Megyn Kelly, a Fox News host, downplays the severity of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse. She deflects the backlash onto transgender women, according to Them. Kelly shares an X post from Libs of TikTok, a right-wing propaganda platform, that objects to the appointment of Giselle Byrd, a Black trans activist, to the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.
“Giselle Byrd is a highly respected leader in the Boston arts community who is committed to the advancement of women,” Karissa Hand, Maura Healey, Governor of Massachusetts’, press secretary told the Herald. “The Commission has a bipartisan history of having LGBT representation, as Governor Baker appointed the first transgender woman to the Commission in 2016.”
“I encourage each of you to lead with love,” Byrd says. “and be reminded that we are all living through a moment that our ancestors and trans ancestors fought for, and it is now our turn to carry the torch that they left lit for us.”
Byrd’s appointment was the subject of a Facebook post by the Massachusetts Family Institution, a conservative group, on the same day that Epstein’s emails were made public. Right-wing media outlets continue to use trans people as a scapegoat.
“Men make the best women, we all know that,” Kelly writes condescendingly, quoting the Libs of TikTok post.
Racist and transphobic replies filled the comments on Kelly’s post. However, many of them also referenced comments she made on her Sirius XM program, The Megyn Kelly Show, including those regarding Jeffrey Epstein.
“(H)e liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby,” Kelly says, claiming that Epstein was not a pedophile, but an ephebophile (an adult who has sexual attraction to adolescents in the 15-19 year old range. “There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
“Are you still justifying the sexual abuse of 15 year old girls but not 5 year old girls?” Fred Guttenberg, a father of a victim of the 2018 Parkland school shooting asks Kelly on X. “Asking for all who are over your bullshit.”
Byrd was the executive director of The Theater Offensive, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump’s administration’s anti-“gender ideology” policy, and the first Black trans woman in the U.S. to lead a regional theater company, according to Them.
Photos courtesy social media
