Megyn Kelly excoriated Donald Trump’s campaign for its “bro-tastic” Madison Square Garden rally, which she said could jeopardize Trump’s precarious standing with women voters.
“I am telling you, even for me—and I voted for Donald Trump last week—it was too bro-tastic,” the former Fox News and NBC host said on her Megyn Kelly Show. “You’re trying to win an election in which you’re hemorrhaging female voters. Maybe when you present in front of hundreds—thousands at least in Madison Square Garden, you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don’t alienate women in the middle of America who are already on the fence about Republicans.”
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While there were a handful of female speakers at the event—including MAGA convert Tulsi Gabbard, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, and a surprise appearance by his wife, Melania—the lineup at Sunday’s New York rally was overwhelmingly male.
Among the men to take turns on the mic was a racist comedian, a retired WWE wrestler who spit at the mention of Vice President Kamala Harris’ name, a sanitation worker who called Harris the “Antichrist,” billionaire bro conspiracy theorist Elon Musk, and disbarred lawyer turned desperate and indebted coffee salesman Rudy Giuliani.
Reflecting on the lineup, Kelly pondered whether the Trump campaign bothered to seek out any female input.
“Do they have no women advising their campaign?” she wondered. “Is there no actual woman sitting behind the scenes coming up with a guest lineup and saying, ‘Let’s just have a word with the guys who are going to be speaking. About [how] this isn’t the bar, this isn’t their living room, this is a campaign, this is politics.’”
A CBS News/YouGov poll last week showed Harris with a 12-point lead among women voters, with 55 percent support to Trump’s 43 percent. A baffled Kelly pleaded with the Trump campaign to consider that.
“We’re trying to get him elected,” she said. “We don’t need to rally the base or guys anymore, and it’s not helpful even if we do want to rally the base or guys to go full off-color, insults to different racial groups, and so on.”
“I understand how this plays, especially with women, and it was an effed-up choice,” Kelly added. “They took what was an amazing celebration of Trump, exciting and well-attended and hugely enthusiastic, and gave themselves a big black eye.”
