Journalist Megyn Kelly blasted her former employer Fox News this week for running a segment that promoted the gender transition of a young child.
The segment, which ran on Fox News on Friday, features a child named Ryland Whittington who was socially transitioned as a boy at just age five by her parents. Reporter Bryan Llenas heaped praise on Ryland for having the “extraordinary courage” to share the story, “particularly at a time when trans gender issues have been politicized.”
Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, told Newsmax host Eric Bolling that it was “irresponsible” for the network to broadcast the segment as it did.
“It is irresponsible to put it on the air like this as a celebration, without flagging for the parents out there who are going through this the significant downsides of jumping onto this without making sure you’re in that very, very small percentage of cases where this might — this gender dysphoria — might actually be a thing,” the journalist said, according to a transcript produced by Media Matters.
“To not flag the significant downsides of what happens to these kids when they’re put on puberty blockers, when they’re put on cross-gender hormones — by the way, when that’s done to girls, they’re sterile, they can’t have children anymore, and you can go down the list. It’s irresponsible to their mission,” she continued. “I mean, I don’t expect any of the mainstream press to do it.”
Kelly said that the vast majority of children who suffer from gender confusion grow out of it, adding that many of these kids grow up to be gay. Therefore, she argued, the mass transitioning of children is “a weird form of conversion therapy by default.”
Kelly was not the only one to call out the shocking Fox News report, which was part of the network’s “America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month” series.
Notably, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro and podcast host and author Matt Walsh — both of whom are sometimes guests on Fox News — made lengthy comments condemning the segment, which seemed woke even by MSNBC or CNN standards.
Shapiro bluntly called the report “absolute, horrifying propaganda,” condemning the actions of Ryland’s parents as “child abuse.”
Walsh encouraged other conservatives to “call this evil lunacy out wherever we see it. Especially on our own side.”
“I have appeared on Fox News many times,” he noted. “I appreciate the platform they’ve given me. If what I’m about to say ruins that relationship, so be it.”