"My office will use every tool available to protect innocent lives."

Said the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton (who is running hard for a U.S. Senate seat), quoted in "A Fight Over Abortion and Surrogacy Ends With a Baby Born in Texas/The baby, who was born Wednesday with a severe heart defect, drew the attention of anti-abortion activists and the Texas attorney general after the intended parents wanted the surrogate mother to have an abortion" (NYT gift link).

[The surrogate, McKenna] West, who did not respond to an interview request for this story, said in an interview this month with the former Fox News and current YouTube host Megyn Kelly that she did not support abortion and felt “trapped” by the surrogacy contract, which permitted the intended parents to end the pregnancy via abortion.... 

[Lincoln] Wilson, the lawyer for Ms. West, said that the legal case was not over and that Ms. West would continue to fight for custody of the boy, who must undergo weeks of surgeries “before he’s really in the clear.”

Here's that Megyn Kelly presentation: 

"A boy in a sports jersey stands with smaller girls on a court and then is seen, shirtless, inside a bathroom with them. A girl in a towel shrieks in terror."

"'Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets,' says the narrator of the television ad that recently began airing in Virginia. A year after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign unleashed $37 million in transgender-themed issue ads against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Republicans are returning to the cultural flashpoint ahead of next month’s elections, including Virginia’s race for governor, and plan to highlight it again in the 2026 midterm contests. 'Where is our common sense?' Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor, said in an interview when asked about transgender athletes competing in female sports. 'If I have to tell you that water is wet, we’ve got troubles.'"

From "Republicans Target Democrats Over Transgender Policies in This Year’s Races/Ahead of critical midterm elections, GOP revives culture war strategy used by Trump in 2024’s presidential campaign" (Wall Street Journal).

Here's that anti-Spanberger ad:

#VAGov: Dick Uihlein-funded group Restoration of America PAC is up on TV with this spot --

Female voiceover:

"Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets..."

"She's apparently all in on a horrifying gender mutilation. An irreversible sterilization of children" pic.twitter.com/gD0ytXwUIn

— Medium Buying (@MediumBuying) October 14, 2025

What a terrible issue for Democrats! They can't seem to back away from it.

"Buttigieg’s remarks came days after Rahm Emanuel... a potential 2028 presidential candidate, told Megyn Kelly that 'a man can’t become a woman'..."

"... a comment that directly contradicted party orthodoxy and sparked fresh divisions over how Democrats should approach transgender rights. 'I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports,' Buttigieg told NPR."

From "Pete Buttigieg weighs in on ‘fairness’ of transgender kids playing girls’ sports" (Advocate).

This gets my tag "2028 campaign." Looks like Emanuel made a significant move and Buttigieg felt obliged to react. But did Buttigieg say anything comprehensible? He also said "The approach starts with compassion, compassion for transgender people, compassion for families, especially of young people who are going through this, and also empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them... and just taking everybody seriously." And: "These decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians, least of all politicians in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn."

And here's Rahm:



"So do you believe boys should be able to play in girls sports?"/"No."

"The book has also amplified debate about whether more blame should be placed on Democratic leaders, Mr. Biden’s staff and the press for not revealing more about the former president earlier...."

"Intentionally or not, by being an author of a major book on the subject, Mr. Tapper has allowed himself to become a symbol of the establishment press that conservatives have long accused of hiding the former president’s frailty from the public. [Megyn] Kelly, the former Fox News star, subjected Mr. Tapper to intense grilling on her popular podcast in an interview that went viral online. 'You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, and you didn’t cover mental acuity, hardly at all,' Ms. Kelly said at one point. 'I mean, time and time again when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.' Mr. Tapper denied the charges. 'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this, and the legacy media was not,"' he said later in the interview. 'Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden.'"

From "Everyone Now Has an Opinion on Jake Tapper/A book the CNN host co-wrote has received positive reviews and appears to be a sales hit. But it has also generated intense scrutiny of him and his work" (NYT).

So... you weren't "hip to this."

Why not? And why would I read a book written by such an out-of-touch, unobservant, slow learner? Or should I ask why would I read a book written by such a liar?

Megyn Kelly corners Jake Tapper, who only apologizes for supposedly not noticing Joe Biden's decline...

... but it looks far more likely that he saw but chose to be part of the coverup:

"Of course, I've said I I look back at my coverage with humility and and uh I wish I did cover the issues of age and acuity but I wish I had covered them much more and I wish I mean of course..."

Watch the whole video, please, and see how Jake Tapper treated Lara Trump when she was a guest on his show on October 18, 2020. Kelly shows the video clip in which Lara Trump called attention to Biden's lack of mental acuity — the subject of Tapper's new book — and Tapper accused her of mocking Biden's stutter.

Watch Tapper's face and listen to his voice as he berates her for her lack of empathy. That's very effective on many women. Not on Lara Trump, but on many women, including many viewers of Tapper's show, and I presume he knows it. You can do a lot of subordinating of women by stimulating our fear that we may be regarded as unkind. 

"I was fluid. I didn't really have much restraint."

Ramaswamy expresses pleasure with himself. I watched some, not all of it, and I think he did very well.

This morning, I'm seeing he's trending on X, and NYT is likening him to Trump and Alex Jones:

After Megyn Kelly told Chris Christie nobody likes him, Ramaswamy had to rephrase it, more cruelly, with fat shaming.

NEW: The Republican debate has been an absolute beatdown on Chris Christie.

Christie had to sit through 30 seconds of the brutal truth from Megyn Kelly after she reminds him how unliked he is compared to Donald Trump.

Then he got bodied by Vivek Ramaswamy who told him to leave… pic.twitter.com/pTt3omzjub

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 7, 2023

If you want to watch the entire debate: here.

"Who cares about a parenting memoirist’s removal from a law-school teaching roster?"

"The answer is, in part, because this story manages to touch on seemingly every single cultural flashpoint of the past few years. Chua’s critics see a story about #MeToo—because of her husband, but also because Chua supported the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, even after he was accused of sexual assault. Meanwhile, Chua’s defenders see a morality tale about liberal cancel culture. 'What they’ve done to you is SOP'—standard operating procedure—'for conservative allies but chills me to the bone nonetheless,' a supporter tweeted at her, earlier this month. Megyn Kelly weighed in, tweeting, 'Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Brett Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting.' Chua’s allies have also suggested that anti-Asian bias is involved. 'The woke academy reserves a special vitriol for minority faculty who don’t toe the line politically,' Niall Ferguson, a historian, tweeted. Chua and her husband aren’t politically conservative—she says that [her husband Jed] Rubenfeld has historically been 'very left-leaning,' whereas she is a 'solid independent'—but they are provocateurs."

From "What Is Going On at Yale Law School?/The prestigious institution has tied itself in knots over a dispute involving one of its most popular—and controversial—professors, Amy Chua" (The New Yorker).

There's not much new in this article. It's bringing New Yorker readers up to speed on something I've already blogged about a few times, as you can see by clicking the "Amy Chua" tag. It was new to me that — as Chua tells it —Chua's daughter Lulu pushed her to go big:

“She’s, like, ‘You have to fight the narrative,’ so I just did something shocking,” Chua said. She wrote an open letter saying that she’d been falsely accused and described a Zoom call with the Yale Law dean in which she’d been treated “degradingly, like a criminal.”... “I sent it to my entire faculty, and I tweeted it,” Chua said. “Ever since then, it’s been kind of an escalating nightmare.”

If you choose to do "something shocking," aren't you seeking "an escalating nightmare"? I guess the something shocking is what she aimed at others and the escalating nightmare is what she found happening to her. Let me rephrase that: the something shocking what she now says she did and the escalating nightmare is her description, to be published in The New Yorker, of how her life feels to her now. 

And it worked. She's got a big New Yorker story about her. Look at that headline — parse it — and look a the nice photo of her perched on a glossy, empty desk. This is good press.

"As the only Asian American woman on the academic faculty, I can’t imagine any other faculty member would be treated with this kind of disrespect and utter lack of due process."

Writes Yale Law School professor Amy Chua.

Some of you may have seen the YDN hit job on me, full of false allegations. I did not violate any agreement, nor have I been hosting wild parties during COVID. On the contrary, what I HAVE done is comforted a small handful of students who reached out to me in moments of crisis... pic.twitter.com/9tOoOu9p6G

— Amy Chua (@amychua) April 8, 2021

Megyn Kelly reacts:

Now they’re trying to cancel @amychua for absolutely nothing. Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Bret Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting. If @YaleLawSch has any backbone, it will stand up for one of its most beloved teachers & tell the damn whiners to sit down. https://t.co/2vwLGWmI9w

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 8, 2021

At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, lawprof Paul Campos goes on the attack in a blog post that begins "Rules are for the little people, chapter infinity":

Meanwhile Chua and [her husband lawprof Jed] Rubenfeld continue to get paid collectively close to a million bucks a year to basically not do their jobs any more, but apparently being asked to at least avoid getting drunk around the kiddies is just too much to ask of our best and brightest.

I can't possibly know exactly what the facts are. I've read Chua's letter, and I don't think the law school has put out its version of the facts. As a law school professor, I was never someone who invited students to my home, so I tend to admire the lawprofs who do extend this kind of sociability to their students. I would find it very difficult to do, and I assume that, generally, students would love this kind of festivity. 

But I could imagine professors inviting students into their home for the wrong reasons. There could be the Harvey Weinstein of law professors. I visualize a continuum of motives for professorly parties, from unselfishly magnanimous to utterly monstrous. But where's the line on the continuum where the professor should know this isn't right and the law school should intervene and say no more parties for you? Why did Yale intervene? I think it intervened and entered into some sort of no-parties agreement with Chua and Rudenfeld, and now, it seems, the question is whether the agreement has been violated. That's the basic factual question here. I'm not looking at the agreement, but Chua does seem to say that she has continued to have students over to her house. 

In her letter (embedded in the tweet, above), Chua justifies what she did based on anti-Asian violence and racism. She's the Asian-American female law professor, and students in her diversity category need support, so... there's an implied exception to the agreement? Or... interpret the agreement properly, and there's no violation? I'd have to see the agreement and know what, exactly, she did. 

Does the agreement refer to "parties" and define parties? Is the law school dean following the students' interpretation of the agreement? Do the students even have the text of the agreement?

IN THE EMAIL: Tank writes:

Megyn Kelly calls Michael Savage an "absolute douchebag."

I think I speak for, oh, pretty much everyone when I say STFU you absolute douchebag. https://t.co/bcQJvlfskr

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 19, 2020

"Last week, when Sue Schafer learned that the Washington Post planned to publish a story about one of the dumbest things she had ever done, she had the same question that many readers would have..."

"... about the resulting 3,000-word article, 'Blackface Incident at Post Cartoonist’s 2018 Halloween Party Resurfaces Amid Protests': Why is this newsworthy? Readers within the Post newsroom were asking the question, too. 'No one I’ve spoken with at the Post can figure out why we published this story,' said one prominent reporter at the paper. 'We blew up this woman’s life for no reason.' In 2018, Schafer attended a Halloween party at the home of Tom Toles, the Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist. The basis for Schafer’s costume was topical. NBC had recently fired Megyn Kelly after she said, on the air, that she didn’t understand why it was necessarily considered racist for people to wear blackface as part of a Halloween costume. Schafer, who is white, decided to lampoon the anchor by dressing as Megyn Kelly–in–blackface.... The Post said Schafer’s transgression was news because it happened in front of Toles and somewhere possibly in the vicinity of columnist Dana Milbank.... The story first arrived at the Post via management consultant Lexie Gruber, who, along with her friend Lyric Prince, an artist, had confronted Schafer that night in 2018.... Nineteen months later, on June 9, Gruber contacted Toles, whom she didn’t know, to ask for help identifying the woman... Toles claimed, falsely, not to recognize her.... Schafer told New York that when she asked [the author of the WaPo article] why the story was news, he replied, 'We have to do it or they will go to another outlet.'... Gruber expressed surprise that the reporters directed so much attention to Schafer — and to herself and Prince — instead of the more notable people at the party. 'I can understand people being curious: Why did they write a piece so focused on a private citizen?' she said. 'But Tom [Toles] is a public citizen. To me, it’s about a larger problem, where people go to marches and then drink and dance with people in blackface.'... How can Toles’s failure to promptly order Schafer out of his house be simultaneously so important that it merits feature-length coverage in the paper and not important enough to merit workplace discipline?"

From "Why Did the Washington Post Get This Woman Fired?" (NY Magazine).

What a clusterfuck! I think it's rather obvious that the ball got rolling when everybody hated Megyn Kelly and imagined they were enjoying her downfall. I wonder if Megyn Kelly is getting some weird muffled last laugh out of all this.

"Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016, forcing him to resign (before his death), and busted a dam which saw a flood of women step forward who claimed..."

"... they too were harassed by the cable network news chief. Carlson settled with 21st Century Fox for a reported $20M. Kelly also admitted that she was sexually harassed by Ailes. She wrote about those advances in her 2016 book Settle for More. HarperCollins reportedly paid Kelly $10M-plus for the book" (Deadline).

A nicely minimalist trailer:

"Megyn Kelly is in big trouble with NBC after defending blackface on her Today hour..."

"'They’re contacting the staff and reassigning everyone today. Everyone’s being told that they still have a home here, but it won’t be on Megyn’s show,' one source said. 'They haven’t made an official announcement about the show, but everyone knows what it means when they’re being moved somewhere else. The show is clearly over.'"

New York Magazine. Here's the clip of Kelly doing what she did, whatever her thinking was here:

Megyn Kelly wonders what the big deal is about blackface pic.twitter.com/07yvYDuAYe

— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) October 23, 2018

The best thing I can think of to say for her is that TV for some stupid reason has to churn out Halloween stories every year, and taking this dumb position might have seemed like a way to get a lively conversation going on the hopelessly stale topic of what to wear on Halloween. At one point, Kelly talks about the general offensiveness of Halloween costumes such as the one where you've got the illusion of an axe embedded in your cranium — what's that, the Leon Trotsky costume? — and she has no idea that she's already embedded the metaphorical axe in her own head.



That's an image from a play I once saw — "Variations on the Death of Trotsky."

The play is divided into eight scenes... each depicting a differing final moment of Trotsky's life and making satirical allusions to soap opera conventions... [T]he play calls for Trotsky to die at the end of each scene, and then continues on (after the ring of a bell) from near where the last scene left off...  Trotsky is depicted throughout the show with a mountain-climber's ax sticking comically out of his skull... Though this is apparent to the audience from the very beginning, Trotsky himself does not realize that the ax is there....

That's what old Megyn had me thinking about.

There was blood — blood coming out of her wherever.

The disgust factor.

"According to some assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense of disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp increase in the number of female candidates and winners," wrote David Remnick in that New Yorker piece I've already blogged about this morning.

I was struck by the idea that rising disgust had potential to lift the Democratic Party to new success, because a couple days ago we were talking about a test that uses susceptibility to feelings of disgust to determine how conservative or liberal you are. There, I noted reports of research that sees liberals as resistant to disgust. Psychology Today had a piece called "Are You Easily Disgusted? You May Be a Conservative," which said:

Evidence suggests that harm avoidance and the need for fairness underlie people's moral judgments in a number of cultures. While liberals rely primarily on these two values, conservatives also rely on desires for group loyalty, authoritative structure, and, most importantly here, purity. Following this logic, Kevin [Smith] and other researchers became interested in the potential for a relation between disgust and political orientations. They speculated that conservatives are more disgust sensitive than liberals as a result of their concern with purity-related norms and that this difference would manifest itself on issues that some may associate with sexual purity (e.g., homosexual sex and, therefore, gay rights).

Sure enough, Kevin and his co-authors found that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals....

If we assume this research has got it right, Democrats might want to reconsider the use of the disgust factor. Maybe the effort to disgust liberals will fall flat, and they won't get excited and out to the polls to vote for Democrats. Meanwhile, the disgust talk might stimulate conservatives, and they'll be running out to vote, presumably for Republicans. Or do you think the disgust-oriented ones, the erstwhile Republicans, will go for Democrats because the Republicans — Donald Trump, Roy Moore, etc. — have been successfully portrayed as just so disgusting?

I'm trying to look at the big picture, the long-term effect, and I think there's some risk for the Democrats in going too far into sexual negativity. I think those of us who are disposed toward liberalism — and I say "us" because I came up 59% liberal on that disgust test — will tune out or come to view them as too fussy and nosy about sex.

ADDED: I'm talking about persuasion at the emotional level, so I naturally thought of Scott Adams's book "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter," which I've read in full. Adams talks about how persuasion is all about emotion, but he doesn't get into the role of disgust. The word only comes up once, quoting the famous Megyn Kelly debate question that began, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals . . .’” Trump (as you must remember) broke in to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

It wasn't Kelly's effort at using disgust that got Adams going. It was Trump's interruption:

He created an emotion-triggering visual image (Rosie O’Donnell) that sucked all the attention from the question to the answer, and it wasn’t even a real answer...  He also picked a personality who was sure to trigger the emotions of his base. Republicans generally don’t like Rosie O’Donnell because of her outspoken liberal views. Trump knew his Republican base has a strong negative reaction to O’Donnell, so he bonded with them on that point. This is the persuasion method known as pacing and leading. First you match your audience’s emotional condition to gain trust, and later you are in a position to lead them. 

Another way to look at that is Trump was able to stimulate conservatives — the disgust-susceptible human beings — by confronting them suddenly with a particular "disgusting" woman.

But why should Trump benefit from attaching himself to disgustingness? Elsewhere in the book, Adams says Carly Fiorina made a terrible mistake when she attempted to showcase her opposition to abortion by vividly describing a botched abortion:

Fiorina paired her brand with a dead baby. I knew voters wouldn’t want to think about Fiorina’s horrible story of a dead baby for one second longer than they needed to. I doubt anyone consciously interpreted the situation as I describe it. But humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons.

If that's correct, maybe it shouldn't have worked for Trump to "pair his brand" with a (purportedly) disgusting woman. You could say Trump was (essentially) offering to defend us from disgusting women, but Fiorina was offering to defend us from dead babies. Adams says "Fiorina lost support because she polluted her brand beyond redemption by associating it with the most horrible image one could ever imagine, on live television." He's really talking about disgust there: the emotional reaction to something that seems "horrible" and "polluted." There's an idea that particular, reasoned arguments don't matter. If what is disgusting gets all over the person, we'll feel aversion, at an instinctive emotional level. And that doomed Fiorina.

But why, then, wasn't Trump doomed? Maybe Trump would have fared worse if Megyn Kelly had been able to ask her question uninterrupted, speaking generically about women and Trump's bad mouth. She sought to ruin him by making him disgusting to the disgust-susceptible conservatives, and he interposed the image of a lady comedian. It's funny. It's all in good fun.

"Some problems weren’t [Megyn Kelly's] fault..."

"... such as when a cameraman walked on-screen while Kelly was interviewing soccer player Carli Lloyd. The cameraman then could be audibly heard muttering an expletive, which wasn’t bleeped since the show is aired live. Other problems, though, fell entirely on Kelly’s shoulders. For instance, two days after a gunman killed 58 people and injured hundreds more in the Las Vegas mass shooting, she interrupted Tom Brokaw as the former 'NBC Nightly News' anchor spoke out against the NRA. Kelly spoke over Brokaw, saying 'Yep. Yep, got it. Gotta leave it at that, Tom. . . . We’re up against a hard break.'... Kelly is now reportedly having trouble booking celebrity guests, unlike the other blocs of 'Today,' according to Variety. 'I’m not booking anyone on her show,' one publicist, who requested not to be named, told the trade publication. 'I literally haven’t pitched anyone even from right out the gate. The buzz that is out there is so bad.'... [O]n many days, Kelly doesn’t have celebrities on her show at all, which is unusual for the 'Today' franchise. Instead, she often relies on lifestyle stories and pretaped features. One recent nearly five-and-a-half-minute segment, for example, followed Kelly and her real-life family as they went camping."

From "Megyn Kelly tries dancing for ratings as her ‘Today’ show continues to falter" in WaPo.

I posted the dreadful dancing clip yesterday, here.

If you want to see that expletive-muttering cameraman, here:

Megyn Kelly's camera man stepped into the frame and then said "shit." pic.twitter.com/zh5vaFPQGl

— Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) September 28, 2017

What a dismal slide for Kelly! Remember how high she was riding when she moderated that GOP debate? That was more than 2 years ago. She made a big leap that night, confronting Trump, and there was so much liberal hope for her when Trump went menstrual on her.

But Trump went on to win, and what use is she now? No use to celebrities, and now she can't get celebrities on her show, and what's a daytime talk show without celebrities? I don't watch daytime talk shows (or, really, night time talk shows). Because I can't stand the canned PR appearances celebrities do on TV these days. It used to be that celebrities might go on TV and be weird. I don't know — Marlon Brando, Bette Davis — I mean back in the day when we loved weirdness, real weirdness, not canned weirdness like Megyn Kelly pretending to find the beat to some overproduced pop music irresistible and just had to get up and dance....

How bad are things going on that new Megyn Kelly show?

It's hard to believe it can be this bad:

Hoda was on #MegynKellyToday this morning for no reason other than to fill time and I've never been so embarrassed. pic.twitter.com/wXUatEcPhY

— Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) October 19, 2017

AND: I'm just noticing the lyrics on the song: "I know you want me." But she knows we don't want her. Sad!

Megyn Kelly's 3rd effort at a morning show: She pisses off Jane Fonda.

Not just rude, but anti-feminist.

How's Megyn Kelly doing on her second day of "Today"?

I made it through more than half of this, even though it's not something I'd watch for any reason other than writing this blog post:

I was curious after reading the WaPo review of her first day, "NBC’s Megyn Kelly experiment unveils its latest creation, a morning-show Bride of Frankenstein," by Hank Steuver:

“Megyn Kelly Today” is meant to be the final, dazzling piece of Kelly’s multimillion-dollar transmogrification from steely Fox News host to a mushy, hugs-for-everybody, midmorning TV host.... The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find....

The hour crawled by. A middle segment featured the “Today” regulars welcoming Kelly to 30 Rockefeller Center, a predawn festivity of studied smarm, with the added delight of seeing Kathie Lee Gifford sit in her makeup chair and play nice-nice with Kelly the way an old house cat would welcome a naive and extra-squeaky mouse to the kitchen. Then everyone came to Kelly’s stage to drink mimosas and bask in the NBC-ness of it all.

This show is not for me, so it really doesn't matter what I think. I don't watch Ellen DeGeneres or Kelly Ripa. I have zero patience for that kind fluffy, female time-waster. I especially loathe fakely enthusiastic studio audiences, especially when the host continually plays to them and insists that they all agree about everything, such as in the clip above, when Megyn Kelly goes on and on about how everyone cares about who Prince Harry is fucking. I'm paraphrasing, because I don't care.

Megyn Kelly's alcoholic metaphor promoting her new morning show.

"Hoda and Kathie Lee love wine. The ‘Today’ show is mostly coffee. I would say if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa. There’s stuff that’s a little naughty. Stuff in there that’s good for you. Some stuff in there that’s fun and sweet. But... with some effervescence."

Explained Megyn Kelly, quoted in "Megyn Kelly Is Ready for Her Morning Closeup/The former Fox News host says her daily NBC morning show, which starts Monday, is one she was 'born to do.' Others aren’t so sure" (NYT).

(A mimosa is half orange juice, half champagne... usually bad orange juice and bad champagne, of course.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Rob said: "Given Trump's earlier comment, Kelly was loath to liken her program to a Bloody Mary."

"Fox News skews very male… I always tend to think of her as more of a guy’s girl than a girl’s girl… It’s extremely challenging, and I’m not sure Megyn’s personality really connects with women."

Said an unnamed "a veteran daytime television impresario," quoted in NBC Insiders: "‘Total Panic’ Over Megyn Kelly’s Morning Show/Megyn Kelly begins her 9 a.m. NBC show in four weeks’ time. NBC colleagues are nervous that the poor showing of her Sunday night current-affairs show will follow her to ‘Today,'" by Lloyd Grove at Daily Beast.

Other comments from people who are named in the article with names too boring for me to trouble you with:

“The Sunday show laid such an egg that any claims that she had automatic star power, to get people in the door to see what she was doing, have been disavowed."

"[T]he Today show is a different format with a very strong underlying brand... She should be able to excel there even if the Sunday show was perceived as compromised."

And back to the unnamed impresario:

"She has the safety net of being in the Today show cocoon.... She’s going to have to adapt to the live audience, she will have to be more entertaining, and that will be a learning curve for her. The ultimate question is whether she connects with women in daytime."

Women and men. Gender politics. Remember where this veering away from Fox began for Megyn, just a little over 2 years ago: