I will tell you, from my perspective, I thought the interview with President Trump went very well. I thought he did very well, and he withstood some tough questioning. I did not go easy on him. Like when I interviewed Gov. Ron DeSantis (you can watch that interview here), the goal was not to emerge with Trump’s jugular as some would have liked to have seen. I thought it was fair. There were some questions for him, some questions for me. And that is, I think, how it should go. There should be a good flow to any big interview.
I give him a ton of credit. I mean, you tell me, could Joe Biden have done that? Could he have done five minutes of that? Just five minutes, never mind an hour and 20 minutes? He couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. Where is the mainstream journalist who will even ask him tough questions? Where are they?
President Trump didn’t expect me to go easy on him. He knows me. We have a history as you heard, and yet he came and he gave me more time than he had initially agreed to. Originally, they were saying 45 minutes, but he kept sitting. He didn’t wrap it. He didn’t say, ‘Get her out of here,’ even though I was needling him pretty good on some of those subjects.
This is the way it’s supposed to work. This is the way it used to work. Those running for the highest office in the land used to subject themselves to tough questions. Trump could stay underground. He’s doesn’t need to do those primary debates – he’s not wrong about that much, as I’d love to see it never mind moderate it. But he doesn’t need to. So, the fact that he gave the time when he could be a Biden and go underground, he could be under a rock, deserves enormous credit.
I also want to compliment my team because if you guys had any idea the amount of research that goes into preparing for an interview like that – it’s night and day. When we got ready for the DeSantis interview, all the producers on my team started a separate text group called ‘DeSantis Research.’ For Trump, we had a separate one called ‘Trump Research.’
Hopefully you know this with me, but everything has been fact checked before I go out there. I do my homework. When Trump says something that’s not true, you as the anchor have to decide whether you’re going to fact check him or whether you’re going to let this one slide and let the audience decide or let the online fact checkers go at it.
If you fact check every little thing that you disagree with or that you could fact check, the interview would go five hours. You can’t do that. You’re going to bore the people at home and you’re going to waste valuable time. Entire subjects won’t get covered if you handle it like that. As the anchor, your job is to sit there and sift through it – you’re thinking real time, separating the wheat from the chaff, what’s important, do I want to hammer on this or not. It’s thanks to my team that I’m able to do that. I know all the stuff thanks to them. They’re so committed to facts. They are not biased at all. All they care about is truth, and they do a great job making the show look good. I’m very grateful to them.
I thought it was interesting that Trump is still focused on the debate question from August 2015. I don’t know if he is still mad about it or if he just wants to talk about how well he did in answering it. He did do well. That answer he gave about Rosie O’Donnell got huge applause and his poll numbers went way up after that debate. So, I think he’s still a little ticked off that I asked it. I know a lot of people didn’t like it, as you heard in the exchange. I loved it. And, as I said to him, onward.
One bit of color for you behind the scenes. Here in the studio, I keep it around 78 degrees. I’m sleeveless, but it doesn’t matter what I am wearing. I could be in a turtleneck. I don’t sweat. I don’t know if it’s a medical condition, but it’s very hard for me to sweat. I’m always cold.
Bill Hemmer and I used a war because he’d be in those heavy wool suits when we co-hosted America’s Newsroom, and I’d be in some Fox polyester dress with no sleeves and be freezing my ass off. Now it’s my studio, and I can do what I want. Pretty much everybody around me sweats, but it’s wonderful for me. If I have a guest coming in, I turn it down to like 70 degrees.
The reason I am telling you this is Trump is way more in the Hemmer camp. He’s a man. He’s wearing a wool suit. He likes it cold, and he’s the star, not me, in the interview. It’s his place. He gets to choose a temperature.
I turned blue almost as soon as I showed up. Does anybody know what Raynaud’s Syndrome is? I have Raynaud’s and lose the circulation in my fingers. My fingertips turn white. It was to the point yesterday where one of my tech guys, Jake, gave me hand warmers. The problem was my dress was kind of small, and there was no place to put them. You’re not supposed to put them right on your bare skin, and yesterday was a rare time I didn’t have a pair of Spanx on. I was worried I might burn my bottom and have hot cross buns if I just stuck them there.
So, I was just holding them while waiting for Trump to arrive. When he came in 15 or 20 minutes later, my teeth were chattering. All I could think was I’m gonna look like I am shaking like a leaf in this interview. People are going to think I’m nervous, but I’m really just freezing to death. It felt like astronaut training where they start taking away your core body heat and other essential elements of living to see if you can continue to perform.
Anyway, Trump is very gracious. When he saw that I was cold, he asked if I wanted more heat. I said no because it’s about him. But if you think I look cold while watching the interview, now you know why.
President Trump is still very much a TV man. He knows exactly how he wants the shot to look, and how he likes the lighting. He was meticulous about where he put his Diet Coke bottle because he didn’t want things in the background of the shot. It’s quite helpful, frankly. He wanted it to look good, and he wanted it to rate well and be received well. I hope that’s how you experienced it.
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Trump by tuning in to episode 627 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.