OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly praised Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for how he handled an interview with NBC reporter Dasha Burns who, she said, was looking to score points with “her leftist base” during the questioning.
“Truly, it was a masterclass in how to handle this nonsense… He saw her coming from a mile away, and he’s obviously way smarter than she is…Dasha Burns, pick somebody else,” Kelly said during her SiriusXM show on Friday.
“Try someone dumber because he’s literally written the book on wokeness and what they’re trying to do on the left… One of the things that struck me was here she is clearly trying to perform for her leftist base over on NBC,” Kelly continued.
“And you can see like the plaintiff whining: ‘What about this? What about Jussie Smollett? What about white supremacy? And the Anti-Defamation League?!’ And it was it’s so nice to hear a politician who’s done his homework who knows that the ADL is a joke of an institution that only ever criticizes people on the right,” she added.
“So good for Vivek for knowing that there’s absolutely no stock to be put into this group at shoving it back in her whiny little unprofessional face. Dasha [Burns], you embarrassed yourself. I think you got shamed after your John Fetterman interview because you told the truth about what a mess he was in that particular sit-down. And ever since, you’ve been trying to make it up to your leftist base to prove you’re one of them… Good luck in your future journalism career,” she noted.
The interview with Burns was contentious as the Republican candidate said he would not perform some “catechism” of condemning white supremacy.
“Let’s talk about white supremacy and what happened last night for a moment, ’cause when you were talking to reporters last night, you called white supremacy a myth. When someone asked you about Dylann Roof, you said you didn’t know who that is. Have you looked up what happened in 2015?” the reporter said.
“Yeah. Yeah, look, I said this last night. Invidious racial discrimination is wrong, no matter how it happens. But if a Washington Post reporter is asking me almost like a catechism, whatever question I said, ‘I’m against invidious racial discrimination, whatever form it takes,’ but says, ‘Do you denounce white supremacy,’ it’s incumbent on us to define what white supremacy is,” Ramaswamy said.
“And I wrote my book Woke, Inc., and I’ve written about the detailed understanding of what the popular understanding of these terms have come to mean. Do you believe punctuality is a vestige of white supremacy, Dasha?” the candidate asked.
“’Cause if you don’t, then you have a disagreement about many of the people who are defining those terms, or the written word, or the nuclear family. These aren’t my words. These are the words of intellectual proponents from Ibram Kendi, to the Ayana Pressleys, to BLM that have said these are vestiges of white supremacy,” he said.
“I’ve never denied that racism is a problem. If you listen to the response I gave to that Black pastor, my whole point is racism has been a major problem for most of our national history, but we’re getting close to the Promised Land that Martin Luther King envisioned. We’re as darn close to it as we ever have been,” he added at another point.
“And so, what bothers the heck out of me is it’s right when we’re close to that Promised Land. Martin Luther King said it. “I may not get there with you,” and he didn’t get there with us. But I think it desecrates the legacy of our Civil Rights Movement, desecrates the legacy of Martin Luther King that right when we get closest to the point of having racial equality, and gender equality, and even opportunities for minorities of many types,” he said.
“Are we perfect? No. But are we as close as we’ve ever been? Yes, we have. To then obsess over systemic racism, to then obsess over white guilt on otherwise, we’re creating new waves of racism, Dasha, that we otherwise would have avoided right when we’re closest to having achieved what even the proponents of the Civil Rights Movement would have dreamed of,” Ramaswamy added.
