Megyn Kelly: Trump's rhetoric on Iran isn't “playing the way his normal too-cute-by-half routine plays”
Kelly: “There was a huge number of supporters who definitely believed him that there wouldn't be another war ... and feel deeply betrayed by this”
Published
Megyn Kelly: Trump's rhetoric on Iran isn't "playing the way his normal too-cute-by-half routine plays"
Citation
From the April 21, 2026, edition of SiriusXM's The Megyn Kelly Show
MEGYN KELLY (HOST): I think there's a lot of frustration with President Trump right now. Obviously, the left hates him, but you've got 80% of independents who are against this war, who I don't think are enjoying his little parlor games on, like, I'm going to bomb them out of civilization, the bombing's going to start, we're gonna bomb bridges — and threatening some civilian infrastructure over and over. And I think there's a growing — I don't think, I know from the polls — there's a growing portion of Republicans who are sick of this too, who are sick of him and who are pissed off about the war. I just don't think it's playing the way his normal too-cute-by-half routine plays.
CHARLES C.W. COOKE (GUEST): Well, I agree with both of you insofar as I don't think that this is different for Trump. I agree with all the criticisms you laid out, Megyn, at the beginning, but I don't think they're new. I think you could apply them to anything Trump has done really in 11 years.
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KELLY: I'm very quick to overlook Trump's ethical problems, you know, his loose talk, his weird tweets. I don't really care about any of that, as you guys know. How long have we been doing this show together? Five years now? I don't obsess over that stuff. It's just for me personally, and I know for a lot of people who I listen to on the right — that's almost exclusively where my news comes from — it's just hitting differently. They're over it.
It's like, you know what? Epstein? Who cares about Epstein? And people were very angry with that. It was, well, you did. You hired all these people for your administration who said it was going be a huge deal and they were going get to the bottom of it over at the FBI. You had Pam Bondi all over Fox News saying, oh, I've got the file on my desk, wait until you see what I've seen. Then you thought you were going to get rid of that story with a two page memo from DOJ/FBI and then mock anybody who thought it was still a story because of you and your lieutenants? Like, not cute and started to lose some goodwill.
That was last July. And now here we are with him breaking, I mean, one of the top three promises he made that got him elected by a large segment of the populace, right? I mean, there were obviously more hawkish Republicans who wanted him to be more aggressive on Iran. But there was a huge number of supporters who definitely believed him that there wouldn't be another war, and certainly not one in the Middle East, and feel deeply betrayed by this. And I don't think his little flippant, you know, act is hitting them the right way.
And I think it's in part that feels disrespectful and the refusal to have sold the war to us at the beginning. And then when he came out and gave that one speech from the White House, it was so meandering. It added no new information. It didn't move the needle at all. Another thing they talked about in the Wall Street Journal piece about how Susie Wiles thought that might help him. It didn't. There was nothing to say, and he didn't say anything.
And people are left feeling like, what is this? We're starting a Middle East war here. We don't know where it's going to land, could go nuclear, could go away tonight, which we don't know, six one way, half a dozen. And he doesn't show us the respect of having a sober conversation about it.