It should be obvious to a woman who was paid $30 million not to appear on a network that she’s one of the lucky ones.
But podcaster and MAGA mouthpiece Megyn Kelly apparently lacks much self-awareness, or else she wouldn’t have exhorted Americans to be patient with President Trump’s tariff policy because, well, you owe him — never mind your fluctuating retirement accounts and higher prices on household goods.


“He’s asking everybody to be a little patient. I think, given the guy’s success in the first term, economically, we should give it to him,” Kelly said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
On her Sirius/XM podcast Kelly, who makes a reported $5 million annually, doubled down.
“Why don’t we give him a chance? Why don’t we see how this changes things?” Kelly cajoled. “Trump,” she said, “is of a different ilk,” a man who truly “cares” about “working class manufacturers of America.”
“He’s earned the right to our patience, and I’m prepared to provide it,” she continued.
Kelly was speaking to an audience composed largely of people who don’t make millions a year. Only 9 percent of Americans make at least a million a year. Most live paycheck to paycheck, so asking them to be patient is asking a lot — especially from someone who lives in a $10 million home.
Trump’s sweeping tariffs on nearly all imports went into effect last weekend, hitting U.S. friends and foes alike, with China being hit with 104 percent levy — increased to 125 percent by early afternoon Wednesday — and the European Union 20 percent.
On Wednesday, Trump announced a 90-day pause of the “reciprocal” tariffs for all the world except China, prompting a 2,700 point surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the biggest one-day jump in five years. Last Thursday, when the tariffs were announced, saw the biggest single day stock market drop since March of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.
Tariffs on, the stock market plummets. Tariffs paused, market rebounds. It’s as if the market is trying to tell observers something.
Those dramatic swings illustrate how the simple back and forth over the tariffs — Trump has now paused them three times — can be as destabilizing as the tariffs themselves, Rob Haworth, a senior investment strategy director with U.S. Bank Asset Management, said in a statement to Newsweek.
“Uncertainty is the driver around the market’s recent selloff,” Haworth wrote. “There are growing concerns about potential economic weakness, due in part to tariff impacts.”
If the tariffs are reinstated, the average working-class family stands to pay an extra $2000, according to a Joint Economic Committe report, released by Democrat congressman Don Beyer
“The trade war Trump is igniting will weaken our economy and cause chaos in our marketplace as Americans pay the cost in the form of higher prices on everyday items,” Beyer said.
Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, fears Trump’s tariffs could prove even costlier than Beyer’s estimates.
“While our report does not touch on this, these tariffs win that badly harms American producers,” Baker, citing numbers from the Budget Lab at Yale University, told USA Today. “And they will fail to achieve any of the pretextual objectives Trump has stated for imposing them. Less than two months into his term, Trump is running the economy into the ground and raising a real and growing risk of a recession.”
Kelly suggested her listeners ignore the economists who are predicting “all doom and gloom” including “stagflation, where inflation goes up and the economy slows and eventually we could see job losses,” Kelly said.
“They should trust Trump instead. There’s no way he’s going to let a bunch of economic pain rain down on the country for the next three and a half years without doing anything about it,” Kelly insisted. “He’s talking about short-term pain for long-term gain.”
She said she saw the backlash coming.
“It’s almost a good sign, in a way, that every rich person I know is upset,” she said. “If you are somebody who’s well off, perhaps your immediate circles in the Hamptons aren’t exactly the proper focus group for whether these things are a good idea.”
But don’t worry, Trump won’t let down those rich friends in the Hamptons, Kelly reassures.
“Trump, in his soul, is a rich guy with rich friends who loves rich people and successful American stories,” she said. “So the last thing he wants is to lose his entire base of rich friends because he’s devastated their fortunes with this move.”
Kelly’s tone mirrored that of the president, who told NBC News he “couldn’t care less” if car manufacturers raise their prices, even as one major manufacturer was already laying off hundreds of workers.
“I hope they raise their prices,” he said, “Because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars.”
Kelly, once a Trump critic, has emerged as one of his biggest cheerleaders. In a recent interview with The New York Times she thanked the president for attacking her personally after she asked him, at a 2015 debate, about disparaging comments he had made about women.
“I’ve been very public about thinking he went too far.” she said in reference to the personal attacks he made against her that led Kelly to hire armed security. “That’s how I felt at the time, and if I could go back and undo it, I would. But I have a better perspective on why it happened now. It was actually an important piece of his rise within the Republican Party in the primary, and it just showed people what a fighter he was.”
She continued, “The same guy who got up bloodied in Butler, Pennsylvania, was the guy who was like a dog with a bone with me, who wouldn’t let it go. He’s got this fighter instinct, and if you cross him or if you do something he finds unjust, he will stay on you until he’s satisfied the thing’s been resolved to his satisfaction.”
On Tuesday, Kelly concluded her rallying cry with a tribute to the man himself.
The president will do “what he thinks is right and what he promised he would do,” a sentiment that has been a “lifelong core principle of his,” she said.
Reaction on social media was to be as expected, with MAGA accounts championing her call for sacrifice while critics express wonder at Kelly’s chutzpah.
“Didn’t foresee MGK going off the rails like this,” wrote one user on X. “What a spectacular disappointment.”
“If she swaps bank accounts with me, I promise to be patient,” added another.