Kelly, once a prominent political news anchor, will be one of tonight’s debate moderators. It marks her first stint as a moderator since infamously feuding with Trump during the 2016 election cycle.
“He’s still ticked off about that debate question,” Kelly said in a Newsmax interview in September, referring to the time in 2015 she asked Trump on the debate stage if his temperament was suited for the presidency given his tendency to call women he dislikes “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
Trump was outraged at the time and refused to participate in an upcoming debate that Kelly, a Fox News anchor at the time, was moderating.
In an interview with Real Clear Politics last week, Kelly posed whether there was even a point to the debate without clear frontrunner Trump participating. “Does it matter at all?” she pondered.
She also slammed moderators at recent GOP debates for not throwing in new questions on the fly in response to big moments, like Haley calling Ramaswamy “scum” for his comments on her daughter’s TikTok use.
“These moderators are too tied to their written questions. They’re not nimble. They are afraid to deviate from what their producers put in front of them. That isn’t good television!” she said.
Kelly currently hosts a talk show and podcast on SiriusXM. After leaving Fox News for NBC News in 2017, the network canceled her show the following year when she defended white people wearing blackface on Halloween.
