Megyn Kelly is bemused, baffled at Donald Trump's counterproductive inability to let anything go

In his Wednesday afternoon rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, Donald Trump trotted out all the hits — Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas," his comments about blood coming out of Megyn Kelly's "whatever," the idea that Muslims danced for joy in New Jersey on 9/11, and Trump's mockery of a disabled reporter. Kelly laughed and sighed on Wednesday's Kelly File. "What is he doing relitigating every controversy from the primary season?" she asked her guests.

Trump supporter David Wohl said Trump bringing up his past controversies "fires up his base," then argued that "the mainstream media — the Fox-excluded media — is trying to do the same thing to Trump as the DNC did to Bernie Sanders: destroy him." Kelly didn't disagree. "It's true the mainstream media now hates Trump — they loved him in the primary season, they wanted him to run against Hillary, they got their wish," she said. "Now the critical coverage begins ... But must he help them? Must he help them so generously every day?" Wolh punted: "He's unconventional, that's for sure."

Earlier on the show, Kelly asked Ben Carson about the apparent disarray in Trump's campaign, fueled by Trump's own comments. Trump is "coming to the understanding that a lot of people are trying to bait him," and as he "comes to a clearer understanding of that, I think he will be able to stay on message, will not be so easily baited and pulled off message," Carson said. "We've been at this for a year-plus, this campaigning," Kelly said. "You're telling me just now he's realizing that his political opponents set traps for him?"

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She brought up the attacks Trump has launched on the Gold Star family of fallen Capt. Humayun Khan. Carson said that Trump would now say that it would have been better to give Khan's parents a pass. Only "because he suffered the political fallout," Kelly said. "But most people would do it out of a sense of decency that drove their behavior in the first place, not out of political expediency." She noted that Carson earlier in the day had called on the Khans to apologize to Trump? "Why should the Khans apologize to Trump?" she asked. "Well, because they said things that are false," Carson said. "What did they say that was false?" Kelly pressed. "That he never read the Constitution," Carson replied. "Where did they get that from? That's unreasonable." You can watch Kelly's reaction in the video below. Peter Weber