Was the Megyn Kelly interview a win for Alex Jones?

Megyn Kelly's controversial sit-down with Infowars founder Alex Jones was generally well-received after NBC spent the lead-up to the program being blasted for legitimizing the conspiracy theorist with the interview.

Kelly began Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly by addressing the importance of the interview upfront. "Jones' influence clearly merits examination, especially given his periodic access to the Trump administration and their overlapping constituencies," CNN wrote in their review of the show. "The fringe element that Jones represents needs to be understood, which isn't the same as needing to be condoned. Kelly struck that point right up front on Sunday Night."

"Here's the thing: Alex Jones isn't going away," Kelly told her viewers.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Variety's TV critic, Sonia Saraiya, disagreed with the positive reviews, writing: "Kelly does not manage to make the segment into a story because she has no story."

Advertisers cautiously avoided the program and Jones, who spent the lead-up to the interview attempting to one-up NBC and Kelly with accusations that the interview was misleadingly edited, "seemed to declare victory," on Sunday, "even popping a bottle of champagne at one point" during a live-stream of his reaction to the show, Oliver Darcy told Reliable Sources.

"The question now is: Was the interview worth it?" Darcy writes. "It's hard to tell in the immediate aftermath, but it seems Jones still may have come out on top."