia meddled in the election on behalf of Trump. But Kelly leaves viewers with the impression that he’s nothing more than an impartial observer.

At the end of the segment, Kelly announced she was granted an exclusive interview with Putin that will air on Sunday night.

WATCH: @megynkelly is in St. Petersburg where she’ll speak with Vladimir Putin pic.twitter.com/K8kWKmSYIs

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 1, 2017

That interview comes on the heels of Putin getting closer than he ever has to admitting the Kremlin’s role in meddling in Trump’s election.

During comments to reports on Thursday, Putin denied direct Kremlin involvement in cyberattacks on Hillary Clinton, but said “patriotically minded” hackers might have acted on their own.

“If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia,” Putin said.

Kelly faces a test during her interview with Putin, who the intelligence community believes is still actively trying to influence U.S. politics. He likely views the NBC interview as a chance to speak directly to an American audience.

It’s unclear whether Kelly’s up for it. Though she infamously criticized Trump for his history of misogynist comments during the first Republican presidential debate in August of 2015, she took a very different approach during the one-on-one softball interview she did with him the following May.

“She asked Trump, off the bat, when he first imagined that he could be president: This is just the sort of softball that [Barbara] Walters tees up, hoping to elicit inspiring tales of triumph against the odds,” Isaac Chotiner of Slate wrote about that interview. “Kelly then turned to the death of Trump’s brother, and Trump’s divorces, asking him mawkishly whether he learned anything ‘about love’ or ‘about himself’ from these experiences. She followed up by asking if he had ever been ‘emotionally hurt,’ before turning back to his penchant for insults.”

Though Kelly didn’t have anything to say about Russian state-owned media of the sort Brilev is involved in during her first NBC interview, the U.S. intelligence community did in its declassified intelligence report about Russia’s meddling in the presidential election that was released in January. A significant portion of it details Russian state-owned television station RT’s efforts to help Donald Trump.

In addition to accusing RT employees of collaborating with WikiLeaks, the report said RT “consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional U.S. media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment.”

Following Trump’s victory, RT “hailed President-elect Trump’s victory as vindication of Putin’s advocacy of global populist movements — the theme of Putin’s annual conference for Western academics in October 2016 — and the latest example of Western liberalism’s collapse.”

As detailed by former FBI special agent Clint Watts during congressional testimony in March, Trump and his aides occasionally used Russian active measures during the campaign, touting fake news stories published by Russian websites at rallies and weaponizing emails hacked from Democratic targets that were published by WikiLeaks.

Will Megyn Kelly Bring The Hate Group Leaders And Extremists Who Frequented Her Fox Show To NBC?

ZACHARY PLEAT & CRISTINA LóPEZ G./Media Matters

In her past role at Fox News, new NBC News hire Megyn Kelly has invited onto her show a number of extremists and hate group leaders who spread and espouse anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant views, statements, and lies. Will she continue her practice of hosting bigotry in her upcoming daytime news and Sunday evening programs?

NBC News Hires Fox News’ Megyn Kelly As Daytime News Anchor And Prime-Time Magazine Show Host

Megyn Kelly To Anchor Her Own Daytime News And Sunday Evening Shows On NBC. NBC News announced January 3 that Fox News host Megyn Kelly will join the network and “become anchor of a new one hour daytime program that she will develop closely with NBC News colleagues.” She will also “anchor a new Sunday evening news magazine show and will become an important contributor to NBC’s breaking news coverage as well as the network’s political and special events coverage.” NBC News said details about her shows will be released in the coming months. [NBC News, 1/3/17]

Kelly Invited Onto Her Prime-Time Fox Show Hate Group Leaders And Other Extremists Dozens Of Times

Megyn Kelly Has Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Leader Tony Perkins At Least 34 Times. Kelly has regularly hosted anti-LGBTQ hate group leader Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), to speak as a “captain of the religious right.” FRC was labeled an anti-LGBTQ “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2010, a designation given to anti-LGBTQ organizations that either intentionally spread misinformation to advance their agenda or have worked to criminalize LGBTQ people. Perkins has called pedophilia “a homosexual problem,” claimed that gay men “recruit” children into homosexuality, and endorsed a Uganda law that would have imposed the death penalty for homosexuality. Kelly has described FRC as “a group whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and culture from a Christian worldview.” Kelly has also peddled Perkins’ talking points that “Christian beliefs and Christian rights” are being trampled as LGBTQ rights increase, lamenting that it must be “alienating” for him to be criticized for his anti-LGBTQ beliefs. Kelly also hosted Perkins to promote his book No Fear. [Media Matters, 4/11/16, 9/10/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Gave Anti-Immigrant Extremist Ann Coulter A Platform At Least 13 Times. Ann Coulter, whom SPLC refers to as a “white nationalist in the mainstream,” repeatedly appeared on The Kelly File to promote her extremist anti-immigrant views. According to SPLC, Coulter’s quotes are “strikingly similar” to “things [that] have been uttered by neo-Nazis and hardcore white nationalists.” In one of Coulter’s appearances, Kelly laughed off Coulter’s suggestion that then-presidential nominee Donald Trump should arrest undocumented journalist Jose Antonio Vargas. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 5/27/15; Media Matters, 7/23/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Has Hosted Anti-Muslim Hate Group Leader Brigitte Gabriel At Least Six Times. Kelly has repeatedly invited anti-Muslim leader Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT for America, to discuss terrorism on her show. SPLC reports Gabriel’s ACT for America floods “the American public with hate speech demonizing Muslims," and notes that it claims a “‘secret Islamification’ of the West” is occurring. SPLC also reports ACT once held a conference featuring a speaker who called news outlet Al Jazeera “the voice of Islamic terrorism.” Gabriel herself has called Arab people “barbarians,” claimed a practicing Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America,” and wrote, “In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream.” [Media Matters, 6/16/16; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 1/5/17, 2/17/16, 8/24/11; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted Jordan Lorence, VP Of The Anti-LGBTQ Group Alliance Defending Freedom, At Least Three Times. Kelly hosted a leader of the Alliance Defending Freedom at least three times. Established as the Alliance Defense Fund in 1994, ADF was founded by religious right leaders including Focus on the Family's James C. Dobson and Campus Crusade for Christ's Bill Bright. According to ADF's website, the organization changed its name to Alliance Defending Freedom in 2012 to highlight its "enduring mission to gain justice for those whose faith has been unconstitutionally denied in the areas of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family." ADF's relentless legal campaign against LGBTQ equality led SPLC to describe the organization as "virulently anti-gay." SPLC proved instrumental in exposing an aspect of ADF's efforts that the organization chooses not to tout on its website -- its international work to criminalize homosexuality. After a New Mexico photographer who refused to serve a same-sex couple unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court, Kelly invited ADF vice president Jordan Lorence -- who was representing the photographer in court -- on her show to stoke fears about the case, asking Lorence whether a loss for his client could lead to "a lawsuit by a gay couple” against a Catholic church. [Media Matters, 12/4/13; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted CIS’ Mark Krikorian, Part Of The “Nativist Lobby,” At Least Twice. Kelly at least twice hosted Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) -- founded by notorious nativist John Tanton -- which SPLC reports was created to give think tank-like credibility to the anti-immigrant “nativist cause.” SPLC also reports CIS releases studies with conclusions that are often biased to "blame immigrants for all of the U.S.'s problems" and claims that "are either false or virtually without any supporting evidence," noting that "CIS is not interested in serious research or getting the facts straight" and that it has “never found any aspect of immigration it liked.” Kelly hosted Krikorian twice in mid-2014, once to talk about President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, and once to ask him about witnessing a terror attack in Nice, France. Both times she introduced him as “the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies” without noting its problematic ties or studies. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/31/09; Media Matters, 1/17/13; Nexis, accessed 1/4/17]

Kelly Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver At Least Twice. Kelly has at least twice hosted the leader of Liberty Counsel, which is on SPLC’s list of active anti-LGBTQ extremists. SPLC wrote of its leader: “Mat Staver, the group's president, co-founder and former dean at the Liberty University School of Law, has claimed that with full marriage equality, everyone will decide to be gay and society will ‘cease to exist.’ (He also has linked homosexuality to rampant increases in disease, falsely linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claimed that homosexuality is the result of childhood sexual abuse.)” Kelly twice hosted Staver in September 2015 while he was representing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis in her legal battle for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. [Media Matters, 9/11/15; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Kelly Hosted Anti-LGBTQ Activist James Dobson At Least Twice. Kelly at least twice hosted activist James Dobson, who, along with his Focus on the Family organization, is well-known for his extremist anti-LGBTQ views, according to SPLC. Focus on the Family is one of a "dozen major groups" that "help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade," it's a strong supporter of so-called ex-gay therapy, and Dobson has written that the “homosexual activist movement” is bent on “overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia” and that same-sex marriage would cause the fall of Western civilization. Kelly twice hosted Dobson and his wife in mid-2014 to talk about the National Day of Prayer event. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/22/16, 4/28/05; Nexis, accessed 1/3/17]

Methodology: Media Matters searched Nexis transcripts for guest appearances on Fox News’ The Kelly File by select individuals and representatives of hate or extremist groups that have been profiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The search was filtered by editions hosted only by Megyn Kelly.

How Fox News Is Justifying Police Conduct In McKinney, In Three Steps

BY RUPALI SRIVASTAVA/Think Progress

Fox host Megyn Kelly said Monday evening that the 14-year-old black girl who was thrown around and sat on by a police officer in McKinney, Texas, was “no saint.” Kelly’s comment was one in a series aimed at justifying police conduct outside the neighborhood pool party.

Video of the incident, which spread over the weekend, shows McKinney police Cpl. Eric Casebolt manhandling the bikini-clad teenage girl, pulling her by her hair and slamming her face into the ground before sitting on her back. He is also seen yelling profanity at other black teenagers, telling them to sit on the grass or leave the area, even pulling out a gun and chasing two boys with it in hand.

1. Attack The Victim

Police officer Cpl. Eric Casebolt wrestles a teenage girl to the ground.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

News coverage on Fox in the days since the video surfaced has repeatedly attempted to justify Casebolt’s actions and distract from accusations of racial profiling by shifting the blame to the young teenagers involved.

Neighborhood resident and witness Sean said on the Kelly File that the officer had to match the aggression of an already chaotic situation to “calm the crowd down.” Sean declined to disclose his last name out of concern for his safety. Others on the show echoed his statement that the officer was forced to act the way he did because of the rowdy environment. “They were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing,” an anonymous witness said.

Radio host Richard Fowler, who was also on the show, noted that the kids were “fleeing” because the era of police brutality and racial profiling rightfully scared them into running away. Kelly interrupts and responds “The girl was no saint, either. He had told her to leave, and she continued to linger.” A panelist on Hannity said, “You can get yourself out of these situations if you just comply.”

Other accounts, however, say the crowd was already dispersing and the situation was calming down by the time the officers arrived. According to Brandon Brooks, the teenage boy who filmed the viral video, a fight between two middle-aged white women and a young black woman occurred a few minutes before the police reached the pool, leading many people to disperse. Sean admitted that the white adults were not handcuffed and that he saw Casebolt only chase after black people near the pool.

2. Glorify The Officer

Casebolt pulls a black teenager to the ground.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

Fox hosts have chosen to highlight Casebolt’s “good track record,” informing viewers of his 10-year veteran status and patrolman of the year award.

On Fox’s The Five, co-host Tom Shillue claimed the video wasn’t shocking to him all. “I’m looking at the video and thinking, ‘OK, the cops are breaking up a party, these guys are great.’” Shillue and others have been quick to defend the officer’s actions and discuss possible reasons for his conduct. Sean said on the Kelly File that Casebolt ran out of handcuffs, so he had to sit on the girl to wait for officers to bring more to him. “I think if he would have had handcuffs on him, he would’ve been able to cuff this girl, and it wouldn’t have gone this far.” None of the witnesses brought onto the Kelly File said racial profiling was a factor in the officer’s handling of the situation.

What they do not mention in their discussion of Casebolt’s track record is that he’s been sued for racial profiling before. In 2008, a black man arrested by Casebolt filed a lawsuit accusing him and other officers of harassment, sexual assault, racial profiling, and failure to render aid. The lawsuit was later dismissed because charges on the man were still pending.

3. Find ‘Witnesses’ To Reinforce The Narrative

Fox hosts have emphasized the importance of context in understanding the video, but they can’t seem to agree on the reason the pool party escalated to such violence. Witnesses on and off Fox shows have given different explanations. On Fox, guests said the kids were smoking weed, fighting amongst themselves, and generally being rowdy and inappropriate. The party host, however, said in a newer YouTube video that white adults at the pool made racist comments towards them. Host Tatiana said the verbal abuse escalated to a physical altercation between the adults and teenagers at the pool. This information was not shared on Fox.

“Let me be clear,” said resident Benet Embry, “the community I live in is not a racist community.”

An excerpt from Embry’s Facebook post following the incident.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

Embry, who is African-American, continued to talk about the incident, calling it a pool party that had simply gotten out of control. Guests on the show like former LAPD detective Mark Furman, resident and witness Sean, and an anonymous female witness defended Casebolt’s actions and the neighborhood residents in their decision to call and support the police. Witness stories told on Fox reiterate the narrative that the teenage girl’s unwillingness to obey the officer led him to use force on her.

“This is a great community,” Embry said. “Nobody’s walking around with hooded sheets and burning crosses. Just a normal, average, everyday suburb in America.”

Megyn Kelly's Non-Apology And Fox News' Race Baiting

 JEREMY HOLDEN/Media Matters For America

Megyn Kelly is insisting that critics who took her to task for insisting that Santa Claus is a white man were motivated by a "knee-jerk instinct" to "race bait," a hollow claim given Kelly's own history of using race to stoke fears of minorities.

Kelly triggered outrage on December 11 when she insisted that Santa was -- and is -- a white man, comments that came in response to a Slate column arguing that the universal portrayal of Santa as white can alienate and ostracize minority children. On December 13, Kelly responded to her critics by accusing them of race-baiting and targeting her simply because she worked at Fox:

Kelly's claim that her critics were motivated by a desire to use racially provocative language to trigger an emotional reaction is not just self-serving, it also underscores Kelly's own history of using race to stoke fears of minorities.

In 2010, Kelly was one of the loudest voices at Fox News pushing its aggressive campaign to exploit racial tensions over a voter intimidation case in Philadelphia.

During a two-week stretch in July of that year, Kelly's daytime show devoted a staggering 45 segments and 3.5 hours to hyping politically motivated and completely discredited allegations that President Obama and Eric Holder were manipulating the Justice Department in order to protect the New Black Panther Party from prosecution over charges that it intimidated white voters during the 2008 election. Kelly's over-the-top race baiting led Gawker to ask whether she was "obsessed" with the New Black Panthers. Dave Weigel wrote, under the headline "Megyn Kelly's Minstrel Show," that Kelly was exploiting racial tensions in a dangerous way:

Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder's DOJ.

Her own Fox colleague, Kirsten Powers, even called Kelly out for what she called "doing the scary black man thing" by dishonestly hyping the case.

When Kelly transitioned from her daytime "news" show to a prime-time slot, she told the Los Angeles Times that she was a journalist, not an ideologue. So it's telling that in addressing her critics, Kelly claimed that she was simply asking whether the depiction of Santa Claus as a white man should change.

In reality, Kelly was not only adamant that Santa remain white -- settling the debate in a manner more in line with an ideologue rather than a journalist. She also protested against the very idea that society would change its icons in order to accommodate minority groups who find those images to be alienating:

KELLY: Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change. Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact -- as is Santa.

That conclusion, which highlights the way Kelly uses her position of power to assert and defend her cultural dominance, led Jon Stewart to point out the oppressive nature of Kelly's stated position.

In a lengthy profile just before her white Santa comments, The Washington Post referred to Kelly as "queen" of television news who, unlike Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, whose opinion shows appear before and after The Kelly File, "markets herself as a break in the clouds, an interlude of lucidity, a host who protects her viewers by condensing complex issues into digestible bits, by cross-examining news analysis with zero tolerance for guff."

But the reality is that Kelly's brand of ideological demagoguery is very much in line with the race-baiting that has been central to the culture wars that have always been fought on Fox News.

Here's how Kelly justified her insistence that Santa Claus is white while lashing out at her critics:

KELLY:  Well, this would be funny if it were not so telling about our society. In particular the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel. Contrary to what my critics have posited, neither my statement nor Harris's, I'm sure, was motivated by any racial fear or loathing. In fact, it was something far less sinister. A lifetime of exposure to the very same, quote, commercials, mall-casting calls and movies Harris references in her piece. From "Miracle on 34th Street" to the Thanksgiving Day Parade to the national Christmas tree lighting, we continually see St. Nick as a white man in modern day America. Should that change?

Well, that debate got lost, because so many couldn't get past the fact that I acknowledged, as Harris did, that the most commonly depicted image of Santa does in fact have white skin. 

Fox Airs Another Misleading Obamacare "Horror" Story

JUSTIN BERRIER/Media Matters For America

After attacking Obamacare by highlighting easily debunked personal anectodes, Fox hosted another guest who falsely claimed the health care law would harm him personally without checking to make sure his story was accurate.

In a November 14 Salon post, former senior counsel to Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT), Eric Stern wrote about a conversation he had with Bill Lawrence, a man featured on Fox's The Kelly File after  writing a letter to Fox News explaining that he and his partners "had to sell our company because we couldn't afford the almost $400,000 in either penalties and fines or insurance premiums that we would have to pay as a result of ObamaCare." In the uncritical interview, host Megyn Kelly responded to Lawrence by asking his "thoughts on having your livelihood directly affected based on what politicians in Washington felt was best for you."

Stern contacted Lawrence after the segment aired and Lawrence admitted that he had sold his Texas-area car wash for multiple reasons, many of which had nothing to do with the ACA:

I then pressed Bill on whether there were any other reasons he was selling his business. He admitted to me that there were plenty of others ("myriad reasons," in his words). What were some of them?  "You ever run a business?" he asked with a chuckle. And then he began ticking off a bunch of problems in his life that he said he'd now be glad to be rid of.  The headache of managing workers. Taxes, fees and permits of every shape and size and color (dumpster permits, gate permits, this permit, that permit). He complained to me that he has to pay $300 for an "auto dealer's" permit just to sell air fresheners at the checkout counter of his car wash centers.

From the sound of it, Gov. Rick Perry is more to blame for Bill's choice to retire than Obama. Perhaps Texas is not the pro-business eden that Perry portrays it to be.

Nonetheless, Bill insisted that the Affordable Care Act was the "primary" reason he chose to sell out and retire after 22 years. He told me he spent a year attending seminars and seeking advice from lawyers and insurance experts on the employer mandate, and it was universally made clear to him that the new federal law would make it too costly to stay in business.

There's no questions that Bubbles Car Wash will have to absorb a new cost under the employer mandate. The question is how great it will be, and whether it will impact the business enough to have required Bill to unload it. Although Bill wouldn't show me any hard financial data, I asked him if he could give me a brief sketch of his company's revenue. He thought for a while, and then said he'd estimate that the company had around $13 million a year in revenues and about $900,000 in earnings -- earnings, meaning post-salary (he wouldn't tell me what his annual salary had been as an owner of the business).

Perhaps more disturbing, Lawrence told Stern that Fox made no effort to verify his claims before putting him on air to attack the ACA:

My first question to him was: Would he show me some of his business's financial records? Maybe an annual report, preferably something audited, so I could analyze his claim about the catastrophic effect Obamacare would have had on his business? He would not.

Did Megyn Kelly request such verification? No, he said, she did not.

[...]

And as for Megyn Kelly, she asked very few probative questions before or during the interview, preferring instead to just take Bill's claim about Obamacare at face value. But clearly there was another side of the story. 

This is not new, Stern has exposed Fox's false Obamacare horror stories before. In an earlier Salon post, Stern contacted three couples who were highlighted in a Hannity special on October 11. After discussing their appearances, Stern found that none of the couples' stories were accurate and ACA's exchanges would actually save them money.

Megyn Kelly Destroys Fox Pundit For Views On Working Moms: ‘What Makes You Dominant And Me Submissive?’

By Rebecca Leber/Think Progress

On her Friday segment, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly tore into conservative commenter Erick Erickson over his comments that it is“natural” for women to stick to raising children while men play the primary breadwinner. Erickson drew fire earlier this week for arguing that women who work are “hurting our children, and it’s going to have impact for generations to come.”

Kelly debunked Erickson’s Red State op-ed, point by point. “I will start with you Erick. What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and makes you scientist-in-chief?” Comparing Erickson to the people who used pseudo-science to argue against interracial marriage a half-century ago, Kelly asked, “Why are we supposed to take your word for it, Erick Erickson’s science, instead of all these experts?”:

KELLY: In this country in the ’50s and ’60s there were huge numbers of people that believed that the children of interracial marriages were biologically inferior and that is why it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in some states in the country up until 1967. And they said it was science and fact if you were the child of a black father and white mother or vice versa you were inferior and not set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama.

Watch it:

In the same segment, Lou Dobbs mocked Kelly’s accusations, responding “oh dominant one.”

Fox News’ Election Night Meltdown And Megyn Kelly’s Legs

By Alyssa Rosenberg/Think Progress

Gabriel Sherman has an amazing piece about the on-air meltdown at Fox News over the decision to call Ohio for President Obama last night, which contains this charming detail:

With neither side backing down, senior producers had to find a way to split the difference. One idea was for two members of the decision team, Mishkin and Fox’s digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, to go on camera with Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier to squelch the doubts over the call. But then it was decided that Kelly would walk through the office and interview the decision team in the conference room. “This is Fox News,” an insider said, “so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go for it.” The decision desk were given a three-minute warning that Kelly would be showing up.

I suppose when a substantial part of your brand, in addition to hiring commentators for their inflammatory qualities rather than actual credentials, is hiring extremely attractive women, it makes sense to use the assets you’ve invested in. But the decision by the channel last night to break the firewall between its anchors and its decision team on behalf of a contributor, Karl Rove, who helped shepherd hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the outcome of an election and didn’t want to hear the final verdict on his investment, was already a sham, another illustration of a conservative allergy to facts and data. Sending an attractive woman to do that embarrassing work–rather than letting her continue to do her anchoring job, at which Kelly is frequently a credit to the network–on Rove’s behalf, to fake concern for the integrity of election results, and to send her in part so you can get her legs out from behind her desk, is strikingly juvenile and strikingly retrograde.

Fox's Kelly Hosts Conspiracy Theorist McCarthy For Baseless Fast And Furious Speculation

 by Matt Gertz/Media Matters


Today on Fox News' America Live, Megyn Kelly offered repeated tension-filled teases for an interview with a "former DOJ official" who she promised would explain how the White House "had to know" about the controversial tactics used in the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious and would provide "his take on what Mr. [Attorney General Eric] Holder likely knew and when he knew it." But Kelly's big get wasn't someone with any actual knowledge of the operation or its aftermath, but rather Andrew C. McCarthy, the resident anti-Obama conspiracy theorist at the right-wing National Review.

McCarthy's credentials to make broad claims about what the White House and senior DOJ officials would be limited even if his credibility was not; he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, not at DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC, and left public service in 2003. 

But McCarthy's credibility certainly is in question. While McCarthy first gained fame for prosecuting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, in recent years he has become known for his viciously anti-Muslim rhetoric and adoption of conspiracy theories.

In a 2011 New Republic post calling McCarthy a "walking clearinghouse of right-wing conspiracies," Jonathan Chait noted that McCarthy has written:

Obama's radicalism, beginning with his Alinski/ACORN/community organizer period, is a bottom-up socialism.  This, I'd suggest, is why he fits comfortably with Ayers, who (especially now) is more Maoist than Stalinist.  What Obama is about is infiltrating (and training others to infiltrate) bourgeois institutions in order to change them from within -- in essence, using the system to supplant the system.  A key requirement of this stealthy approach (very consistent with talking vaporously about "change" but never getting more specific than absolutely necessary) is electability.

McCarthy has also:

• Used his platform at National Review's The Corner blog to question whether Bill Ayers was the true author of President Obama's 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father, citing Jack Cashill's flawed analysis. He subsequently doubled down on the theory after National Review colleague Jonathan Adler criticized the hypothesis as "outlandish" and "nutter-territory stuff."
• Written a book that invoked numerous smears and falsehoods in order to make the case that President Obama has "Islamist sympathies" and "seem[s] disposed" to "advance the cause of Islam in the world." McCarthy also suggested that Obama's 1981 visit to Pakistan could indicate that he was "a citizen of an Islamic country."
• Dissented from a National Review editorial criticizing birtherism by questioning the significance of the birth certificate Obama released in 2008 and speculating that Obama may be a "Muslim citizen of Indonesia."

• Attacked DOJ lawyers who previously defended terrorism suspects as having "work[ed] for the enemy."
• Pushed the myth that at an event is 2007, Obama "marched with members of the New Black Panther Party."
• Dissented from a National Review editorial denying the existence of "death panels" in health care reform, writing that "Palin was right."
• Declared that "what 'radicalizes' Muslims is Islam -- the mainstream interpretation of it."
• Pushed a baseless conspiracy theory that Obama gave Interpol broad powers to investigate U.S. citizens without being limited by the Constitution.
• Wrote that The New York Times "sided with al Qaeda" by publishing an article describing a secret Bush administration program designed to monitor international financial transaction.

Fox Rushes To Defend ALEC After Coca-Cola Cuts Ties With Group

by Marcus Feldman/Media Matters

Coca-Cola, one of its corporate sponsors, has cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after advocacy group Color of Change had called for a boycott of Coca-Cola due to its ties with ALEC. And Fox hasn't wasted much time coming to ALEC's defense.

As the Huffington Post reported:

The soft-drink company has severed its tieswith the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative lobbying group that drafts legislation and sends it out to lawmakers. ALEC's fingerprints have been found on bills and laws in a number of states, and the group's opponents have grown resistant to what they call ALEC's efforts to shape the legislative agenda in a way that harms minority and low-income voters.

[...]

On Wednesday, the advocacy group Color of Change called for a boycott of Coca-Cola, one of the companies that sits on ALEC's elite Private Enterprise Board, citing ALEC's efforts to get voter ID laws passed.

In response, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed ALEC communications director Kaityln Buss to discuss Coca-Cola's departure. Did Kelly ask about funding ALEC receives from the controversial Koch brothers? Did Kelly ask why ALEC was pushing for voter ID laws in the absence of evidence of voter fraud? Did Kelly ask about ALEC pushing the "Stand Your Ground" laws that have become infamous in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case?

No. She just provided a platform for ALEC to paint itself as innocuous.

Here's a list of Kelly's questions during the segment:

KELLY: So Coke has bailed, in response to the pressure from these groups. Walmart not so much, not yet anyway. What do you make of the threats that these groups are facing, the threat of boycott?

KELLY: Your point is it's not a partisan organization, but to get the things that you want enacted, you have to have money, and you have to get the word out, and you get that from donor like Coca-Cola, like Walmart. But now, no longer Coca-Cola, because some groups on the left have organized to put pressure on that group to not fund you, in particular because they don't like your push for voter ID laws, and my question to you is what do you think of that?

KELLY: That's what Walmart came out and said. They said look, we don't necessarily agree with every single position, you know, the entities that we give money to support, but we're not going to bail on this particular group. But the group that is going after you and your supporters has come out and said that "many leading organizations have left your organization," and I quote, "as it moves to the extreme right," your response?

KELLY: I know. They came out and said that by funding ALEC, Coca-Cola and others are supporting an effort to disenfranchise African Americans, Latinos, students, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. That's how they stand. And I want to ask you, a couple weeks ago a guy named Mark Stevens, who was pressured to boycott Rush Limbaugh as an advertiser, but refused came on the program and said this about the pressure he was facing from some groups on the left. Stand by:

MARK STEVENS (video clip): They have called my people in my company, they have called the women in my company and told them they're women haters, the most horrible terms, they've told me -- these are tens of thousands of emails by the way, most of them positive, but the small group, they told us that we're under surveillance. The email subject lines say citizen of the internet, police of the internet, Mark you're in danger, your house is going to be shown up by buses, your businesses are going to be destroyed, your people are in trouble. This is terrorism, why don't we start calling it what it is. You don't have to commit an act of bloodshed for there to be terrorism, you have to invoke a sense of fear.