Transcripts For CSPAN2 Settle For More 20170101

Politics and prose. On behalf of our great staff we welcome you all and we want to thank our friends and partners, we love doing events here. How many of you have been to an event here before . All right. I can see why youre coming back. Its one of our favorite venues and specially excited for tonights event. So i think youve been given introductions on how this is going to proceed. We are really honored and pleasure to host a woman recognized by millions of people across the country and around the world, most of us and most of you know her as one of the most influential and toughest journalists in television. Shes also a former highpowered lawyer. Shes a mother of three and perhaps most important shes also an author. T thn kelly is here to talk settle more more is a memoir and the one thing i can say with assurance being on the Book Business is that theres an art to writing a memoir. Theres even more of an art to writing a good memoir and more of an art writing a great memoir. It has to tell the truth memoir. Through her career as a successful lawyer. Evolution in her role as professional woman. And one other very important point about this book, it is really, really funny. She survived some of the most challenging environments. She said to work in some of the very contentious people she has covered, im not mentioning any names. [laughter] theres much more of megyns story, megyn, if theres any consultation, i dont know if any have followed the story of pizzagate. We know a little thing or two about the real consequences of fake news stories and we are with you. We are with you and we havent experienced half of what she has. But anyway, to help us get to the heart of her book and story, we are lucky to have with us another superb broadcast journalist, katty kay. Shes a bbc anchor on world news america. We are delighted that katty will be in conversation with megyn, welcome in inviting the two exceptional women. [applause] lets rerun it. Lets rerack that. Thats how we are opening the kelly file tonight. Yeah, theres so much criticism and negative walking in a room where everyone loves you, thats so great. The book tour has been the opposite of the internet. [laughter] thank you all for coming on winters monday night. We are specially appreciative that youve joined megyn and i here. I know megyn and its a real treat to have me sit here and talk with her for an hour. I have your questions to and i will throw them randomly during the course of the evening. I read settle for more over the course of the weekend. Its funny, honest. I have to admit, megyn, when i was first asked to do this how does somebody of your age write a memoir, youre just starting in life. Theres a stier to that because originally i was going to write about a segment and we see millennials who cant function if they suffered any sort of offense and it was irritating me. It really gets under my skin and i call them cupcake nation. The more i start today write about that, theres a reason why im like this and theres a reason i feel this way and i actual thought i can explain it to people if i walk them through how i got to this place and why i find the cupcake nation thing objectionable and deeply problematic for society and for those 240 20yearolds. Adversity is an opportunity to grow and become stronger and, you know, just take where lisa had left off. If i had had no adversity and had parents that kept me in protective bubble, how do you think i would have handled the last year, i would have been crying under my desk. The reason why i was able to handle that is because i had been through iterations of that before. Lets go back and start at the beginning in albany, new york. Almost british. [laughter] i say that as a complement. My mom is one of the stars in the book. What i love about your parents is the idea that inculcated in you, the idea that you werent particularly special. I like that. Not everybody is a winner. I hate that. Right. And i think that youre the the values that you have compared to the value we both have kids. The world that our kids live in where you get a trophy for showing up for the game. Right. It drives me kind of crazy. Ive had enough of that. I certainly didnt grow up with that. My parents, youre not so special, it was like you dont seem that special so far and thats just fine by us. We are openminded to specialness, but we dont see it yet. And that was a gift to me because honestly i felt zero pressure to achieve or succeed growing up. I could tell they wanted me to be happy. You did have to be funny. Good sense of humor and engaged and you werent allowed to sit like a plotted plant in the table. Beyond that, it was you seem happy, are you happy, good, good luck. And that worked out very well for me and so, you know, that all started with my mom and dad, and by the way, on the participation trophies, it wasnt if you achieved, they didnt give you praise. There was no pressure to achieve. Your older brother and sister, all your family, this is about megyns family, your book. Tell a story about how your dad he would get you and ask you what had gone on in your day and your older brother and sister would Say Something and it would be megyns turn and you would go on and on and on. Shes talked enough, shut her up. Make her shut up, theyd say. My dad who was an educator. He thought ph. D students in education all five of us had dinner together every night. My dad would say to everybody, whats the report. My brother and sister and myself. Whats the report. Pete and suzanne would give a few answers. Sure enough and i would go on and on, they would say make her shut up and my dad would say, you had your chance and hed say and now you will listen to her. [laughter] and actually my friend proposed naming my book that. [laughter] you paint megyn a picture of a happy family but theres two incidents that really struck me during the course of your childhood and we should talk about those and the first was what happened when you got into seventh grade. Youve been surrounded by friends and go to school and then band. But for you seventh grade was a nightmare. The Second Chapter in the book and its about my seventh grade year. Its called mean girls in the book and honestly its still hard to talk about to this day and so now i just turned 36 on november 17th and that happened when i was 12. Dont make me do the math. I can still get teary about it when i think back on what happened. I had always been somewhat popular. I never really struggled. I was not attractive at all. I had no appearance currency. You know, i was never one of those girls, oh, my gosh, shes so beautiful. My parents was like shes going to be with us for a long time. This is why the book is so great. You talk about putting on weight and having acne. Huge space between my two front teeth. Dont u you want to have that fixed . Im going to go with my mom. I grew up unattractive. I was kind of chunky. My hair was hideous. Thats my friends fault. Anyway, i didnt look good. You have to not picture this version of me where there are two people over there. They pay to make me look good. Everybody here would look glamorous if they had people that they paid. So i did have currency in my personality and my friendships, like that to me was important to my own ego and sense of self and worth and for whatever reason. Everyone here has been to seventh grade. The group turned on me. So many people said why and the Group Requires no reason nor do they really provide an explanation. They just turn and i went from being a popular girl to being an object of disgust for them. I mean, it was it wasnt that they didnt want to hang out with them it was because i repulsed them and you could just feel it as i would walk to the halls and they would throw things at me and constantly make comments about my bod, about my skin and culminated in this horrible episode where i was let me just couch this by saying, i know that people have had it so much worse. Please understand, i know that. But at the time i didnt have that perspective. But i was home with my parents on a saturday night and the leader of the group, she was having a party and she said, megyn, do you know where all the people from my party are and i said, no, and they all yelled into the phone, we are here. Honestly, i can still get upset about it. To this day it was so cruel and i was feeling so vulnerable and my parents were watching me and i hadnt discloses to them even that i was being bullied never mind to this extent and i went out on the backyard and it was a cold snowy night in the winter and i skated on top of the snow which had been iced over just with tears streaming down my face in the darkness and felt so isolated and alone and targeted and i read in the book, it didnt stop in the spring when a beautiful angel named heather shepherd came and sat with me at lunch and befriended me for no particular reason. She did and my mom by that point knew something about the bullying and said, all you need is one, you know, and she befriended me and changed everything for me. She really changed everything for me, and do you know that we remained friends for years. I never really articulated to her how grateful i was for that until really this book and she knows my mom, they both live in albany still and she read it and she called my mom and said, you know, she helped me too which meant so much to me. To this day, i cannot tolerate bullies and i do think one upset what . [laughter] and youve done a little more. I think outside of the bullying, there are a few. I would not recommend this. I do have empathy for people. I have empathy for true victims of, you know, negative events. Thats not to say that i believe in i dont like the word victim. Even if you have been victimized its just a selfdefeating word that can mess with your head but i do have empathy through people that have had hard times. One question that i have read, you are clearly close to your mom, why do you think you didnt . I was ashamed. Amazing. I felt i felt their repulsion. I started to believe that i was repulsive and i was doing it all wrong. It was your fault. It was my fault. I wasnt likable and that was an area in which my parents did value that. They wanted me to have friends like normal parents. While they were saying they would never be attractive. I was about 7 and my mom said, i know a girl that didnt brush her hair today and i was like out i went. She didnt make me brush it. I would make her brush her hair for the record. They didnt put any pressure on me to look good but there was an understanding that i should have friends. I felt embarrassed that i didnt. Your dad died when you were young and you clearly had a very Good Relationship with him. But and i think for those who can read the book, the night he died you had a yeah. You routed your died when he died. Yeah. That actually is a story i never told publicly before, before this memoir and i wrestled with it, you know, i really wasnt sure how much i wanted to discloses of about that night. Not because of people like you sitting here, people who are openminded and i hope kindhearted and hopefully can view me through if not a generous lens but neutral lens. I certainly didnt want them messing with my fathers death. This is what it is like to be a public figure and a private figure if you discloses yourself publicly. But i thought it was integral of what i am. I thought, maybe it makes you feel better when you know that somebody you can relate to has had a similar circumstances. For the record my dad and i have had a beautiful relationship. I was only 15 when he died. He was 45. He was no heart problems. He was fine and ten days before christmas 1985 he dropped dead of a heart attack and it was a stupid fight and it was over a class ring. I was being a stupid 15yearold girl who wanted a nicer class ring than we could afford and he was telling me, we cant afford that nicer wring and ring and i wouldnt let it go and he had had it and he turned and walked out of the kitchen and he never got mad, i mean, he wasnt that kind of parent. My mom, on the other hand, she would get mad, but he turned and walked out and i walked past him in the living room to go upstairs to my room to my bedroom and my last sight of him was he was staring at the Christmas Tree in the living room, a good man alone. And thats just something that i have to live with and in those terms because the next thing that happened my sister came into my office my room and said, wake up, daddy had a heart attack. And he was never revived. You know, i where in the book about going to the hospital and, you know, i dont know if you ever lost anybody but going in there and seeing him having a chance to say goodbye, how strong my mom was, my mom who is 14 years old at the time, she has three kids, theres me, 145yearold me and shes a nurse at the va. She does not have a lot of money and my dad had just canceled the major insurance policy we had because he was like im 45yearolds and he didnt it wasnt a heart parent. Patient. So we had money problems facing us and my mom knew that as well. She was such an example for me in those moments, not by preaching, she was she fever said never said to me, you must be strong. We are having a they therapy session here. You to function in the face of upset. Upset but functioning in the face of it. That is something i can do. You talk about how she doesnt, shes strong and incredibly strong after your father died but you tell a story about how youve been a lawyer and jumping for several years now and you get to new york and youve been in chicago and when you cry youre lonely and your apartment is cold and at the first night shes super sympathetic. She said, the third night she said megyn, stop playing the victim, not attractive. And man, did that jolt me out of this selfpity party. You know, she had been there, empathetic. Now youre being ridiculous. Toughen up butter cup. I think about it till this day. Toughen up butter cup is what i want to say to everybody in the millennial generation. Do you say that too your kids . Theyre 3, 5 and 7. It might be cruel. Youre bringing up your kids with the same values of not everyone is a winner. Ive already thrown away my sons participation trophy. It went right in the garbage. Im sorry, i did. I went to my daughters school, we had parentteacher conference, what is your core message to yarley. You are not special. I mean it in the context that i just deliver today you. I dont jump a joy when they give me a piece of paper that has three lines of it. I try not to tell them that they are not the greatest things, i love them to death, i hug them and kiss them all day long and i dont tell them how much i how extraordinary they are. Should it come along . Right. Should we jump forward to law career. You became a lawyer in chicago and new york and after, what was it ten years or something in law . Nine years. You write the fabulous journal entries which is full of angst that im more exciting than this and i need more exciting. Why was law not enough . You can read them. Its a little Bridget Jones dairy. But like she did, but, you know, i had been practicing law for over nine years and up state we never came from circles of power, it meant a lot to be a lawyer. I have arrived and now people are going to take me seriously and i like this sort of, you know, im fierce and im tough and serious, megyn kelly esquire, yeah. And so i was really reluctant to walk away from it because it meant something to me, to my selfimage, but i really did ran first head first of brick wall of unhappiness and you get to a point where you cant deny it anymore. You cant deny up happiness. Malaise and mediocraty. How did you get into journalist . I had always been interested in journalism. I got rejected which i love to remind them now. They dont care. [laughter] it means something to me. [laughter] yeah. And so i when i decide today leave law, okay, so this is something i always wanted to the but maybe i can do it now but, you know, its not that easy to jump into it career as a broadcast journalist and so i really was determined but without the immediate plan and then like in retrospe i feel like my father may have had a hand in it because my dad and guitar playing is a theme of the book. Absolutely. We use today spend, we never took a fancy family vacation. He played the guitar around the campfire and we would sing and dance, that kind of thing. I tried to learn guitar. I was taking guitar lessons once a week and low and behold and woman was journalist and she made a class because the Space Shuttle had blown up. Meredith, where were you. Well, im in news. Youre in news. Honestly, i believe in stuff like this. I just feel like theres a reason i was in that guitar class and theres a reason why i connected with this woman and this beautiful lovely woman who sometimes competitive and they dont always extend the hand of generosity and friendship to help another woman in Competitive Industry in particular, this can happen to guys too. She was just the opposite of that and had endless generosity for me and helped me make a tape and within six months i had my first tv job part time and within 12 months of that fox news hired me. Whats the rewarding aspect of being the news anchor, most challenging aspect . Rewarding aspect, i would definite i will say the most rewarding aspect is the responsibility that, you know, theyve given me and ive earned. Its not so much speaking truth to power. Its being able to hold people in power accountable. Thats the most rewarding aspect of it, that you can ask the hard questions and they kind of have to deal with you, you know. Certainly in the position im in now. They kind of have to. Take donald trump, he avoided me for most of the year, he wouldnt come on the kelly file that doesnt mean i didnt have a chance to hold him accountable. I did. And hillary clinton, she never came on the kelly file, not once, which i would argue did not serve her well. [laughter] [applause] theres my Makeup Artist clap ig. Shes on my side. Anyway, so thats the best part, the worst part, you know, i would definite i will say the worth part has been security threats that ive had to face. I get lots of it and i hate it. You went from somebody that reports on the news to becoming the focus of the news. Right. It happened after you asked the first question in the Republican Debate when you asked donald trump about how he treated women in the past. Lets back up. What happened before you asked that question because its an extraordinary day that you had leading into that . Thats one of the things i review in the book. Trump and i had always had a Good Relationship prior to that debate. We werent friends but we were friendly and then i did a segment before the debate on the kelly file from the divorce of ivana trump. It wasnt my story, it was a story that the daily beast had broken 30 years ago in which ivana in sworn deposition testimony testified that he raped her. He was brutal according to her testimony, extremely nasty and very detailed. The deadly beast brought the story back up because trump said mexicans are sending rapists, speaking of rape, right, thats why they went there. My point in having on the daily beast report and kelly file is to challenge the reporter a bit and say, look, she recanted that testimony, she does not standby it, it was 30 years ago, it was a contentious divorce proceeding which people notoriously lie, so how did so how did you account for the reality of your port in which i felt was not quite skeptical enough of those allegations. So i thought it was very fair to trial because we were not the one stretching up his divorce. Someone else was. It wasnt just the daily peace. I put the guy on come i. Challenged him. Donald trump is not happy. He was not happy about the story on. He was not happy i given any airtime at all and insisted i call him the monday before the thursday president ial debate. He was supposed to come on the kelley filofax monday in the weapon unless i called him personally. So i called him and it did not go well. He said he never shouldve put that story in your show. If they teach you a favor. You should be thanking me. Everyones talking about that story. Bill oreilly didnt put that ot a show. I said bill oreilly is not the editorial page. Is that i never want to see that kind of story on your show again. I said mr. Trump, you dont control the editorial on the kelley fio. And that is when he blew. D started screaming. Your disgrace. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Ag i am a set list my beautiful twitter account against year and i still may. I was the first olene hewitt had in seventh grade. I dont know if a class that is bowling so much as the never politician which enemies too. The threat of the twitter account was clear. At this point i have the woman drafted. This has been dropped it forionf weeks. The open enormous electric andnd hard questioning or all of them. So now im in a position right now hes angry. He feels antagonize. He was an antagonize, but he feels antagonize. He spends this fourday sniffinh around trying to field me out os it. Whats going to happen with her . It was very clear he is focused on me. Extraordinarily focused on me. Tg at the time i thought to myself, this would be the biggest new store in the country of people knew he threatened to unleash his twitter account on me and called every fox executives prior to the debate. That was not a conversation that he had given me permission at the time to reveal, nor did i think it was appropriate. I didnt want to screw up the fox news debate and even then i had a sense he might not show us he got angrier and i did not want that. Ad the we have the thursday debate and note that the rest is history. [laughter] was their bullying that followed . [inaudible] the attacks against year, that prompted not just for mr. Trump, mr. Trumps beautiful twitter account. Re you were really put under a lot of pressure. I would say there was an at attempt to olene. If you look at the definition of bullying in the dictionary, it talks about obtaining a desired effect. And he did not obtain the desired effect. But it is a credit to my team at the fio that he did it because it was hard to hold the line night after night after nightiny and not cover him too harshly because my life was being threatened. Im not cover him to gently h because they wanted him to stop the nonsense or to please him. I made a promise to the audience after he came after me and after me in august that it would continue to cover him without fear or favor which is a line from the New York Times 100 years ago, but it still works as a journalistic principle. I had a team of people that help me with that. The point i tried to me in the point i want others to know right now and one of the reasons i included all of this in the book is when donald trump comes after you, it isnt just atw tweet. Its like wow, he is tweaking about her. I understand hes a fighter. He really is a fighter and a counterpuncher. I get all that. Even then coming in such power that a single tweet couldleash unleash in somebodys life. Im not even a civilian. Im a journalist. I would say he put me on the Playing Field when i belong on the sidelines. We cant have President Trump pulling people out of the stands and doing this to them because he criticized them because most people dont work for a company detonates a billion dollars a year and can hire a roundtheclock security for somebody like me. Ive been under armed guard for 16 months and my children have been under armed guard. It is not an appropriate price to pay for hard hitting[app journalism. [applause] do you were a common train to comment that ms era in which people suggested in the most extreme version of what youve been subjected to, but every journalist i know whos coverede this campaign has had some mild form of what youve been through . There will be a knock on effect, which means the powers that be are not held to account in the way they should be. I should point out this doesnt come from the individual politician. What happens when a politician turns on you. Is it then all of their followers turn on you, too . It is an army had been in that position before comment besieged by attacks. If youre a woman besieged by little misogynistic attacks, it do. I do worry about younger reporters and reporters of the place with very little means. It costs a lot of money to have a roundtheclock security. That cant go on forever. At some point the security has to go the other way and you cano keep footing that bill. We have to accept the reality of that rant. The vast majority of donald Trump Supporters are not at all this way. Not at all. In fact, i have millions have been watching the kelley fio every night. And i know that there are so many people out there who say about donald trump and i love you too. I dont like what he said about you and maybe they say i dont really like your first question to him, that they can hold those two ideas in their head. Its that far corner of the internet that really enjoys nastiness and threat. Unfortunately, there is a man who works for donald trump whose topic is to stir these people. And that man needs to stop doing that. S his name is dan sabino. [applause] the internet is a nastyfa place. The fact that its anonymous somehow allows people to be that much more vicious. People had to put names to things they write, they would p write half the staff. You can avert to some extent the one across as over nonphysical threat come you have to start paying attention. Do you watch at home whenn, its broadcast later . Back later on the dvr . Not usually. I dont get home until around 11 30, midnight. If im lucky my husband doug is still awake and we are having a glass of wine and well talk t about her day and well talk about her kids. We will talk about how the show went to it i dont usually watch it unless theres something i thought that was bad on it. Then i usually watch it before the fox news. They turn on the tivo. We screwed data. Whenever you felt imposter syndrome and how did you overcome it . Well, thats an interesting question. Confid i feel like i havent really had huge selfconfidence problems in my life. Im not somebody whos like i have no confidence. I need to be built. Thats a gift to my parents realism with me, the radical honesty. I never had an experience with others could something none of us had this really assumed i was mediocre at most they never turned that it is better than mediocre, thats great. Ill pursue this. But i would say when i was a voyeur, i was definitely not the smartest lawyer and the banks. I was up against these Harvard Law School graduate. People were first in their class and those people a special brains. They just do. So i would just work 10 times harder than anybody so that i could hang. In a dead herring. I was right there with them, but it was exhausting. I would say socially, i dont know how i want to put this. I have some insecurities socially. I read in the book about how Sheryl Sandberg and i became friends and she knew i was going out for the fortunes most powerful womens conference and she wasnt going to be there, but she wanted me to need alloi these great women who she knew. Im going to connect to via email and you should make you should make this a minute of either friday night before the saturday conference. Okay, great. These are powerful and internal luminaries in business. Now comes a time where im supposed to walk in the bar and made up with the women. Im walking through comic again again im thinking to myself, no one is going to stop it because they dont really want me. Thats what im thinking to myself. Has this ever happened to you . One of the problems is people look at somebody like me now and think that its never happened to her. We are all the same on some basic level. We all have the same social challenges we go through or wor challenges her doubts. I want to the buyer. Nobody stops me and i actually had to work up the courage to walk back through the bar the other way and once again nobody stopped me. Thats it. I can check a box. And then, i was disappointed in myself that i didnt try harder to make a connection. The next day i sat like this at the conference and she interviewed me. And i told that story. And all the women are supposed to meet up with were in theextr audience. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. My female lead up with all those been insane we didnt see you. We would have loved to have seet you. Lets pick another day. It was so sincere and i believed it. And i thought shit. Sometimes you or your worst enemy. Sometimes i think that may have. You talk in the book about going to therapy and its related to this because i think theres a bit where you say that you wanted to be invulnerable and that laymen he realized women surround themselves with other women who project only strengthen no humanity. I think it was roger ailes who b said you were trying to be too perfect. I really think if youre faking it, everybodys going to know. Do you have to learn something. This is sort of the moment o the book to begin in the decision to settle for her in my life. Wimax market herself. Ey it doesnt mean more money or more good. It means more for herself. But ive got the fox says. Id made to broadcast television as a professional living and the messages i started to come into me from all different circles with the same. First i had a negative expense of someone of the fox news bureau, a oneman and breakins solved it right after ithat your happened. He was always my mentor and kind and he pulled me in and said you know what your problem is . T youre just as vulnerable as everybody else come everybody else, that you project your vulnerability. People think they can hurt you or they try to and they do it with impunity. Roger ailes headed had me up to his office. Now who is the real you. I was like what you talking about . It is still the post bullying me with a protective shell i made. You cant hurt me. I find it screw you. I am strong. This is the first time somebody was asking me to take off the shell, which was scary. And then, i was seeing a therapist because the risk of literary living my first husband, who for the record i have a lovely relationship with today. He remarried, had three kids. I remarried had three kids. I was struggling with that decision. A study to see a therapist referred to the book as the lady amy, who saved me. And she offered me the same challenge. He same she was seeing the same thing. She wanted you to go to a womens group. She wanted to see her one time a week and i was like how screwed up at night . Twice a week . I was already on tv so theyre going to be like that making kelley from fox news is so screwed up. The womens group is great. It was amazing. They were so brutally honest. I was honest of them back. Ab it is extraordinary and i write about this in more detail in the book. When enough facts are going out for a drink and they didnt ask me to go with them. My feelings arso hurt. Am i the only one who feels like they dont want me . Maybe theres something about me that they dont want. I went to the womens group to say they were right outside ofhe my door, talking about the happy hour they didnt ask me. I thought i was going to get a soft shoulder to cry on, but as i write in settle for more, what i got even more was honesty. The one woman in the group through tears said to me, iu wouldnt have invited you be there. [laughter] i was like why . Ke she barely even know me. And she told me why. She told me it was like the final exclamation point on what ive heard from brent and roger and what i was starting to sense in my own life, which was what you project is offputting and kind of intimidating and not that likable. And she said honestly, if i sat next to you, i feel like i would have nothing to relate to and use that you never have a bad hair day. Uis have it together. You are little miss perfect, which is one of the chapter titles. For so many as i wouldve heard that and i wouldve been like good, it is working. And that year, 2005 in may 2006 was the beginning of my recognition that that was not working for me and it was a very selfdefeating defense mechanism i have been using for years. I am happy to tell you that through a lot of hard work, i did get the shell off and i believe its the reason i found out, my husband and i have three kids attend that i have now. Its the reason i have true friendships and my life now in relationships i struggled withit earlier and i also absolutely believe it the secret to my success as a broadcaster. [applause] which brings us to this question. Your same suppose. How do you maintain your composure . Shes really not. Shes a bit of a mass. I have learned to control my temper. Im Irish Catholic so i have a temporary. The other half is italian. By Makeup Artist coming to get to know the book, shes no shrinking violet. Unable to control my temper. That is the key. It is okay to feel emotional or feel tears coming on, but you have to play, and the same is true when youre angry. All have moments on the. Im sure ill think of some or all things dont get angry. Dont get angry. But i am angry. Dont show your anger. So i can do that. Im not a monkey. I dont have to act on all my instincts. I can sort of talk myself and walk myself through it and so can you. Practice. Roger ailes has been harboringou around the edge of the conversation. Another revelation you have in the book that attacked again for the first time mr. Relationship with roger. They should play now, when you first met roger he was a great mentor to you. This is hard to tell somebody youre trying to be too perfect and you got to change in order to really connect but we think youre great. So he was responsible for launching her career. But the relationship changed. I felt it was important to leave out the good things about roger in the book, even though chapter 24 as it has become known in my circle, with mys friends and family come in the second to last shot here waspte added late because the scandal broke late and then i had a decision to make. Do i go back and scrub the book of any kind references to him . Because i too was learning about him when i was writing chapter 24. In the end i thought that is dishonest because roger ailes is not all bad. Hes not all good. Honest the long and short of a daze and honestly in a way that is the chapter of which i am almost w most proud is the one i worked the hardest on. I wrote that chapter and i rewrote that chapter and rewrote the chapter about a thousand times. Every word in that chapter has been pored over by me, by my husband, doug and some Close Friends who had dared to show i to. So you will see the complete picture when you read it. I urge you to do that because i made sure to tell the whole story there in context that ive in context could have done all these interviews that a bit annoying. Were they just want to punch you. Like biting your come forward earlier. Its like you know what, can i swear here . Fuck you for saying that. [applause] you dont get to ask me why i didnt come forward until you ask me whether there is a safe avenue for reporting that my company and the only answer to that is yes but you asked me that next question. [applause] so that the headline rate there. The story as i joined fox news has made dream job. But only been working parttime in television. He hired me, gave me a great opportunity to 12 months to make tenure he called me to new york, sat me down, give me a bunch of great advice including now who is the real you. And the untold part of that meeting and others like it was they would be coupled with highly inappropriate references. In the beginning, listen, i dont speak the queens english as you come to see. Get that . That was for you. Last nights im glad you thought you had to make sure i got it. Ter] last night i also have a bawdy sense of humor. I dont offend that easily. My mom, my nana, they look dirty jokes. I dont offend easily. In part, i was like okay, dont be too uptight. And then he would cross these lines where you are like that is inappropriate by any measure. You know when that has happened. In the book, listen, i couldve filled four pages of the comments he made. I didnt want to go there. I included enough so you can decide for yourself whether its Sexual Harassment. I submit to you it was unambiguous because they dont want to be told. To want to see the evidence and judge for themselves. It is a terrifying six months because i understood my careerli was on the line. I knew two things. I knew there was no way i was going to do anything with them and i knew its not because of appearance. Its because of integrity. And i knew that it is very likely this is going to end disastrously because i assumed at some point is going to escalate to physical attempt to be with me and i would have to reject them outright which is the one thing i didnt want to have to do. I was dancing the dance where it was like back to work. So anyway. And that worked okay for me and i could get out of there. All the women are shaking their heads yes. Guys have such a different reaction because im going to say 90 , maybe thats too high, i would then have it. This in one way, shape or form. A lot of them are like wow,nate really . Anyway, did culminate in a physical attempt to be with me in his office. Ive been with the company for 18 months by that point. Im not the make and kelley have today. I have no power. I mean zero. He was on the cover of industry magazine is the most powerful men in this. I didnt want to blow up my relationship with him. I was doing well at fox news. I was performing well. I was earning their stripes. I wanted that to be the standard to which i was judged. As soon as they have the physical confrontation in this office and i did not do anything, they ran out of this office. H i hired a lawyer. And for the record, i did tell his supervisor, which is what you are supposed to do. An the long story made short his years went by and i would look for other women. Ultimately years later i found one, but hers that happened around the time might have happened and ive convinced myself based on what my supervisor had told me that hes not a bad man. Hes just written. He might be having marital difficulties. Gretchens lawsuit had, i wasnt sure about that one for reasons we dont need to go into. But the allegations that hit later that day, three women came forward anonymously in a new soon as i saw that. I knew. And then i had a decision topany make. Had because ultimately the companycn had said they were going toly al conduct an internal review and somebody told me roger was working to them at to them at every view to only a smallwi circle of people who had worked directly with gretchen and i knew it would mean. The onair talent. Not me, not my friend. Not any of the other women who are probably speaking to the daily beast. You know, i write in the book about how i looked at thisof picture of yardley, my 5yearold and shes on top of a jungle gym. Jungle gym pages in this us white dress with red dog and shes got the blonde hair down and her sneakers on and she had fallen off the monkey bars a week earlier and cracked her head open and she had gotten stitches, but she was back up on top of the monkey bars. I am flipping through my photos at the jersey shore. Honestly, i just said this will not have been to one more woman at fox news. Other. And thats when i picked up the phone and i called lock when murdoch and i told them to get his general counsel on the phone. About wh and then i told them about what had happened to me 10 years earlier. And i told them the good and bad about my relationship with him. I didnt want them to think he was some monsters. I just wanted them to know this is real and you need to take anv honest look into his behavior. D thats all he wanted, an honest review. If there was nothing there, they would exonerate him. And if he went down, he would have only himself to blame and they believe that is where things got better. All the awful stuff about harassment during the course of this campaign and the conversation that has been long overdue because like you 90 of women have gone through something similar at some point in their lives and the tendency has always been questions like you have. Why did she come forward . Why didnt you tell somebody as if the woman was the problem. They made the victim has to stop you a discussion about how we look. Pathway included in the book, when he was harassing me, i still looked like voyeur mega and kelley. I had on my long pants and navy and gray and brown and black suits. I have not yet been fox aside. Excuse me. Even if you looked exactly as gorgeous as you do this evening, its still not okay. So to the haters who would look at those of us with our false eyelashes and she dresses and say you asked for it, you know, again, fuck you for saying that. It has nothing to do with how you dress. Its about power. A brilliant woman in canada, the writer. One of the few uplifting parts of an incredibly long and exhausting campaign was after all of these stories came out and the access Hollywood Tape came out, she set up a website. She was said please write in if you type instances of Sexual Harassment in the course of your life. Tens of thousands of women brought into her. That was the conversation that needs to be had and i hope we dont drop it. My stories at a lot of attention because i just read the book. But the Unsung Heroes of that episode are the women of fox news who dont have a primetime show, who at great risk to themselvethemselve s because no one thought he was going to get fired, found the nerve to walk in to paul weiss, the murdoch started that investigation and told their story, believing he would continue being their boss. Those women want their anonymity and i certainly would never outdone. But those are the truly courageous ones. Much harder than it sounds. Megyn has to be the kelley filed at 9 00. We could just carry on gathering. Settle for more. Ever noticed her in the process. Join a contract, you brought the book that the number one New York Times the seller. Congratulations. That is wonderful. [applause] what is the more you want now . What does megyn kelly want more of . Well, for me it is prettyitp clear. I am doing a job i love, but