Megyn Kelly has blasted a liberal tech reporter, calling her a ‘bad person’ while recalling an ugly exchange in the wake of her sister’s death.
Kara Swisher made the first jab in her remarks on Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway when she called Kelly a ‘rage machine.’
‘She has a little act that she takes on the road and screams at women – a lot of women,’ Swisher said of her one-time friend.
‘What is wrong with her?’ the journalist asked, rhetorically.
Kelly then decided to respond on her show Monday, saying: ‘What is wrong is I see you and I hear you and I see how nasty you are to everybody.’
She described Swisher as a ‘very tough, ballsy, open lesbian woman’ and noted that the journalist is known for walking away with people’s balls.
The podcaster also recounted how Swisher reacted when she had to cancel an interview following her sister Suzanne Crossley’s sudden death in 2022.
When Kelly was invited to appear on Swisher’s show to discuss her views on the COVID pandemic and the vaccine, the interview was abruptly canceled due to the sudden death of Crossley, Kelly’s colleague, who suffered a heart attack at the age of 58.
Following Crossley’s passing, Kelly informed Swisher’s show that she wouldn’t be able to make the scheduled appearance due to a personal issue that had arisen.
‘This is five days in advance, but I knew very well I wasn’t going to [be] doing anybody’s podcast,’ she recounted.
‘And she responded, not the assistant, she responded and said, “Oh that sounds like a good idea and I certainly hope she’ll stay off X in the meantime.”
‘Her instinct was to question like why I was doing it, like she wasn’t really accepting that it was a personal thing that happened to me,’ Kelly said.
‘She thought I was trying to avoid her because I was on X saying controversial things that she was objecting to and that I wasn’t, you know, strong enough to go on Kara Swisher’s podcast. Again, like somebody who doesn’t f***ing know me at all, right? Like I’m afraid of having somebody ask me tough questions or mixing it up.’
Eventually, Kelly’s assistant responded by telling Swisher that ‘actually her sister died,’ at which point, she said, the journalist tried to play it off as a joke.
‘She writes back “Oh well I was only joking. I was only joking, you know, sorry,”‘ Kelly said.
‘I’m sorry but she’s a bad person!’ Kelly concluded. ‘That s***, you’re a bad person.’
‘She tries to cover her own ass because she knows she now made herself look terrible,’ Kelly said.
‘And from that point forward, all she’s done is rip on me, and frankly vice-versa,’ she said. ‘I mean, I just see her very differently now, I think she’s a bad person.’
Kelly also noted that Swisher never sent her a note or offered her condolences.
Meanwhile, Kelly broke down as she told her own audience that her sister had unexpectedly passed.
‘I’ve got to tell you that something really sad happened in my family over the weekend,’ Kelly said as her voice cracked with emotion at the beginning of her show.
‘My sister died. She was 58. Her name was Suzanne Crossley. And she died suddenly on Friday of a heart attack.’
Kelly added: ‘She hasn’t been in very good health for the last couple of years. It’s been one problem after the other. It was sudden and it was unexpected.’
The podcaster went on to say that she rushed up to New York as soon as she was told that her sister had suffered a heart attack and she was with her mother Linda, brother Paul and her nephew Brian – one of Crossley’s three children – when her sibling passed.
The broadcaster became emotional and paused briefly before she said it was ‘really hard and emotional’ when Crossley died.
She said that she would be able to record her podcast, but she said that for her it’s ‘cathartic’ to work.
‘I said to myself, do I come back for Monday’s show? Do I not? And for me, it’s better to be here,’ she said before explaining:
‘It’s more cathartic to work, it gave me a couple of hours where I could take my mind off of it and do my show and talk about the stuff that matters.’
Kelly also said that her sister’s death is a ‘reminder to hug the people you love – how short and tenuous life is and how important it is to stay close to the people you love.’
‘We can’t all be perfect on that front but we can make a little effort day by day to shoot a text or return a call.’
