Tom Arnold was supposed to be promoting his new Viceland series The Hunt for the Trump Tapes on Megyn Kelly’s Today show Tuesday. But they never got around to it.
Instead, Kelly began with the fight Arnold allegedly got into with The Apprentice producer and MGM CEO Mark Burnett at a pre-Emmy Awards party last week and didn’t let up on the issue for several minutes.
A belligerent Arnold, who refused to take the issue seriously, didn’t help matters.
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Following the public altercation, Burnett’s wife, actress Roma Downey, tweeted a photo of her hand with the message: “Got this bruise tonight when Tom Arnold tried to ambush my husband Mark and me at a charity event.” Asked by Kelly if he caused that bruise, Arnold laughed and said, “Roma Downey’s like, Julie Chen, hold my beer,” referring to the wife of ousted CBS CEO Les Moonves. “She’s like, I’m going to be with my CEO husband when he assaults someone and I’m going to say that person assaulted me.”
“Stop that, Tom,” Kelly said in response. “Don’t disparage her in personal terms, or Julie Chen.”
Arnold insisted that Downey was “disparaging” him when she suggested he had assaulted her.
“I didn’t touch her. I didn’t see her,” he said. As proof that he did nothing wrong, Arnold cited the fact that he was allowed to stay at the party even after he supposedly “beat up the CEO of MGM and his wife.”
“That woman was Touched by an Angel on TV,” Arnold added of Downey. “Now she’s touched by Tom Arnold, she’s touched by the devil right there.”
The discussion only got more heated from there with Arnold telling Kelly, “You keep defending Kavanaugh and those guys, maybe you can defend me for one second here!”
“No, I won’t,” Kelly said. “And I’m not defending Kavanaugh, I’m asking for a fair hearing.”
Since the sexual-assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee came out, Kelly has used her show to lay out the potential arguments that would be used to discredit his accusers. On Monday, she seemed to grow angry as she repeatedly reminded her panel that Kavanaugh is “saying he didn’t do it” and deserves “due process.”
“You’ve had your chance to respond, I’ve got to move on,” Kelly told Arnold eventually as he continued to profess his innocence.
“Before I let you go,” she added, seeming for a moment like she might try to get in a question about his new show. “No, I’m going to let you go.”
