How Jessa Duggar And Jill Duggar Played A Part In Sarah Palin Getting Fired By Fox News
Jessa Duggar and Jill Duggar allegedly played a part in Fox News’ decision to fire Sarah Palin. The former Alaskan governor was let go shortly after she spoke out about the Duggar girls’ much-discussed interviews with Megyn Kelly, and now Palin is claiming that what she said about the Duggars got her fired.
During a recent interview with CBN News, Sarah Palin hinted that she lost her job because some of the higher-ups at the Fox News Channel didn’t like what she had to say about the network’s decision to book Jessa Duggar and Jill Duggar for an interview. Early in June, the former 19 Kids and Counting stars sat down with Megyn Kelly to talk about being sexually molested by their older brother, Josh Duggar.
“Some things happened that I haven’t talked about publicly, things like getting canned from a job I really liked, sort of out of the blue, because I called somebody out,” Sarah Palin told CBN News.
“Next morning I got word, ‘Oh, we no longer need you anymore,'” Sarah said. “Yeah, it was a shock, but more power to Fox News.”
As Us Weekly points out, Sarah Palin talked about Jill and Jessa Duggar during her last TV appearance as a Fox News employee. However, Sarah’s firing probably had less to do with Jill and Jessa and more to do with what she said about the woman interviewing the Duggar daughters. According to Talking Points Memo, Palin “shamed” Megyn Kelly for talking to the girls.
During the interview, Jill and Jessa Duggar complained about the media’s fixation on their family’s molestation scandal. It became a very hot topic after In Touch Weekly published police reports documenting Josh Duggar’s shocking behavior. When the former 19 Kids and Counting star was a teenager, he sexually molested four of his sisters and another unnamed girl. His victims included Jill, Jessa, and a sister who was only five years old. However, Jill and Jessa Duggar didn’t use their appearance on The Kelly File to speak out against their brother’s behavior — as Fox News reports, they chose to defend him and vilify the media for “re-victimization that’s even a thousand times worse.”
During the Fox News segment that allegedly got her fired, Sarah Palin agreed that Jill and Jessa Duggar were being re-victimized, and she dared to suggest that Megyn Kelly became part of the problem when she asked Jill and Jessa to talk about what Josh Duggar did to them.
“These girls are being re-victimized, for shame on the media for, under the guise of ‘Hey, gotta let them have their say anyway. Let’s interview them and put them there, back into the fire, and let them explain,'” Palin told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “They’re innocent! And these girls, yeah so humiliated.”
Megyn Kelly was the only journalist who was granted an interview with Jill and Jessa Duggar in the wake of the Josh Duggar molestation scandal, so it’s fairly obvious that Sarah Palin’s criticism was aimed at her.
Megyn Kelly plays softball with the Duggar sisters: Your Weekly Top Ten http://t.co/LT27ndtAOF pic.twitter.com/e7sz592www
— Wonkette (@Wonkette) June 7, 2015
Jill and Jessa Duggar claimed that they decided to appear on The Kelly File simply because they wanted to “set the record straight” about their older brother’s behavior. However, Jessa and Jill Duggar had another reason for downplaying Josh Duggar’s actions by claiming that he only did what he did because he was “a young boy in puberty and a little too curious about girls.” As the Inquisitr previously reported, the fate of their TLC reality series, 19 Kids and Counting, was still up in the air, so the girls were likely trying to save the show by convincing fans that Josh and their parents deserved to be forgiven for the sexual abuse and the attempt to cover it up.
Jessa Seewald on the future of 19 Kids and Counting: If it’s canceled, “life goes on” http://t.co/5OanPKYNAJ pic.twitter.com/XN38FGRJqS
— People magazine (@people) June 6, 2015
Just like Sarah Palin, 19 Kids and Counting did eventually get the ax, but Jill Duggar and Jessa Duggar’s days as TLC stars aren’t over yet. The Duggar daughters have scored a series of three TLC specials titled Jill & Jessa: Counting On, and there’s a possibility that TLC may decide to give the girls and their husbands their own reality series if the specials prove to be a success. However, Duggar critics are fighting hard to keep any members of the controversial family off of TV.
According to Rawstory, critics of the Duggar family have flooded the Jill & Jessa: Counting On Facebook page with comments about how TLC is “exploiting molestation.” Critics are contacting companies and asking them to pull their ads from the TLC specials, and they’re imploring TLC viewers to boycott the Jill and Jessa specials. The “Take the pledge: Boycott all Discovery Channels” Facebook page goes one step further by asking viewers to avoid watching any Discovery network shows during the December 13, 20, and 27 airings of the Jill & Jessa: Counting On specials.
Sarah Palin seemed to suggest that Megyn Kelly was exploiting Jill and Jessa Duggar by using their family’s scandal to get more viewers to tune in to The Kelly File. Do you think TLC is trotting Jill and Jessa back out on TV because the network also thinks that interest in the scandal will bring in big ratings?
[Photos by Alex Wong/Getty Images, TLC]
