Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly has slammed her old network for sounding like state propaganda after President Donald Trump’s abduction of the ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Kelly, who spent over a decade at Fox News, said she saw only “rah-rah cheerleading” when she flipped on the right-wing network after Maduro and his wife were swiped by U.S. special forces in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“I turned on Fox News yesterday, and I’m sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda,” she said Monday on her SiriusXM show, as first noted by Media Matters. “There was nothing skeptical. It was all rah-rah cheerleading.”
She continued, “I love our military as much as anyone, and I believe in President Trump, but there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah-rah train.”
Kelly, 55, said she was “embarrassed enough” by taking part in such unabashed cheerleading when she was at Fox to know better. The network did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“I have done that enough times in my career as a Fox News anchor to have been embarrassed enough to know I’m going to stay on the yellow light for this,” Kelly said. “I’m not in the green-light territory. I’m not in the red-light territory either, but I am staying in the yellow-light territory for now.”
Kelly reminded listeners that she is the mother of two teenage boys. With Trump, 79, not ruling out putting American boots on the ground in Venezuela, she urged parents across the country to view this weekend’s military action—and what takes place next—skeptically.
“I have seen what happens when you cheerlead, unabashedly, U.S. intervention in foreign countries, thinking it’s for our good and for the national and international good, only to wind up with what we’ve called a quagmire in places like Iraq, not to mention Libya,” Kelly said.
She continued, “We’re not great at going into these foreign countries, decapitating them at the leadership level, and then saying either we’re going to steer the country to a better place or it’s going to steer itself. Either one. They just—nine times out of 10, they don’t work out well.”
Countless Democrats—and some Republicans, like Rep. Thomas Massie—have echoed Kelly’s criticisms of the attack.
Others have also cautioned that the abduction of a foreign leader on their own soil is a dangerous precedent to set in the 21st century, as fears spread that Russia or China may use it as justification to do the same to their own adversaries who are U.S. allies.
Kelly, known to side with MAGA more than not, said the issue of Venezuela is “something we need to consider both sides on.”
“What does it mean in terms of boots on the ground? Trump is saying, I’m actually fine with that in Venezuela. Well, whose boots? Because I have a 16-year-old boy, and I have a 12-year-old boy, and I have a 14-year-old girl. And a lot of my listeners have children too who are actually the ones who might have to fill the boots,” Kelly said.
“So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads for that matter when I say I’m staying in yellow territory until we know more, and I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade this time. I’ve been burned too many times.”
