Former Fox News star Megyn Kelly got into a public feud with Donald Trump in 2015. While moderating the first GOP presidential debate, in a question directed at Trump, Kelly said, “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
After the debate, Trump criticized Kelly on Twitter and wrote: “Wow, @megynkelly really bombed tonight…Funny to watch.” And during a post-debate interview with CNN, Trump said of Kelly: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Kelly told ABC News: “It was bizarre because I became the story. He was so very focused on me that I became the story, and you know, you never want to be the story when you’re a newsperson.”
In light of the feud that broke out this week between Elon Musk and Trump, a video of Kelly talking about her past feud with Trump (they’ve made up) is resurfacing and getting circulated by Republicans who hope the current feud isn’t a real — or at least not a permanent — MAGA detonation.
Accordingly, some MAGA adherents (see below) are citing Kelly’s experience with Trump as instructive in understanding the current Musk-Trump situation, even if it’s hard to imagine the Trump-Musk feud as a half-scripted melee meant to distract when, after all, Musk said Trump was “in the Epstein files” and was complicit in hiding them.
Yet it is not beyond the realm of possibility, as Trump’s true training for his political career was his success in the entertainment business, where spectacle is king.
This wouldn’t be the first time Trump orchestrated a fake feud with a public figure to achieve a goal.
Case in point: pic.twitter.com/u84sYiXSd4
— Chase Geiser (@realchasegeiser) June 5, 2025
As seen above, Kelly said that after she left her reconciliation meeting with Trump: “I walked out, we agreed like, we’re good. And the last thing he said to me, before I walked out of Trump Tower, was ‘you know, Megyn, it’s not such a good thing if they’re not talking about us.’”
Kelly explained her reaction to Trump’s notion: “And I was like, oh my god, was this whole thing for show? Like, was he acting the whole time, to generate buzz?”
Note: Kelly certainly changed her tune after that meeting in Trump Tower: she campaigned for Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.