Appearing on The Todd Starnes Show on NEWSMAX last week, former President Donald Trump blasted bias and negative coverage within establishment media, particularly calling out journalist Megyn Kelly as “bad news” and “no longer relevant.” Listen to the full interview below.
“There was a certain hostility in the interview,” Trump said after joining Kelly recently for a 67-minute sit-down interview at his home in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I didn’t like the interview. It was a snarky interview.”
“Megyn Kelly I’ve never been a fan of. And I was so surprised to hear that her podcast is very positive,” Trump told Starnes. “She was always negative for me.”
“I think she’s a disgrace. She has a third-rate podcast,” he added. “She’s the one that asked the big question, you know, the Rosie O’Donnell question at the debate.”
During a Republican primary debate in the summer of 2015, Kelly, then a Fox News primetime anchor, moderated the 10-candidate discussion and asked Trump a question regarding his rhetoric about women. Amid their heated back and forth, one of Trump’s responses, which mentioned actress Rosie O’Donnell, generated soundbites, memes, and news articles for months and years to come.
As described by the Associated Press:
A startling 24 million people tuned in to Fox in August 2015 for the first Republican primary debate of the 2016 election season.
Setting up one of her questions as a moderator, Kelly said to Trump, “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
Trump interrupted with what he hoped would be a laugh line.
“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he said.
Kelly pressed on. “For the record, it was more than Rosie O’Donnell,” she said. “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”
After the debate, in the middle of the night, Trump began going after Kelly on Twitter and later in interviews, including one on CNN in which he said, “You can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Associated Press
The former president also tore into Kelly’s career pivots from one media outlet to another. Kelly now hosts a two-hour daytime SiriusXM radio program covering news and commentary.
“I couldn’t stand her when she was on Fox,” Trump added. “She was a big star, even though she shouldn’t have been. She ended up failing at NBC.”
“She’s no longer relevant,” he told Starnes. “Megyn Kelly is bad news, always was.”
Trump told Starnes that in a second White House term, he’ll continue an America First agenda, taking on top issues including crime and corruption.
“We’re not respected,” Trump said, slamming President Joe Biden. “Our president is a joke. He’s the most incompetent president in history.”
“He can’t put two sentences together. He can’t find the exit to a stage,” Trump stated. “And this is the man that’s responsible for nuclear weapons.”
As president, Trump said he’ll indemnify police officers during efforts to crack down on crime.
“I look at all these cities that are going to hell,” he told Starnes. “We are going to indemnify police officers from liability.” Trump said police officers face consequences if they are tougher than they should be during arrests. “They end up losing their wife, their family, their home, their children, their pension, they lose everything.”
“We love the police officers.”
But the 77-year old presidential candidate told Starnes that state-level governments also play a role in intervening against spikes in crime.
“You sort of have to let the governors take their states,” Trump said, reflecting on his approach to crime while he was President of the United States. “That was the one thing in my administration I let the governors do.”
“You’re not supposed to get too involved in law and order within the state” he told Starnes, adding that duties of those sorts fall to “the governors and the mayors and the people that run the cities.”
Listen to the full interview below: