Megyn Kelly's Brutal Criticism Of Kristi Noem's Looks Is So Ironic

After Megyn Kelly left mainstream media (likely to never return), her rhetoric and attacks seem to have only escalated. On her self-titled SiriusXM podcast and talk show, Kelly has come after everyone from Kamala Harris to Meghan Markle to Taylor Swift. However, she's also targeted Kristi Noem. Kelly's a Donald Trump supporter, so attacks on Noem, former Republican Governor of South Dakota and Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security, are more unexpected. And one of her lines of attack for Noem concentrated, somewhat inexplicably, on Noem's looks. Noem is one of those women in Donald's orbits who looks like Melania Trump, but we haven't seen Kelly coming after them.

Here's what happened. In a May 2024 episode of "The Megyn Kelly Show," Kelly explained all the things that she found so distasteful about Noem's appearance. Despite starting the segment by saying, "I'm not opposed to fake hair at all," and saying she even put in extensions sometimes, Kelly went after Noem for her hair; "She's like Lady Godiva with the extensions down here," Kelly said, via TikTok. Melania Trump has had her own hair extensions fails exposed without Kelly saying anything about it, so it seems like there's more going on with Kelly's attack on Noem.

Megyn Kelly didn't stop her complaints there. She went on to note that it seemed like Noem had Botox and filler. "It's like a lot in her face," said Kelly, per TikTok. "She did a weird ad for capped teeth. ... She's trying to be some sort of glam queen instead of a respected leader." Kelly's hardly the first to question if Noem's had plastic surgery with her MAGA makeover. But regardless of what you think of Noem's politics or her take on glamour, Kelly's claims don't really make sense. There shouldn't be any reason why a woman can't be both an effective leader and someone who likes to look nice, and calling her out for that simply makes Kelly look petty. There are also those who are suspicious that Kelly has had plastic surgery herself, so it would seem to be particularly hypocritical for her to be railing against someone for doing something that she's also done.

Months later, Kelly acknowledged that she still didn't like Noem, but that she would support her as Department of Homeland Security Secretary. One major gripe (along with her choice of styling, apparently) that Kelly has with Noem is that Noem wrote that she'd met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in her book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward." That detail was later retracted (the meeting never happened).