Megyn Kelly's Startling Immigration Admission Subverts Months Of Fox Fearmongering, Including Her Own

Kelly Called Executive Action “Amnesty” In July, Now Admits It's A Loaded Term Exploited By Conservatives

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Fox News host Megyn Kelly undermined months of claims from her network peers when she admitted to guest Jennice Fuentes that President Obama's upcoming executive action does not constitute “amnesty.” Kelly, who has herself used the “amnesty” label to discuss the president's coming order, acknowledged that the term is a dog whistle conservative media have exploited to stoke opposition to immigration reform.

Obama is set to announce a new set of executive actions that will allow as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants to apply for protection from deportation based on the time they have been in the U.S. and their family ties.

On the November 19 edition of The Kelly File, Kelly acknowledged that the president is not actually pursuing “amnesty,” because “amnesty is citizenship and that's not what [Obama] is talking about.” Kelly also explained how conservatives purposely misuse the word “amnesty” for political gain: “That's a hot-button term that the right uses to sort of get people upset.”

Kelly has invoked amnesty to warn against the action, as recently as July. According to Nexis transcripts of the July 30 edition of The Kelly File, Kelly said that Obama may be preparing to “drop a bomb like amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants.”

KELLY: And we should tell the viewers that this Democratic push saying they're gonna impeach him, they're gonna impeach him is working. They pulled in two million dollars just over the past weekend by these blast e-mail alerts saying impeachment. But the question is, I mean, Boehner came out today and said we're not gonna impeach him. OK? So, just stop that. However, what's true today may not be true tomorrow. And there's a report over the weekend from the Associated Press suggesting the president may be getting ready to use an executive action to basically give amnesty or some sort of massive provision for up to 5 million illegal immigrants in this country. And what would that do?

[...]

KELLY: Joining us now with more is Andy McCarthy, author of Faithless Execution, Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment. And let me just start, I want to get to the book and the controversy over the word impeachment and how people circle this back to you in a minute. But the notion that the president would come out, sort of get people -- the Democrats would come out and get people saying, impeachment, that's crazy. What -- that's crazy. Impeachment, come on. And then drop a bomb like amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants to set the Republicans up to then say, now that's impeachable, but they've already laid the foundation for how crazy the notion of impeachment is. I mean, if that's what's actually happening here, pretty sophisticated political strategy, is it not?

[...]

KELLY: So, if the president wants to go ahead, if he's confident now he's not gonna get impeached because of everything we've discussed, what do you think would happen if he granted amnesty for five million people?

For months, Fox has labeled the president's plan amnesty. On November 13, Fox host Bill O'Reilly said Obama's executive action “is essentially an amnesty for millions of people.” Earlier in the month, Fox host Sean Hannity said that “immigration law does not allow for the amnesty that the president wants to grant.” In early August, Fox co-host Jedediah Bila called Obama's plan “executive amnesty to millions of people.”