Megyn Kelly wondered Wednesday whether “pedophile” is really the right word for someone who “likes 15-year-old girls.”The Megyn Kelly Show/YouTube
Megyn Kelly is known for offering absurd options that no one asked for.
She was there perseverance for example, that Santa Claus is white, and her statement that wearing blackface accustomed not that bad (it got her fired from NBC News). On Wednesday, on it SiriusXM show of the same nameKelly picked another hill to die on: In a conversation with NewsNation host Bathia Ungar-Sargon, she implied that it wouldn't be entirely fair to call Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile because he was “the barely legal type” of minors, which Kelly horrifyingly defines as “the type of 15-year-olds” who look as if they could be adults. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, and the Justice Department said he abused and exploited dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14 years old.
But Kelly said she nonetheless wonders how to characterize Epstein because, she said, she knows “someone very, very close to this case who is in a position to know just about everything” and “that person told me from the very beginning, many years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in that person's view, was not a pedophile.”
Kelly continued, “That's the point of view of this man who was there for a lot of it, but he was the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I understand that's disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to justify it. I'm just giving you the facts that he didn't like eight-year-old kids. But he liked very young teenagers who could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legit to a passerby.”
Kelly said the characterization from her unnamed source – that Epstein “was not a pedophile” – “is what I believed… until we heard from [Attorney General] Pam Bondi said he had tens of thousands of videos of alleged… child sexual abuse material on his computer, and for the first time I thought, “Oh no, he was a real pedophile.” I mean, only a pedophile would like videos of little children being abused. [Bondi has] I never specified it, I don’t know if it’s true. Frankly, I no longer trust what Pam Bondi says about Epstein.”
“Or something else,” added Ungar-Sargon.
“Yes,” Kelly replied, “so I don't know what's really true about him, but we haven't seen anyone come forward and say, 'I was eight, I was under 10, I was under 14 when I first came under his purview.' It can be said that this is a difference without a difference.”
“No, that’s not true,” says Ungar-Sargon.
“I think there’s a difference,” Kelly continues, “there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
We don't really know.
The comments come across as something of a shift for Kelly. Back in 2023 she pounced against Republicans who defended British comedian and right-wing darling Russell Brand from rape accusations from three adult women and one minor. (The brand was charged with five charges of rape and assault in the UK earlier this year and pleaded not guilty. He denied the accusations.)
“You're 31 years old and you're supposedly having sex for three months with a 16-year-old?” Kelly spoke about the juvenile allegations against Brand. “We're done. I'm signing off. And I'm tired of conservatives on the internet trying to defend this as if she played a role in it. She was underage. Just because you can't be prosecuted for it doesn't mean it's right.”
Kelly also has opposed grooming by convicted pedophiles such as former Metro spokesman Jared Fogle, whose victims as reported age from 6 to 17 years. And she condemned what she called the “exploitative and predatory nature of the minor entertainment industry.” (Kelly too, of course used the term “grooming” in the gratuitous, homophobic, and transphobic sense that many on the right use to describe activities such as dragging, which do not even remotely constitute grooming.)
Epstein's victims described the abuse they endured as ruining their lives, despite the fact that they were “very young teenagers” rather than five-year-olds, according to Kelly. Take Marina Lacerda, an immigrant from Brazil who, like me, wrote back in September – described how the violence affected her education at a press conference on Capitol Hill back in September:
Lacerda described how she fell into Epstein's orbit, working three jobs to support her mother and sister when she was in high school and a friend offered her $300 to give a man believed to be Epstein a massage. “My dream job,” she said, “turned into my worst nightmare.”
Lacerda said she was invited to visit Epstein so often that she dropped out of ninth grade and never returned. She said her only option was for Epstein to tell her she was too old to work for him.
Kelly's comments came the same day the House Oversight Committee released Another 20,000 pages of records provided by Epstein's estate, including emails in which Epstein called President Donald Trump is “the dog that didn't bark” and said he “knew about the girls when he asked.” [co-conspirator] Ghislaine [Maxwell] stop,” as my colleague Inae O wrote. (White House officials said the emails effectively proved Trump's innocence and called them a “distraction” from the government shutdown.)
In a statement provided Mother JonesElisa Bautista, campaign director for UltraViolet Action, a sexual assault advocacy group, called Kelly's comments “reckless and irresponsible.”
“Jeffrey Epstein is a pedophile, period,” Bautista said. “Middle-aged men grooming and sexually exploiting 15-year-old girls is child abuse. Dot”.
Lawyers for several of Epstein's victims did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.
