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Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Megyn Kelly Turned Down 'Huge' CNN Offer


Megyn Kelly said she considered moving to CNN from Fox News after then-network boss Jeff Zucker made what she described as a “huge offer,” reports The NY Post.

Kelly, who now hosts “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast, said she ultimately decided against taking the  offer because she didn’t think she would be able to bring her Fox News fan base over to the left-leaning network.

She made the comment during an interview on Friday with conservative commentator Buck Sexton.

Kelly recalled that when she departed Fox News in 2017, she seriously mulled jumping ship to rival CNN.

“I considered going to CNN,” according to Kelly. “CNN made me a huge offer. Huge.”

Kelly instead opted to sign on with NBC News, where she hosted a morning talk show that ended up getting canceled due to low ratings and controversy.

“I said no, Buck, because I knew: Who is my fanbase going to be over there? I knew who my fans were and I knew that my Fox viewers were not going to follow me to CNN and that the CNN viewers were going to hate my guts,” she said

Kelly said Chris Wallace, who departed Fox News for a show on CNN+, the fledgling streaming service that has drawn very few subscribers, is “suffering from that very problem right now.”

She said she was surprised that Wallace left Fox News because he managed to earn a substantial, multimillion-dollar annual salary even though “he was in last place [in the ratings] every week, every year, every month.”

“He was always in last, and they still paid him,” Kelly said of Wallace and her former bosses at Fox News.

Kelly also lambasted CNN executives for conceiving of the idea of CNN+ in the first place.

“Who is the moron at CNN who actually thought, ‘You know what we need with our ratings in the toilet? More of us. We need more CNN,’” Kelly said.

Sexton echoed the sentiment, adding: “I do love all of the jokes about how while Elon [Musk] is offering to buy Twitter for tens of billions, there are lots of people out there right now who are willing to buy CNN+ for tens of dollars.”

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