In Roman riding, the rider stands with one foot on each of two horses as they gallop side by side. The rider controls both horses simultaneously while balancing across them. That’s what Megyn Kelly has been doing for almost a year: straddling two very different personas.
One horse is Megyn 1.0 — the common-sense legal analyst and pro-Western conservative commentator.
The other is Megyn 2.0 — increasingly indulgent of anti-Israel narratives, defending the spread of Islam in the West, and joining the ranks of Candace Owens’ defenders.
Last week, during Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing, those horses drifted too far apart, and Kelly landed on her ass.
Kelly opened the preliminary hearing with this promise to her audience:
As we go through this preliminary hearing this week, we’re gonna be sticking to the proof that is offered by both sides… while you can have suspicions about somebody else’s role in a murder like this one, you cannot get that into evidence unless you have real proof and a legitimate good-faith basis for raising it… that’s where we begin today.
There is, of course, nothing controversial about this.
Except that only last December, Kelly told her audience to “go f*ck themselves” for expecting her to call out Owens’ conspiracy theories and months-long campaign of harassment and accusations against Charlie Kirk’s friends, family, employees — and pretty much everyone else under the sun.
This followed months of Kelly moving the goalposts in defense of Owens’ reprehensible behavior after Charlie Kirk’s death.
When first confronted about Owens’ conduct on The Fifth Column podcast, Kelly said she wouldn’t criticize her because “she’s a young mom” — a standard that has never stopped Kelly from attacking Meghan Markle, for example.
Next came Ben Shapiro, who appeared to be the first person to tell Kelly that Owens was targeting TPUSA, Kirk’s friends, and even Erika Kirk.
Kelly acted shocked, insisting she wasn’t “the mother of the internet.”
She then followed it up by confidently assuring her audience, “It’s not true. Candace has, in fact, been defending Erika.”
That statement has aged like milk in a heatwave.
Kelly then revealed that she had been working behind the scenes to broker peace between Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, the newly widowed young mother.
It was at this time that Kelly berated viewers who questioned her continued defense of Owens, unleashing profanity and showing them the door.
Not since Neville Chamberlain has there been a more gullible or unsuccessful peace negotiator.
Ben Shapiro accused Kelly of moral cowardice at TPUSA’s AmFest, and rather than reconsidering her position, Kelly bizarrely transformed her unwillingness to criticize Owens into a principled stand against “bending the knee to Israel.”
Once again, she told her critics to “go f*ck themselves.”
It wasn’t long after this that Megyn Kelly’s Israel Derangement Syndrome metastasized. Megyn 2.0 earned the moniker “Grandma Groyper,” stating:
How much of the narrative that is in our news today has been spoon-fed to me by people who are super pro-Israel at all costs, who won’t tell the truth about Israel, no matter what it is… I’m just starting from square one basically on Israel right now.
Only a year earlier, Kelly had hosted Charlie Kirk, warning about the threat of Islam in the West. Fast forward a year, and she was openly eyeing Tucker Carlson’s significant Muslim audience, saying on Next Up with Mark Halperin, “Like he’s gotten very, very popular lately, I read, with Muslim viewers because he’s been standing up for Islam.”
Then came Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing.
Almost overnight, Megyn 1.0 reappeared.
On the second day of the hearing, she argued, “There is no disproving a conspiracy theory in the mind of a true conspiracy theorist. It’s not possible. They will just continue moving the goalposts.”
By day four, Kelly was urging those attacking Erika Kirk to show some humanity. “Every night Erika goes home to Charlie’s two children who have no father… it’s just beyond human what is being asked of the family.”
For a moment, Kelly sounded exactly like the careful legal analyst who made her reputation.
Unfortunately, this is where things fell apart.
Kelly’s guest, former prosecutor Matt Murphy, politely but directly challenged the person driving many of the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories — not anonymous internet trolls, or even leftists, but young mom Candace Owens herself.
Murphy said, “I’ve seen some insane things on the internet, mostly championed by Candace Owens, that are so loony, tinfoil-hat out there. And I think that’s hard on the victim’s family.”
He accurately described those embracing the conspiracy slop as “actual lunatics.”
Murphy also pointed out that Owens had said she would stop spreading baseless conspiracies if Erika Kirk asked her to; Erika Kirk repeatedly did, and Owens ignored her.
Instead, Owens responded by accusing Erika of being a child groomer, a human trafficker, connected to Jeffrey Epstein, mocking her by pretending to cry over death threats she’d received, and implicating her in her own husband’s murder — all without credible evidence.
This treatment of Erika, by the way, is ongoing.
Kelly immediately rushed to defend Owens: “I think she’s in her own search for what she believes happened here, and she has zero trust in official words on anything.”
Murphy continued and actually delivered on what Kelly had promised at the start of the week, being unbiased and objective.
But when Murphy dismissed Israel’s alleged involvement outright — “Israel didn’t kill Charlie Kirk. Sorry. They just didn’t.” — Megyn 2.0 returned.
Kelly immediately defended not simply Owens, but the legitimacy of continuing to speculate about Israel’s possible involvement, pointing to Charlie Kirk’s criticisms of some Jewish donors before his death and reports of Israeli-only cell phones allegedly being present at Utah Valley University.
The shift was striking. In fact, it’s a surprise she didn’t begin going on about maroon shirts or Egyptian planes.
The same Kelly who had spent days insisting that conspiracy theories require evidence was now arguing on behalf of conspiracy theories.
The same Kelly who argued for compassion and humanity toward Erika Kirk was arguing on behalf of someone who has actively profited from tormenting Erika Kirk.
Everything Kelly had started the week promising to do, she was now doing the polar opposite of.
This is where Kelly’s two personas collide. The legal analyst who demands evidence gives way to the commentator willing to excuse wild, even harmful, speculation when it comes from her friend.
Kelly has repeatedly shown that she knows exactly how evidence should be evaluated. She understands legal standards. She recognizes how conspiracy theories move the goalposts whenever facts become inconvenient.
As she put it: “There is no disproving a conspiracy theory in the mind of a true conspiracy theorist.”
Yet only days later, Megyn 1.0 resurfaced.
Referring to those who continued denying Tyler Robinson’s guilt despite the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, Kelly remarked, “Some people who refuse to believe that Tyler Robinson did this have been saying for quite some time, ‘Oh, but there’s no video of the actual shooting’… and still they won’t accept it. We’re never gonna get through to them. I don’t even really care about them, to be honest.”
It’s enough to give her remaining audience whiplash.
The balancing act isn’t sustainable. Eventually, one of these two Megyn Kellys will prevail. Judging by who she’s repeatedly told to “go f*ck themselves,” she’s already made her choice.
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Nathan Livingstone is an Australian filmmaker and video editor who creates short films, commentary, and investigative pieces. Follow him on X: @TheMilkBarTV
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