Overview

Background

Kelly was born in Syracuse, New York in 1970 and earned her bachelor's degree in political science from Syracuse University before attending Albany Law School, where she graduated in 1995. She then practiced law as a litigator at Jones Day for seven years and was an associate at the Chicago office of Bickel and Brewer LLP for two years. After burning out on the law, she took a job as a reporter at an ABC television affiliate in Washington, D.C. in 2003 and was hired by Fox News about a year later.

Kelly first came to national prominence at Fox News, where she worked from 2004 to 2017 and anchored programs including America's Newsroom, America Live, and The Kelly File. The Kelly File launched in the fall of 2013, and within a year Kelly was named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her profile sharpened further during the 2016 Republican primary when she asked then-candidate Donald Trump pointed questions about his treatment of women, beginning a prolonged public rivalry. After leaving Fox, she anchored Megyn Kelly Today for NBC News from 2017 to 2018 before transitioning to independent media. At NBC, the daytime program received largely negative reviews, and in October 2018 Kelly made headlines when, during a discussion of Halloween costumes, she seemingly defended blackface. She was officially let go by NBC on October 26, 2018.

The Megyn Kelly Show is produced by Devil May Care Media, an independent company Kelly founded in 2020. It airs on SiriusXM's Triumph channel and in podcast format, having launched as an audio-only podcast in September 2020 before partnering with SiriusXM in 2021 to expand into a live, daily radio program and video broadcast. In 2025, she also launched MK Media, a podcast and video network featuring commentary and news programs from independent creators.

Public Role in the Second Trump Administration

Endorsement and Early Support

Kelly has a decade-long history of skirmishing with Trump but put aside past grievances to support him in the 2024 presidential election. Kelly endorsed Trump on the eve of his 2024 re-election. That endorsement represented a significant moment in Trump's 2024 campaign, as Kelly's audience — large, conservative, and attentive — lent credibility to his candidacy among voters who had once watched her challenge him. Her presence in his orbit was visible: Trump was seen embracing Kelly at his campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in November 2024. For much of the early period of Trump's second term, her show served as a sympathetic platform for administration-aligned commentary on immigration, judicial appointments, and domestic policy.

Break Over the Iran War

Some of the sharpest criticism Trump faced in the early days of the Iran war came from Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, once-loyal media figures far more accustomed to singing his praises. Kelly called out the president on The Megyn Kelly Show over his rhetoric toward Iran, in which he said "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." Kelly also reflected on her own role in amplifying war messaging on Iraq and Afghanistan while at Fox News.

Kelly appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored and claimed Trump was "gullible," "weak," and easily fooled. She argued that he had fallen for the claims of foreign leaders who had misled previous American presidents. She expressed frustrations over Trump's aggressive rhetoric about bombing Iran and asserted he had been "bamboozled" into going to war by other foreign leaders. Trump responded in a 485-word Truth Social post that railed against Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones, accusing them of having "low IQs" and operating "third rate podcasts." Kelly said on her podcast that Trump was "turning on his most loyal supporters because they don't support this war."

Criticism of Trump Family Conduct

Kelly said one thing that had left her "disappointed" with Trump's second term was his family's "grifty" moves, comments she made after financial disclosures revealed that Trump's crypto ventures had made him significantly richer since he took office. She expressed concern about "story after story about all the money his sons are making off of the government." These criticisms tracked broader conflict-of-interest debates, but Kelly's willingness to raise them publicly — given her prior endorsement — amplified their resonance within the conservative media ecosystem.

Role in Conservative Media Ecosystem

What is striking about Kelly's break with Trump is the extent of the departure: she went from actively supporting him — literally campaigning with him in 2024 — to taking public stands against the Iran conflict, to directly criticizing Trump personally. Her trajectory paralleled that of Tucker Carlson and, to a degree, Candace Owens, suggesting a broader realignment among some figures who had been integral to building Trump's second-term coalition.

Less than ten years ago, Kelly was gunning for a career in mainstream media, calling herself "kinda done with politics" and writing a book that held up Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination as an inspiring moment of progress. She had also grilled Trump on his pattern of misogynist harassment, leading Vanity Fair to dub her an "improbable feminist icon." Her subsequent return to partisan conservatism — and then her partial break with Trump over Iran — traces an unusually wide ideological orbit, one that has invited commentary about the nature of her positioning.

Recent Developments

By spring 2026, Kelly was stunned by Trump's disastrous polling numbers, with Republicans widely expected to lose their narrow majority in the House, and some polling suggesting they could lose control of the Senate as well. She was pleading with the GOP to course-correct before the midterms. Kelly noted that Trump was already "underwater" with independents on his handling of the economy and cost-of-living crisis before the Iran conflict, and that the war — which she described as a "war of choice" — had driven gas prices higher.

As of mid-2026, Kelly continued to describe herself as "disappointed" with Trump's second term, even as she maintained her independent platform. Despite her frustrations with Trump, Kelly still identified positive aspects to his record and stopped short of repudiating her 2024 endorsement. Her show remained active and her audience continued to grow, providing her with a durable platform from which to engage the intra-conservative debate.

Outlook

Kelly's influence within Trump-era politics is now of a distinctly complicated kind. She remains one of the most listened-to conservative voices in the country, but her willingness to criticize both the Iran war and the Trump family's financial conduct has placed her outside the circle of administration-friendly commentators who dominate pro-Trump media. She has publicly boosted Vice President J.D. Vance, endorsing the idea of him as a successor to Trump and calling for her audience to support him as the leading 2028 GOP presidential contender. That posture suggests she is looking past the current administration's turbulence rather than abandoning conservative politics altogether.

Whether her audience will follow her through that evolution — and whether the break with Trump proves durable or episodic — remains genuinely uncertain. Her career has demonstrated a capacity for reinvention that makes linear predictions difficult. What is clear is that the independent media model she built after leaving NBC has given her a degree of editorial freedom unavailable to broadcasters tied to corporate networks, and that freedom is now being tested in real time against one of the most volatile political environments in recent American history.