Fox’s Megyn Kelly and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas tussled tonight over “sanctuary cities” and whether cities with those laws need to be changed following the death of Kate Steinle.
Vargas said the issue here squarely comes down to ICE not acting when they could have issued a warrant for the killer’s arrest. He pointed out that sanctuary cities are beneficial for immigrants who “can actually report to police.”
Kelly still insisted, “The law is the law, and fidelity to the law is what binds us together.”
Vargas––who has made it clear he wants the media to start calling out Donald Trump on this issue––made it clear that the San Francisco killer doesn’t represent millions of other illegal immigrants. Kelly agreed that anyone making that leap is “engaging in hyperbole,” but still called sanctuary cities “lawless.”
MEGYN KELLY, HOST, "THE KELLY FILE": Breaking tonight, the young woman gunned down by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco was just laid to rest. Surrounded by friends and family. It does not appear at this hour that anyone from the Obama administration was in attendance.
Welcome to THE KELLY FILE, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Funeral services were held this evening for 32-year-old Katherine Steinle. Her loved ones remembering her as an avid traveler who loved connecting with people until her life was cut short a week ago. That's when Kate was shot and killed while in her father's arms, police say by this man, Francisco Sanchez, an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times from this country and had racked up a string of felonies while in the U.S. The San Francisco sheriff had Sanchez in custody as recently as April but released him pursuant to San Francisco's sanctuary city policy where they have rules against handing over anyone to the Feds who might be deported.
This sheriff himself a convicted criminal says, he stands by the city's policy. Kate's murder has since exploded into a national debate on illegal immigrant, sanctuary cities in crime. With the White House ducking the issue of its own acquiescence in these city's decision to flout the federal immigration laws which were duly enacted. When asked repeatedly this week to speak to this case, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest declined to weigh in other than to refer folks to the Department of Homeland Security. A stark contrast to what we saw after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri. A man we now know was attacking a police officer at the time of his death. His funeral saw three Obama officials in attendance, his death drew comments from President Obama personally. And the administration also sent in the DOJ and 40 FBI agents dispatched to Missouri after Michael Brown was killed.
Where is the swarm of agents in San Francisco? Then there was Freddie Gray in Baltimore, a repeat drug offender who was killed in police custody. Here again his funeral was attended by three Obama administration officials and again the President spoke personally to Freddie Gray's death. And again, sent the DOJ in to investigate. When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, the President spoke to his death which was later ruled to be in self-defense. But Kate Steinle, nothing. No comments, no swarm of FBI agents, no DOJ investigation, nothing. Why?
Marc Thiessen is a FOX News contributor and the former chief presidential speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Richard Fowler is a nationally syndicated radio host. Thank you for being here, both. Marc, why?
MARC THIESSEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, the silence from President Obama is absolutely deafening. He had plenty to say when it came to Trayvon Martin, when it came to Michael Brown, when it came to Freddie Gray, but all of the sudden a woman is killed by a criminal alien, and all of a sudden the President is tongue tied. He's got nothing to say. Why is that? The answer is simple. In all of those other cases, he had liberal policy points that he wanted to make about gun control, about police bias, about racial profiling. In this case he has no policy points he wants to make because the policies that he supports are the ones that got this woman killed. His support for sanctuary cities, his support for releasing criminal aliens into the communities. So he doesn't want to highlight this because there's no political gain to be made from it.
KELLY: Richard, do you disagree with any word that Marc just said?
RICHARD FOWLER, NATIONALLY SYNDICATED RADIO HOST: I disagree with about 90 percent of it. I think this president is outraged that we haven't passed comprehensive immigration reform. Since this president is coming to the White House --
KELLY: Where is the comment on Kate Steinle's death?
FOWLER: Over and over and over again about comprehensive immigration reform. This president has said number of times --
KELLY: But if you could just answer my question, Richard? Could you answer my question?
FOWLER: I am answering your question, Megyn.
KELLY: Where is the comment about Kate Steinle's murder?
FOWLER: The reason why Kate Steinle's murder happened, and the White House will tell you the same thing, is because we have a broken immigration system. George Bush tried to fix it and Republicans blocked it. Now, the President has tried to fix it. Marco Rubio even tried. It was so bad that he ran away from it.
President Obama got lots of attention today fordropping the n-word in his interview with comedian Marc Maron, but he also made a fairly innocuous comment about how people who watch Fox News have a very different worldview and set of facts than people who read The New York Times.
But this remark really set off Fox’s Megyn Kelly, who made it clear she’s getting sick and tired of the president taking all sorts of shots at Fox News. She said, “He can’t seem to get over the fact that we are here.”
Marc Thiessen agreed, while Robert Zimmerman said Obama had a point about people consuming news to be informed versus having their views reinforced.
Kelly said Fox is clearly a “constant irritant” to the president and basically just chanted, “We’re here, we’re clear, get used to it!”
She said Obama simply “doesn’t want to accept there is a channel that will criticize him,” and liberals do whatever they can to discredit Fox.
Megyn Kelly is bucking the conventional wisdom of what it means to be a Fox News anchor. The take-no-prisoners newswoman isn’t afraid to throw hardballs at Republicans. She recently lectured Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over his penchant for arguing with female reporters. She poked Jeb Bush about whether he would have invaded Iraq in 2003. She cornered Mike Huckabee for saying it was trashy for women to swear in public. Last year, she told Dick Cheney, “History has proven that you got it wrong” on Iraq. On Election Night 2012, she dared to question Karl Rove for claiming that Barack Obama hadn’t won Ohio, and it went viral.
This story first appeared in the June 22, 2015 issue of Variety. Subscribe today.
Just as surprisingly, she says she wouldn’t brawl with a certain Democratic presidential candidate if she landed an exclusive with her. “I think Hillary Clinton could handle me — easily,” Kelly says on a recent afternoon in her Manhattan office. “That would be epic television,” she muses. “Here she is, this powerful woman talking to somebody who is also a woman in a powerful post, who would never be accused of giving her a pass. Right? But I respect Hillary Clinton, and all that she’s achieved.” Kelly makes the case that she’d be fair. “I’d be under pressure, too. If you want to get big-name Democrats who are running for president, do you want to annihilate them? Of course not.”
Robert Maxwell for Variety
Kelly, 44, a former corporate litigator who continues to gain prominence at the country’s biggest news network, is poised to become a force in the 2016 election, and is already set to co-moderate an Aug. 6 Republican primary debate. She will need to seize that opportunity to try to prove her detractors wrong, particularly the many liberals who still distrust her, and insist she’s way too soft on her subjects.
Bill Maher lambasted her on HBO’s “Real Time” for her coverage of the police officer in McKinney, Texas, who attacked black teenagers at a pool party (Kelly questioned the behavior of one of the girls shown in a leaked video). “We think of Megyn Kelly as the sane one over there at Fox News,” Maher said. “It’s just because she’s surrounded by (Sean) Hannity or Bill O’Reilly.”
Kelly said she wept when she saw an 11-minute clip of Jon Stewart skewering her reporting several years ago, but claims she’s grown thicker skin. “When you’re young and just starting, you think, ‘Oh gosh, how much power does he have? Is he going to hurt me?’” Kelly asks. “Frankly, I really no longer listen to Jon Stewart. I think we’ve stood the test of time.”
But like everything on Fox, Kelly is controversial. Viewers and critics are often befuddled, because they never know where she stands. She sounds like a Democrat on social issues (she’s long defended the transgender community) but a Republican on fiscal matters. Kelly tells Variety she’s not a member of the GOP. “I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans,” she says. “I’m an independent.” She believes her lack of political ideology actually makes her a more effective reporter. “I’m not rooting for anybody,” she says. “I’m a Fox News anchor, and I have no horse in the race. I can give anyone a hard time.” When asked if she considers herself a journalist or a personality, Kelly says, “I don’t really separate the two. I just think of myself as Megyn Kelly — broadcaster. You can do both.”
And of course there’s yet another charge against police being racist at a pool party! This time you can clearly see a kid punching a cop, and a mom resisting arrest, but somehow, if you have the right melanin amount in your skin while watching the video, you see racist police instead! It’s magic!
Here’s Megyn Kelly interviewing the mother involved in the altercation and her mumble-mouth lawyer:
OK well that was annoying, but don’t worry dear reader, I have a palate cleanser! Here’s the awesome Sheriff David Clarke to respond to EVERYONE who says racism is to blame for this latest altercation:
MEGYN KELLY, HOST, "THE KELLY FILE": Breaking tonight, angry protesters hitting the streets over what they call the latest incident of racist policing in America. What the folks in the middle of this mess say the video today seen by millions only tells part of the story.
Welcome to THE KELLY FILE, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. The Black Lives Matter protest group has tonight organized what they call a march for justice in McKinney, Texas just getting underway there. It started with the Friday evening party in McKinney that quickly went bad. Residents say a rowdy group of teens first started trespassing. Then began harassing the neighbors. Then the confrontation turned really ugly. With alleged racial slurs, fights and one police officer caught on camera. Now being held up as the latest in a media narrative about cops out of control. Here are parts of the video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Move! Move!
(INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It was that guy. It was that guy.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Get on the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I told you to stay.
Get down on the ground. (Bleep). (Bleep).
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Sir, we just got here. Sir, we just came to a birthday party. Please.
In disbelief of Josh Earnest’s comments suggesting the Obama strategy against ISIS is successful, Megyn Kelly said she had to read his comments three times just to understand it, referring to it as ‘nonsense’. After Brit Hume weighed in on it, Kelly then played a clip from ‘The Jerk’ saying this is what Josh Earnest reminded her of after his comments today.
Fox’s Megyn Kelly brought on former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton last night to press him about Hillary Clintonreceiving emails about Libya of questionable intelligence from Sidney Blumenthal, someone the Obama administration had already prevented Clinton from hiring at the State Department.
Burton said that everyone in the administration has friends, and the Blumenthal story is “confusing” and just a “trumped-up controversy” anyway.
Kelly asked Burton about the “cloud of corruption that follows” Clinton everywhere. Burton retorted, “Maybe it just only follows her around on your network.”
Kelly shot back that it was The New York Times that broke the Blumenthal story, not Fox, while Burton took shots at Clinton’s Republican rivals for focusing on her over important issues.
Typical arrogance we’ve come to expect from the Obama regime.
Kelly: Our next guest says he liked the president’s speech in some ways – because he wrote something very similar for President Bush back in 2007. Former presidential speechwriter Marc Thiessen, now with AEI, joins me now from Washington. Did the president crib off of George W. Bush, is that what you’re saying?
Thiessen: Yeah, it was eerily familiar. There were lines like, “Our job is to help Americans build a future of hope and opportunity. A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy. A future of hope and opportunity requires that all our citizens have affordable and available healthcare. Extending opportunity and hope depends on a stable supply of energy.” All of that came from the 2007 State of the Union Address by George W. Bush. So, Barack Obama has gone from blaming George W. Bush to plagiarizing George W. Bush.
Megyn Kelly kicked off her show Tuesday night utterly bewildered at a report she touted as striking another blow for Obamacare, after two whole months of problem after problem plaguing the health care website. This time, it’s about the payment mechanism for the site, and Kelly was astonished to discover that because no one is able to actually pay for plans on the site yet, the plan is to “estimate” the cost of each plan and for the government to just work out that estimate with insurers.
Yep. A program designed to provide affordable health care to millions of people will be temporarily whittling the payment system down to a crap shoot.
Kelly cited a new report from Reuters on a “short-term” fix for the Obamacare site’s payment system as they get the kinks sorted out.
The administration is planning a “workaround” for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to “true up” payments, he said.
“The intent is to make sure plans get paid on time, which is a good thing,” Durham told Reuters.
First of all, the very fact that the payment system isn’t working was too much for Kelly. She cried, “How does the system work without a payment mechanism?! There’s no cash register!”
But for the government to just estimate the cost of health care plans… to say Kelly was flabbergasted would be putting it in the mildest possible terms.
Even as CNN improves its reporting on Obamacare, Fox News continues the larger mainstream media trend of reporting on supposed Obamacare horror stories. On Monday night’sThe Kelly File, Megyn Kelly featured a report byTrace Gallagher that told the sad story of a family that might have to cut down on manicures and such, in order to afford their Obamacare plan. Turns out the story, as it was initially reported by the Heritage Foundation, doesn’t really add up.
Gallagher’s report focused on Kate Joy, a California woman who, “despite her name, is not happy” about Obamacare. She and her husband “have an extensive Christmas list, and have checked it more than twice,” Gallagher reveals. “It’s a list of what they plan to give up to pay for the new healthcare plan.”
Obamacare burn! Nicely done.
“They live in northern California, and help support their 19- and 21-year-old sons who work part-time and go to college,” he continues. “Here’s the deal. Under the old plan they paid $499 a month. Of course it was cancelled, because it doesn’t qualify under the Affordable Care Act. Look at the number. $1,252 per month.”
This would be a good place for Gallagher to explain why the old plan didn’t qualify under the Affordable Care Act, but he doesn’t. The viewer, then, is free to assume that the old plan only covered non-complicated doctors’ visits on alternating Tuesdays.
“That’s actually more than my monthly mortgage on my home,” Joy says in the interview clip. “You can imagine that you have to start thinking about, you know, where is the extra money coming from to pay for the policy.”
(Nov. 22, 2013) — Former congressman Allen West has stated in a column published on Friday that “Every day we get more evidence that the Obama administration is a complete fraud and will go down as the largest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people.”
Allen B. West served one term in Congress from 2010 to 2012 and was allegedly defeated by contender Patrick Murphy. A lawsuit was filed by TruetheVote challenging the results of that election which has moved forward in federal court.
West was reminding his readers that when the unemployment rate was reported to have dipped from 8.1% to 7.8% 30 days before the presidential election, he had said that the numbers could not be accurate. “There’s simply no way possible that unemployment numbers could have dropped that much in one month when the new jobs numbers were dismal and the workforce participation rate continued to drop,” West wrote, responding to an articlein The New York Post earlier in the week which claimed that employees at the U.S. Census Bureau have manipulated employment statistics beginning at least in 2010 to include the report issued a month before the election.
The mainstream media was quick to denounce the claim as inaccurate or vaguely-sourced. In a follow-up article, author John Crudele stood by his claim and stated that “The House Oversight Committee and the Inspector General of the Census Bureau are now looking into these charges.”
In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Rep. Jason Chaffetz said that if the numbers were manipulated to show a lower unemployment rate than should have been reported, it could have impacted the results of the election, which Barack Obama allegedly won by about 3,000,000 votes over challenger Mitt Romney.
On Thursday’s “The Kelly File,” Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained to host Megyn Kelly why even the so-called fix President Barack Obama proposed earlier in the day was fraught with problem of its own — and that it was meant to shift blame away from the administration.
Kelly asked Hume if Obama helped himself during Thursday’s press conference.
“Probably not very much, Megyn,” Hume said. “This is such a small effort here with all kinds of problems associated with it — whether it’s even possible for it to work, even if he’s legally authorized to have done it. I mean, I keep thinking about some insurance company going to federal court saying this is illegitimate. There is no constitutional or other legal authority for the president to have done this. And poof, whatever effect this has could be done. And the other thing, of course, is his answers while he was more apologetic than before in some ways and was saying the blame was on him. I think a lot of people’s answer would be, ‘Yeah, no kidding.’”
Obama’s new maneuvers could be deeply problematic for the insurance companies as well, he said.
“I must say, Megyn, I have my doubts as to whether he can,” Hume continued. “I also have doubts as to whether this is possible. You know, we have talked about the insurance companies, unlike the Obama administration, were ready for the law to roll out. And they took all the measures the law required them to take — to participate in the exchanges, to stop selling the no longer qualifying policies and all the rest of it. And what the president is now saying, ‘Oh, oops, well you can go on doing things kind of the way you were for another year.’ Well, they are really in no position to do that.”
As far as Obama’s objectives, Hume said it didn’t appear to him Obama was looking for an actual solution, but instead for a way to avoid blame.
“[H]e’s not looking to accomplish anything,” Hume said. “He’s looking to shift blame. He doesn’t want his law, and his party and himself to be blamed for cancellation notices. So he’s created this apparent fix that says, ‘OK, folks, you really can keep your policies. Sorry about that.’ Well, you know, I’m not sure that will work. When you think about it, it shouldn’t work. It’s dishonest.”
Hume predicted another wave of cancelations as the more of the law takes effect — and noted the media may have turned against Obama in a way it has never before.
MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Half the country thinks the president knowingly lied
MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Half the country thinks the president knowingly lied when he promised you could keep your health care plan if you like it, period. Four in ten believe he just didn't know that this pledge would be broken. And consider this, 55 percent of solid majority of the American people say this administration has tried to deceive the public about the health care law. And the big picture number, nearly nine in 10 people, 86 percent say, elected officials in Washington are adding to the country's problems, not solving them.
Andrew McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor, best known for putting away the terrorists behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and he just wrote a column for National Review online talking about the president's broken promises. And coming right out in this piece, Andy and saying that Barack Obama is guilty of fraud, serial fraud.
ANDREW MCCARTHY, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Right. Serial fraud.
KELLY: Explain it.
MCCARTHY: Far more serious than people who routinely get prosecuted by the Justice Department. Just the lie about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan which basically just scratches the surface of the fraud here was repeated systemically and numerous times years after we can prove that he knew what he was saying was not true. We have millions of victims. They've been untold billions of losses here. And if you look at what the U.S. attorneys guidelines say about prosecuting fraud cases, they talk about frauds of big classes of people, like people who are the in the market for purchasing insurance on your own rather than getting it through your work.
MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Back now to our top story tonight. The administration releasing the first ObamaCare enrollment numbers just a few hours ago. Less than 27,000 people have selected a plan from the Feds. Less than 80,000 people have signed up through the state exchanges. A few weeks ago one of the architects of ObamaCare joined me. And I asked Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel about this very issue. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: We are not on track. We are not anywhere near on track for that right now.
DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS SENIOR FELLOW: Excuse me.
KELLY: The latest numbers we have and Ms. Sebelius won't tell us exactly what it is. But the latest numbers that we have from the research service suggest it's about 129,000 people.
EMANUEL: Ms. Kelly, as I have repeatedly said whatever the number is today is totally irrelevant. Because people are not going to buy until round about thanksgiving.
KELLY: All right.
EMANUEL: For a January 1st start line.
KELLY: All right. Here's my last question.
EMANUEL: You cannot project from today's enrollment.
KELLY: Understood. OK. I get your point. Here is my last question here.
EMANUEL: So, you are claiming we are not on track. You have no idea whether we're on track or not.
