FlipBoardFormer Fox News host Megyn Kelly found herself on the receiving end of some friendly, but nonetheless poignant criticism during Tuesday’s Megyn Kelly Today on NBC. Taking a break from her program’s wall-to-wall coverage of many sexual misconduct scandals, Kelly spoke to former white supremacist turned author and advocate Christian Picciolini, who spoke at length about the Trump White House’s numerous overtures to the community he was once a part of.
“I do believe that there were dog whistles,” he said when Kelly asked him whether or not President Trump and his administration were using the oft-mentioned term in their public discourse:
“But to somebody like me, I can tell you that’s a bullhorn. I heard them loud and clear. When they referred to globalism, I knew that they were talking about the global Jewish conspiracy. When they use terms like ‘the liberal media,’ those are terms we use to use but we use to call it the Jewish media.”
Citing her previous employer’s penchant for also using terms like “the liberal media,” Kelly briefly interrupted Picciolini to defend the cable news network and other conservatives who might use such terminology sans their “dog whistling” counterparts. “We used to criticize the MSM [mainstream media] — some would call them the liberal media — and it didn’t mean that,” she said. “It meant, you know, left-leaning people who were not open-minded toward the views of half the country, conservative people.” As her guest quickly pointed out, however, Kelly’s network was nonetheless guilty of doing precisely what she argued it hadn’t:
“That’s also the power of their marketing, and how they can take words that are hateful and massage them to get them into the lexicon to make it normalized… To the people I was involved with 30 years ago, that is a high five. That is a license to go out and be more violent. That’s why we’re seeing a rise in hate crimes because they feel as though the administration today… If they’re not supportive of it, they’re at least turning a blind eye to it.”
One should probably give equal times to “both sides” in this debate, right?
(Via NBC News)
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Megyn Kelly can try to distance herself from her past at FNC, but those of us with working memories will recall the many times she trafficked in the very dog whistles that provided validation to the beliefs held by the ex-white supremacist she interviewed. Just because you changed jobs doesn’t mean you changed as a person.
It’s the mainstreaming of the far right. Even the “Librul network” MSNBC is full of righties these days. These media conglomerates are owned by right-wing billionaires more and more every year.
Fox “news” has gone from a legitimate news network to a batshit conspiracy theorist magnet in 20 years.
Santa Claus is white, right Megyn?
HE JUST IS, OKAY?
Your imaginary friends can be any color you want them to be. Just don’t tell other people what color theirs is.
I would venture to say that a lot of right wingers (extreme or not) interpret “liberal” to mean pretty much all minorities. When you speak of liberals as enemies and many of your people equate liberal with minority, you are advocating racism by way of the commutative property.
Well-put.
Dog whistle politics is the game the right has been playing for a long time. Since the time when they couldn’t come right out and say nigger in public. Especially since the late 1970’s and the rise of reaganism.
Wow, Megyn Kelly is awful.
I must have a different definition of schooled because there was no schooling in that clip. He basically agreed with her: you have your meaning and they gave theirs and they are different.
And there is plenty of dog whistle on the left as well.
Ok… I have to play the What About game with you on this one. Name a “dog whistle on the left.”