Megyn Kelly Cuts Off Tom Brokaw, Bumped From Las Vegas Coverage As Terrible ‘Today’ Show Start Continues
Megyn Kelly’s rough start to her Today show tenure continued in her second week, with the anchor being bumped from the early morning coverage of the Las Vegas mass shooting and then cutting off legendary anchor Tom Brokaw the next day during a discussion about gun control.
Kelly came to the early morning program amid big fanfare, even getting her own branded Megyn Kelly Today hour. But the former Fox News personality stumbled out of the gate, with some disastrous interviews her first week and on-air mishaps, including a cameraman walking into a shot and letting off an expletive.
A new week came with even more difficulties for Megyn Kelly. Early on Monday morning, coverage of the Today show turned to the mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that left 59 people dead and hundreds injured. While Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie led the coverage, the show opted to preempt the Megyn Kelly Today hour and leave Kelly out of the coverage entirely.
At least one industry expert said it was a strange decision on NBC’s part to leave Megyn Kelly out of the coverage.
“It’s baffling why they didn’t have Kelly participate in the coverage,” an unnamed network veteran told the New York Post’s Page Six. “They seem confused.”
Megyn Kelly's trainwreck first week of celebrity interviews has come to an end… but it's only the beginning: https://t.co/8mpquuZaOR pic.twitter.com/rTERKbTzEP
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) September 29, 2017
Things did not get better for Megyn Kelly on Tuesday. As the story about the Las Vegas shooting immediately shifted into a debate about gun control, Kelly seemed to pump the brakes on this line of discussion. After an audience member asked Brokaw how news organizations should best handle coverage of violent incidents like the one in Las Vegas, the longtime NBC anchor discussed what he believed was a duty to hold the National Rifle Association to account.
“The NRA has a lot of money, obviously, and if you’re running against the NRA… you’re portrayed as a traitor against America,” he said (via Salon).
But as Tom Brokaw continued to give his views on the Second Amendment, Megyn Kelly began talking over the legendary anchor and brought an end to that debate.
While experts have said that Megyn Kelly still has time to recover from her rough start at the Today show, the continued stumbles and the fact that she was bumped out of coverage for a key news story are not seen as a good sign for her standing on the show.
[Featured Image by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images]
