Amid concerns about President Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Megyn Kelly is facing backlash for the “disgusting” way in which she seemed to defend the convicted sex offender. Though the conservative commentator acknowledged that Epstein’s crimes were “disgusting” and “sick,” she also suggested that he was not really a pedophile because “he liked 15-year-old girls” and “wasn’t into 8-year-olds.”
“I realize this is disgusting,” she added. “I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this; I’m just giving you the facts.” But on social media, people were shocked by how quickly Megyn started downplaying Epstein’s crimes after Democrats released several emails about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. “Here comes the ‘well yeah it happened, but its not that bad’ phase…” one person on Reddit observed after Megyn’s comments went viral.
Megyn’s problematic comments came in response to the emails about Trump.
On her show, The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn read the emails released by Democrats earlier this week. Though Trump has claimed to not have knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes, Epstein claimed in one of the emails that Trump “knew about the girls.” Megyn admitted that she understood why people were concerned about the emails. “I concede that they sound bad,” she said on her show. “They don’t sound good.”
However, she went on to defend Trump and suggested that if Trump had abused young girls, people would already know about it. “If Donald Trump allegedly liked the barely legal type, we would know,” she argued. “We know virtually everything about the man’s sex life, unfortunately.”
She also said that interest in the Epstein files started out as “a genuine search for truth” but turned into a “political weapon to try to bring Trump down.”
She argued that ‘there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.’
As the conversation about the emails progressed, Megyn said she knows “somebody very, very close to this case who’s in a position to know virtually everything.” This person, she claimed, has told her “from the start” and for “years and years” that Epstein “was not a pedophile.”
According to her, “this was this person’s view,” which made it seem like she was trying to distance herself from this particular claim. However, she later added that “that is what I believed and that is what I was reliably told for many years.”
She continued with, “It wasn’t until we heard from Pam Bondi that they had tens of thousands of videos of alleged child sexual abuse material on his computer that, for the first time, I thought, ‘Oh, no, he was an actual pedophile. Like only a pedophile gets off on young children abuse videos.'”
Megyn explained the difference between ‘an actual pedophile’ and whatever she thought Epstein was.
According to Megyn, Epstein “was into the barely legal type.” Apparently, in Megyn’s eyes, “barely legal” means 15 years old. She clarified, “He liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.” Megyn acknowledged that “the whole thing is just disgusting,” but asserted that “there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.”
She claimed, “We have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was 8, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview.’”
People were disgusted by this.
They couldn’t believe what Megyn seemed to be implying. “‘Barely legal 15-year-olds…'” one person on Reddit wrote. “Uhhh, That’s still not legal.” Another added, “Trying to normalize sexually assaulting 15-year-old girls is a new low of a long list of lows. Boggles my mind how a woman with a 14-year-old can sit there and say that with a straight face.”
A third person acknowledged that, sure, 5-year-olds and 15-year-olds are different. But they’re both kids. “A 15-year-old is different than a 5-year-old, but they are both children and incapable of providing consent,” they concluded.
Besides, why was Megyn even talking about this in the first place? “What is the point of this distinction?” someone else questioned. “Even if it were not complete bull… and you’re ‘just giving facts’, what is your motivation to make this distinction other than to make it sound not as bad?”
