Kara Swisher reveals ‘rage machine' Kelly begged her for podcast advice: ‘Remember, Megyn, I did help you!'
During Thursday's broadcast of On with Kara Swisher, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and Swisher talked about Kelly's 'confounding' pivot to 'really angry' MAGA pundit in recent years, lamenting that she had once been 'one of the best to ever do' cable news.
'I don't watch her anymore, but I thought her observations about where the industry was heading were right,' Wallace, who previously served as George W. Bush's communications director, said about Kelly's time as a primetime Fox News anchor.
At the same time, they brought up Kelly's recent interview with The New York Times in which she said that 'the future involves direct relationships between individual journalists and their audience, or personalities.'
Kelly also insisted that the current mode of cable news and broadcast journalism 'is dying, if not dead.'
'I think she's right,' Wallace reacted, prompting Swisher to recount the time that Kelly sought her guidance following Kelly's unceremonious exit from NBC News in 2019.
'Just so you know, Megyn Kelly doesn't like Kara Swisher, but at the time that happened, she called me and we had drinks and I talked to her about this and how to do it,' Swisher noted. 'Just remember, Megyn, I did help you!'
Both Wallace and Swisher would criticize Kelly for the 'confounding choice' she has since made in becoming a rabid pro-Trump commentator who devotes an outsized portion of her programming to right-wing culture wars and picking fights with other media personalities and celebrities.
'I think it's just terrible and angry, really angry, at especially women,' Swisher sighed, prompting Wallace to add: 'Yes! She hates us more!'
In the end, Swisher figured that their observations would only serve as more ragebait for Kelly, who now ranks as the third-most popular conservative podcaster in America. 'She'll have a show on this soon. So, good, great to give you content, Megyn,' Swisher snarked.
The Independent has reached out to Kelly's representatives for comment.
Swisher's latest broadside against Kelly comes months after Kelly blew up when the tech insider called her a 'rage machine' who 'screams at women' while she does her 'little act.' During the podcast she co-hosts with Scott Galloway, Swisher asked about Kelly in March: 'What is wrong with her?'
Kelly, meanwhile, responded on her SiriusXM show by describing Swisher as 'a very tough, ballsy, openly lesbian woman' who is 'literally known' for 'walking away with people's balls.' Accusing Swisher of being 'nasty,' Kelly also recounted Swisher's reaction after finding out that Kelly's sister had passed away from a heart attack.
According to Kelly, she canceled a planned appearance on Swisher's show because of her sister's death, leading Swisher to joke to Kelly's assistant: 'Oh, that sounds like a good idea and I certainly hope she'll stay off X in the meantime.'
While Swisher would respond that she 'was only joking' after Kelly's assistant clarified the cancellation was due to a death in the family, Kelly said this was proof of Swisher's awful personal character.
'She tries to cover her own ass because she knows she's now made herself look terrible,' Kelly said, adding that the relationship between the pair had fallen apart afterwards. 'From that point forward, all she's done is rip on me, and frankly, vice versa. I mean, I just see her very differently now. I think she's a bad person.'

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
If you're an American CEO, you might wake up one day to discover that President Trump has helped himself to a seat on your board of directors. Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has fashioned himself as a businessman-politician who knows what's best for American companies. Many CEOs appreciate his focus on deregulation and lowering taxes. But there's a catch: Trump has strong views on how managers should run their businesses and no compunctions about using the power of the presidency to bully bosses into doing it his way. Many CEOs are learning how to accommodate the micromanager in chief, some through lip service and others through actual business decisions. Some of Trump's interventions are remarkably mundane. He wants Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in its soda instead of corn syrup. Coke says it will actually do what Trump wants, even though sugar is more expensive and Trumpa-Cola will probably cost more. Other demands are far more problematic. He wants the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to their former names, the racially insensitive Redskins and Indians, respectively. That's Trump using professional sports franchises to push his anti-woke agenda to the extreme, which may not hurt Trump, but it puts the two teams in a lose-lose position by reigniting controversies they thought they had finally put behind them. Trump's most meddlesome gambit is his trade policy, which is meant to literally force thousands of US companies to reorganize the way they do business by buying less abroad and more domestically. He directly threatened Apple with a 25% tax if it doesn't start making iPhones in the United States. After Mattel said it would have to raise prices because of Trump's tariffs, Trump threatened a 100% tax on products the toymaker imports and threatened that Mattel "won't sell one toy in the United States." Trump said he'd hit Harley-Davidson with a "big tax" if it went through with a plan to move some motorcycle production overseas. When Walmart said it would likely pass along the cost of Trump's tariffs to its own customers, Trump told Walmart it should "eat the tariffs" — pay the cost and accept lower profits — and warned, "I'll be watching." Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump's tariffs Trump's manhandling of corporate America is hitting the bottom line. General Motors (GM) said on July 22 that Trump's tariffs shaved $1.1 billion off its second quarter profits and will likely cost the company as much as $5 billion this year. The day before, Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA) said the Trump tariffs contributed to a $2.7 billion loss in the first half of 2025. The second quarter earnings season is just getting started, so that may just be a taste of the losses related to Trump's rewiring of global supply chains. There's another category of Trump strong-arming: revenge. Trump has punished a dozen or so prominent law firms for working with Democrats or contributing to lawsuits or prosecutions targeting Trump himself. Trump typically issues an order limiting those firms' ability to work with the federal government, and in some cases makes deals in which those firms agree to do pro bono work for Trump's pet causes. Trump becomes the de facto chair of the firm's pro bono there's Trump's anti-woke crusade targeting Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and dozens of other universities for policies Trump considers too liberal. Trump has canceled billions of dollars' worth of federal grants to those schools, in some cases securing his desired policy changes as part of a settlement. Many companies have tried to preempt a Trump anti-woke crusade by rolling back diversity policies, including Google, (GOOG), Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Paramount (PARA), UnitedHealth (UNH), and IBM (IBM). Trump, in these instances, runs the HR department for a stint. Trump's micromanaging is a stark departure from the free-market capitalism the Republican Party has espoused for decades. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers likens Trump's interventionism to Soviet-style central planning. "There is not a single institution this guy doesn't want to call to tell them how to do their jobs," Wolfers said recently. There are at least three lessons for CEOs. One is to hide for as long as Trump is president and hope he never notices your company or any of its products. Trump seems to have targeted Coke for his new beverage formula because he's a famous fan of its products. He hasn't said anything about Pepsi using a similar formula. Pepsi probably hopes he never does, though CEO Ramon Laguarta is clearly hedging his bets. Another lesson is that it's OK to blame Trump's intervention for losing money, but not for raising prices. Trump hasn't publicly criticized any company for saying his tariffs have cost them money, as GM and Stellantis have done and many more are sure to do. Eating the cost of his policies causes Trump no heartburn. But if you publicly blame him for any pain that afflicts voters, he blows his stack and sometimes seeks revenge. Lose money loudly, raise prices quietly. A third lesson is to pal up with Trump — and watch your back. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang has become Trump's new business BFF, accompanying him on a high-visibility Mideast trip in May and counseling him behind the scenes on technology and trade policy. Nvidia benefited earlier this month when Trump reversed a prior position and once again allowed the sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China. The company's stock popped more than 5% on the news. Other corporate titans have courted Trump — and then fallen out of favor. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, once considered Trump's "tech whisperer," seems to have offended Trump by declining to join his Mideast trip in May. That's when Trump threatened a 25% tax specifically on imported iPhones. Trump's most spectacular business breakup has been with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who contributed millions to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and became head of the DOGE commission. But Musk grew disillusioned with some of Trump's policies, criticized them publicly, and broke ties with the Trump administration. Trump retaliated by threatening to deport Musk to his home country of South Africa and cancel contracts or subsidies involving Tesla and another Musk company, SpaceX. Crony capitalism only works if the cronyship lasts. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


USA Today
18 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump pick Alina Habba is out\u00a0as interim US attorney for New Jersey
President Donald Trump's former lawyer Alina Habba was rejected as the state's top federal prosecutor. WASHINGTON – A panel of judges in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey declined to permanently appoint President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Alina Habba, to serve as the state's top federal prosecutor, according to an order from the court. Habba has been serving as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney since her appointment by Trump in March, but was limited by law to 120 days in office unless the court agreed to keep her in place. The U.S. Senate has not yet acted on her formal nomination to the role, submitted by Trump this month. The court instead appointed the office's No. 2 attorney, Desiree Grace, the order said. More: Trump's team promised transparency on Epstein. Here's what they delivered. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York last week declined to keep Trump's U.S. attorney pick John Sarcone in place after his 120-day term neared expiration. Sarcone managed to stay in the office after the Justice Department found a workaround by naming him as "special attorney to the attorney general," according to The New York Times. Habba's brief tenure as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney included the filing of multiple legal actions against Democratic elected officials. Her office brought criminal charges against Democratic U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, as she and other members of Congress and Newark's Democratic mayor, Ras Baraka, tried to visit an immigration detention center. The scene grew chaotic after immigration agents tried to arrest Baraka for trespassing, and McIver's elbows appeared to make brief contact with an immigration officer. Habba's office charged McIver with two counts of assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer. McIver has pleaded not guilty. Habba's office did not follow Justice Department rules, which require prosecutors to seek permission from the Public Integrity Section before bringing criminal charges against a member of Congress for conduct related to their official duties. Habba's office also charged Baraka, but later dropped the case, prompting a federal magistrate judge to criticize her office for its handling of the matter. Prior to March, Habba had never worked as a prosecutor. She represented Trump in a variety of civil litigation, including a trial in which a jury found Trump liable for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Habba and ordered them to pay $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit, which alleged that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump's reputation in the investigation into Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.


The Hill
18 minutes ago
- The Hill
Golden Dome set to get another $13B as project leader takes helm
President Trump's Golden Dome missile defense project officially has a new team lead and gained potentially another $13 billion, setting the effort on a race to hit its ambitious three-year timeline. The office will be led by Vice Chief of Space Operations Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, unanimously confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as the first Golden Dome for America Direct Reporting Program Manager, according to a Pentagon statement released Tuesday. Guetlein, who Trump named as the Golden Dome lead in May, will be 'responsible for developing the Golden Dome portfolio of capabilities,' and report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg. 'Golden Dome for America requires a whole-of-nation response to deter and, if necessary, to defeat attacks against the United States,' the Pentagon said in the release. 'We have the technological foundation, national talent, and decisive leadership to advance our nation's defenses. We are proud to stand behind Gen. Mike Guetlein as he takes the helm of this national imperative.' Intended to protect the skies over the continental United States, Golden Dome promises a network of space-based missiles launched from satellites to intercept missiles launched from the ground, an expensive, untested technology. The Trump administration has insisted the project is necessary to protect against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks and will only cost $175 billion. To fund the effort, $24.4 billion was included for the project in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, signed by Trump on July 4. Then on July 17, the House voted to pass the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which includes roughly $13 billion for advanced initiatives to support Golden Dome. But the purported price tag, also announced by Trump in May, is far below estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, which pegged the figure at more than $500 billion over 20 years to develop. Other estimates have placed the cost at $1 trillion. What's more, missile defense experts highly doubt a Golden Dome system as Tump has described can be created in under three years. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) last month called out 'the physics' of Golden Dome, pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to seek out viability analysis from scientists instead of defense and space firms. 'This idea, you know, might not be fully baked,' Kelly, an engineer by trade, told Hegseth during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on June 18. 'You've got to go back and take a look at this. . . . You could go down a road here and spend hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money, get to the end, and we have a system that is not functional,' Kelly added. In its statement, the Pentagon said Golden Dome would establish partnerships with industry, academia, national labs and other government agencies to rapidly develop and field the system, with an architecture to be developed within the next 60 days.