06 June, 2017
Megyn Kelly's much-anticipated, one-on-one exclusive interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin aired Sunday night on NBC.
Putin claimed that Russian Federation has a preference in an election but only reacts to the "political direction" that the United States seems to be heading in.
"This is a transferral, I repeat, of internal political squabbling in the United States onto the global arena", he said. "I didn't even really talk to him.That's the extent of my acquaintance with Mr. Flynn", Putin said.
Putin's comments were translated from Russian into English for the broadcast. He also attacked Kelly and the press for raising those questions.
The FBI is now conducting an investigation, led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, into Russian attempts to interfere in the last US presidential election, including whether there could have been any connection to associates of the Trump campaign. "There were no meetings", he said. "No proposal like that came to me", he said.
"No meetings between Ambassador Kislyak and anybody from the Trump campaign?" she asked. And out of this sensation, you turned it into a weapon of war against the current president.
In the preview, the Kremlin chief was asked about the nature of his relationship with the retired US Army general who is the subject of several investigations at home. "But we will absolutely not accept when these sorts of things are used as an instrument of political conflict", he said.
Asked whether "you have something damaging on our president?"
"Have you all lost your senses over there?"
"Do you think that from all over the world or from the United States the ambassador reports to me every day who he meets with or what they discuss there?" For me, this is just fantastic.
The interview was taped on Friday in St. Petersburg, shortly after she moderated a St. Petersburg International Economic Forum panel in which Putin displayed his trademark combativeness. "CNN agreed, dubbing the debut "low-key" and saying the Putin interview was" theatrical enough but largely news-free".
Kelly, who was a prime-time star on Fox News Channel, moved to NBC at the start of this year. There was also a cute, if uncharacteristic, segment dubbed "At the kids table", featuring children answering questions about why we're so uncivil these days. She'll try out the Oprah bit next Sunday whens she interviews sportscaster Erin Andrews.
Sunday just wasn't Megyn Kelly's night.
The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik said NBC might "finally have a winning newsmagazine", saying the program "sharply focused in content and storytelling on women at a time of cultural change in terms of gender and power". Frankly, it felt as if anyone could have hosted the program.
The program, which also featured a segment on saving African elephants and an interview with a whistleblower who exposed fraud at a drug company, attracted 6.1 million viewers, coming in behind both the 60 Minutes re-run and the National Basketball Association finals game.
