Megyn Kelly says despite his boycott demands, Donald Trump watched her show religiously all year


Megyn Kelly is promoting her new book, and on Wednesday, the BBC's Katty Kay — like most interviewers — asked Kelly about her year of harassment from President-elect Donald Trump, starting when she asked him a question about his insults to women at the first Republican presidential debate. The "online nastiness" from Trump and his supporters was immediate and overwhelming, Kelly said, and "he really relentlessly kept it up for nine months, which led to a serious security situation in my life and that of my family, that was ongoing."
Kelly had her theories about why Trump behaved that way. "I think in a way, Donald Trump felt hurt," she said. "I think he thought we had a good relationship, he thought he had a good relationship with me, with Fox News, with the anchors and the management there — all of which was true — and he felt betrayed that I would ask him a question like that and that I would then go on to cover him skeptically when he deserved it."
Kay asked Kelly if she feels she was "treated differently" because she's "a powerful woman," and Kelly said she's "given a lot of thought to that." "I think it was a combination of the fact that I'm a woman with power," she said. "You know, it wasn't just the fact that I'm a woman, but it was that I'm a woman with power who happens to be on Donald Trump's favorite channel — you know, the Fox News Channel, which he watches every night, and did throughout this entire year. One of the most interesting things he said to me in the sit-down I had with him in May was despite his demands, repeated demands that people boycott The Kelly File, he never did. He was watching it night after night — which I knew, because he was tweeting about it as soon as the show would end."
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Back in the Cold War, the U.S. had "Kremlinologists" trying to figure out what was going on inside the highest tiers of the Soviet government. If you want to know where Trump is getting his information, you can apparently just fire up Twitter and flip back and forth between CNN and Fox News.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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