It’s August, and plenty of folks in television are on vacation: Martha MacCallum, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, Nora O’Donnell, Willie Geist, Gretchen Carlson…and Megyn Kelly.
On Friday, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump suggested he “probably” caused Kelly’s vacation, describing it as “sudden,” coming after his extended–and personal–criticism of Kelly’s tough questioning of Trump during the Fox News presidential debate. “People were very, very surprised that, all the sudden, she decided to go away for 10 or 11 or 12 days.”
Kelly announced her vacation this week, saying she was looking forward to some time with her family. A Fox News spokesperson called Trump’s comments “wildly irresponsible” and “downright bizarre.” Here’s the spokesperson’s statement, in full:
“The conspiracy theories about Megyn Kelly’s vacation rank up there with UFO’s, the moon landing and Elvis being alive. Megyn is on a pre-planned, annual summer vacation with her family, which is much deserved. To imply otherwise as Donald Trump and his campaign operatives have is not only wildly irresponsible, but downright bizarre. Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks it’s advantageous to his poll numbers to keep talking about Megyn, but that doesn’t change the fact that Roger Ailes has fully supported her and her tough journalistic questioning since day one and is thrilled with the added exposure from the debate which resulted in even higher ratings of The Kelly File this week. Anyone who knows Roger is aware of how historically and consistently loyal he is to all of his talent and how he protects them at all costs. As Governor Terry Branstad said today, ‘when you’re a candidate, you’ve got to basically answer the questions. You can’t just attack the person asking the questions. That doesn’t work.'”