Donald Trump told Fox News host Megyn Kelly she had done him a “favor” with her tough questioning during an August 2015 Fox News GOP Debate, saying she prepared him for the rough and tumble of debates to come.
Trump, who was sharply critical of Kelly’s questioning after the debate, recently sat for an interview with Fox New anchor that will air next week. Kelly appeared on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” Thursday night to promote the interview.
“I’ll tell you what: In a certain way you did me a favor, because I felt so good about having gotten through,” Trump said in a clip of the Kelly interview aired on the Tonight Show. “I said if I could get through this debate with those questions, I can get through anything.”
Kelly said her outreach to Trump to do the interview was part of a peacemaking operation commenced as their feud abated.
“There was a lull in the tweets. I had wanted to go speak with him. I wanted him to stop,” she told Fallon. “I knew if I could speak with him face to face, I could get him to stop. I don’t know what his motivations were for the whole dustup.”
She said that at first Trump declined the interview request, but he agreed the second time she reached out. In an unexpected twist, she actually went down to Trump Tower to have that meeting with The Donald.
“I walked down there one morning, into Trump Tower, past a bunch of eyeballs that were as big as saucers,” she said to laughter.
She then gave a brief description of what the interview, which will air Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Fox during her “Megyn Kelly Presents” special, will entail.
“We didn’t address anything that had happened [between us] … because I was looking to move past that … We had a normal conversation as candidate and reporter,” she said. “And then we sat down for an interview. In the interview, we do talk about what happened.”
The appearance ended with a brief clip from Kelly’s Trump interview. Here is a transcript of the back-and-forth between the two as they discussed that first GOP debate in August that ignited their feud:
Kelly: “You said you didn’t feel the moderators had been nice. But do you think it’s a journalist’s role to be ‘nice’ to presidential candidates at a debate?”
Trump: “Fair, I don’t care if they’re nice.”
Kelly: “But you used the word nice.”
Trump: “No, I don’t think so. I might’ve said they weren’t nice, but that doesn’t mean they had to be nice.”
Kelly: “It’s not a cocktail party.”
