The reviewers are in about Megyn Kelly's interview with Alex Jones and, predictably, people are split.
Members of the alt-right like, Jack Posobiec are making common cause with progressives like Lily Herman and Women's March in denouncing the interview, albeit for reasons that couldn't be further removed from one another.
Kelly earned plaudits for a job well done from Andrea Mitchell and John Podhoretz, among others, while several people are citing a recent Politico article that gave her a glowing review.
That article, written by Jack Shafer, argues that "when Kelly’s show finally aired, she took the mendacious Jones apart in such a textbook manner you had to wonder what all the shouting had been about. The Jones pattern, she said at the segment’s top, is making 'reckless accusations followed by equivocations and excuses' when questioned."
He rebuked a subset of Kelly's critics for the "unspoken assumption that instead of reporting on the politically deformed—people like Sen. Joe McCarthy, George Lincoln Rockwell, Gov. George Wallace, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, Alex Jones, and others—the press should quarantine such figures from readers' and viewers’ eyes lest their contagion spread." As Shafer put its, "Surely it makes more sense to deal straight on with tin-pots like Jones than cover our eyes and ears in hopes he’ll vanish by himself."
The highlight of Kelly's interview with Jones was when she confronted him on his promotion of unfounded conspiracy theories, ranging from Pizzagate (the belief that there was a child sex ring operating out of a Washington pizzeria) and the notion that the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings were some kind of hoax to the claim that Chobani yogurt employed "migrant rapists."
As a form of damage control, Jones leaked a recording of pre-interview calls with Kelly, although his version of events didn't discredit any of Kelly's questioning. The highlight seemed to be Kelly trying to make Jones feel comfortable that she would be fair to him, which hardly contradicted the interview that was eventually aired.
More unsettling, perhaps, was a recent video posted by Yashar Ali of New York Magazine, which showed Kelly sending a softball question to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In that question, she says that the people of Russia praise Putin for "returning dignity to Russia" and "returning Russia to a place of respect," then asking him if being in the country's leadership since 2000 "has taken any sort of personal toll on you?"
SCOOP: I obtained the unedited footage of @megynkelly's Putin interview. Her last question is troubling. My story: https://t.co/ZNqZMdwIM1 pic.twitter.com/cR9nTi8SBX
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) June 18, 2017
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