To say former President Donald Trump’s relationship with the media is rocky would be a gross understatement. However, Bill O’Reilly believes former Fox News host Megyn Kelly changed the media narrative around the 45th President during the first Republican debate in 2016.
During his O’Reilly Morning Update Thursday, the former Fox News host shared that Kelly’s questioning of Trump and his disparaging statements about various women throughout the years altered the thinking of media members and executives.
“Just about eight years ago, Megyn Kelly launched a verbal rocket at Donald Trump during the first Republican campaign debate of the 2016 cycle. The subject was Mr. Trump’s disparaging comments about selected women. That confrontation changed the dynamic between the media and Donald Trump,” O’Reilly posited. “Up until then, the press actively pursued the businessman because he was good for business, but any media honeymoon quickly disappeared. It was inevitable as the American press corps is overwhelmingly liberal and his belief system. It has been that way since the Vietnam War.
“Donald Trump has never run as a standard conservative, but he was aggressively going after Hillary Clinton. So the press threw in with the Clinton campaign and created Russian collusion.”
O’Reilly then argued that Trump’s larger-than-life persona doesn’t require media attention or coverage.
“Today, the former president has few media allies as you know, but it really doesn’t matter. His presence is so overwhelming. Almost all negative information about him is rejected by his supporters, even as it is embraced by his detractors,” concluded O’Reilly. “Very few Americans are agnostic on Trump. So we might want to change media tactics a bit.”
