We had the rumors yesterday. We have the confirmation today. NBC News announced Friday that Megyn Kelly has been fired from the network, putting an end to "Megyn Kelly Today." The program lasted 13 months.
"Megyn Kelly Today is not returning," an NBC News spokesperson said. "Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other TODAY co-anchors.”
Kelly outraged viewers earlier this week during a panel on controversial Halloween costumes. She and her fellow panelists were discussing cultural misappropriation, when Kelly suggested that blackface had been "okay" when she was a kid.
"What is racist?" she asked. "Because you get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. When I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up like a character."
Those statements caused her own NBC colleagues to turn on her. Anchor Craig Melvin called her comments "racist" and "ignorant" and didn't seem to have much patience for her initial apology to the staff.
Megyn Kelly issued an apology in an email to colleagues for a controversial comment she made on her show Tuesday about blackface. pic.twitter.com/0MJUvA1tjZ
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2018
She offered a fuller apology to the nation at large, in which she said, through tears, that she did not mean to hurt anyone, let alone further divisions in the country.
Still, the damage had been done and now the third hour of "TODAY" is again up for grabs.
Interestingly, the network did not say that they were parting with Kelly for good.
"Discussions about next steps are continuing," according to Kelly's lawyer Bryan Freedman.
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