Megyn Kelly attacks MSNBC over labeling Casey DeSantis as ‘America’s Karen’
Megyn Kelly on Monday went after an MSNBC pundit who said Casey DeSantis has been seen as “America’s Karen,” griping that critics of Florida’s first lady simply “perceive her as a threat.
“If [critics] were saying this sort of thing about a leftie, these same [commentators] would be outraged by the rampant misogyny,” Kelly said on her podcast.
“But as always, it’s always fair game against a Republican wife,” Kelly, 52, told guests David Marcus and Stu Burguiere. “They hate her in a special way. It’s almost coming at her more viciously than with [former first lady] Melania [Trump].
“I think the reason they are reacting so angrily to [DeSantis] is they accurately perceive her as a threat.”
Former GOP Congressman David Jolly of Florida launched an attack on DeSantis, the 43-year-old wife of Republican presidential hopeful and Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, on “The Saturday Show With Jonathan Capehart” after briefly praising her as “a fairly compelling political figure” and “the brighter side to Florida’s angry governor.
“For others, she’s become America’s Karen,” said Jolly, an MSNBC analyst, referring to the slang term that has circulated online in recent years to describe entitled white women.
Another network guest compared Casey DeSantis to Serena Waterford, the devout wife of a religious ruler from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Kelly said that to the liberal media, Casey — a breast cancer survivor and mother of three — “can’t do anything right” and must endure a “particular viciousness.”
Asked Monday by Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney about the attacks on his spouse, Ron DeSantis, 44, said, “My wife is an incredibly strong first lady of Florida, a fantastic mother and a great wife, and that threatens the left.”
A Daily Beast op-ed last month also mocked Casey DeSantis as a “Walmart Melania,” deriding the governor’s wife for sporting a leather jacket with a map of Florida and a message sewn on the back: “Where Woke Goes To Die.”
Melania Trump baffled many when the then-first lady wore a trendy jacket with a bizarre message on the back that read, “I really don’t care, do u?” while traveling to meet detained migrant kids in Texas in June 2018.
A May article in Politico, “The Casey DeSantis Problem: ‘His Greatest Asset and His Greatest Liability,’” also accused Florida’s first lady of being “blindly ambitious,” “paranoid” and vindictive” — and quoted a Trump operative who likened her to “Lady MacBeth.”
In July, Casey visited Iowa to start her “Mamas for DeSantis” national tour.
“It’s one thing when your policies come out after us — the mamas. It’s another thing when they come after our children. And that’s when the claws come out,” the former TV journalist told attendees at a packed barn event in Johnston.
“If you want somebody to go up to Washington, DC, to clean house, to be able to put this country back on the trajectory where we are talking about — our rights coming up from our Creator and our government being put in place to protect our rights that are ours — [Ron] is the man to do it, and if I have to crisscross this country, I’ll do it,” she pledged.
Her husband told “Varney & Co.” that the Iowa message would resonate with voters, as opposed to MSNBC’s message.
“She and I kind of shrug it off because we know it just shows they view her as a threat, because the message that she was bringing in Iowa about the rights of parents and how we are not going to take this anymore with the left trying to indoctrinate our kids, they understand that that resonates not just with Republican parents, with independent parents and, yes, with Democrat parents,” the governor said of him and his wife.
Ron DeSantis trails more than 30 points behind the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, in the Republican presidential primary, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
