It’s a fascinating comparison because superficially, they have so much in common: They’re both blonde, thin, attractive, articulate, 55+ legal experts who’ve hosted primetime Fox News TV shows.
(Of course, not all legal credentials are equal: Laura Ingraham wrote speeches for the White House, clerked for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and worked at one of America’s highest-grossing law firms, whereas Megyn Kelly’s accomplishments are more, ahem… modest.)
But one was a natural-born superstar, and the other wasn’t. You can call it charisma, personal magnetism, sex appeal, or the “it factor,” but whatever it is, Megyn Kelly’s got it in spades. The camera loves her. There’s a certain sparkle in her eyes — Zoomers call it “aura” — that Ingraham lacks.
Kelly’s curves > The Ingraham Angle.
Yet one career has followed a steady, successful trajectory, and the other is replete with peaks, valleys, triumphs, crashes, and stunning humiliations. Today, Laura Ingraham is the most-watched woman on cable TV, with 2.5 million viewers. She’s one year away from celebrating a decade-long run on primetime television — a remarkable achievement.
And Megyn Kelly is trolling Trump on YouTube, feuding with Ben Shapiro, mocking Mark Levin’s genitalia, and retweeting Candace Owens.
A few years earlier, Kelly gushed over Levin’s “brilliance” and “honesty”:
Megyn Kelly to Mark Levin:
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) May 8, 2026
"It's truly an honor to be with you. Whenever I see you I stop, whenever Mark Levin has a book I read. There is such a small collection of people who are truly brilliant and honest. You're honest to a fault.” pic.twitter.com/BgFhp8G2e5
And she even admitted to having a “crush” on Levin and being his “stalker”:
Megyn Kelly admits that she has a secret crush on Mark Levin and that she actually stalks him. pic.twitter.com/e786axzhiT
— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) March 28, 2026
Then Kelly did what she’s always done: She switched positions and became the biggest, loudest supporter of the “I Hate Mark Levin” movement.
It’s the hallmark of her career. Over and over again, her “friends” become her enemies. She went from crediting Ben Shapiro for rescuing her career when NBC fired her, and she was an unemployed “loser”:
Megyn Kelly’s career was in the trash after her first attempt to bring down President Trump. In this video, she credits Ben Shapiro for getting her “loser” ass off the couch. He helped her out of her slump- it’s why she started her show, she says.
— Ally (@AllyJKiss) April 10, 2026
Poor Megyn… she learned… pic.twitter.com/pBXcU0Ne5E
To claiming credit for Shapiro’s success:
Megyn Kelly responding to Ben Shapiro now: “Nobody knew who the heck Ben was when I started putting him on my Fox News show. And I made him a star.”
— Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) December 20, 2025
“It’s about Israel,” she says of the criticism.
Megyn Kelly Snipes Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire Layoffs: ‘I Had Been at Fox News for 16 Years Before Anyone Even Knew His Name’ | Video https://t.co/xBKOtptkkB
— TheWrap (@TheWrap) May 4, 2026
Kelly’s abrupt U-turns aren’t limited to her ex-friends and colleagues. She’s also flip-flopped on numerous hot-button issues, including transitioning young children.
When the wind blows left:
Flashback to big shot "conservative" Megyn Kelly celebrating "trans kids."@megynkelly is for sale to the highest bidder. She has ZERO integrity. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/pwgqUEtXy2
— Alan Jacoby (@AlanJacoby) March 3, 2026
When the wind blows right:
There’s no such thing as a trans kid, Chief Lies-a-Lot. They get butchered by a corrupt system that wants to make money off of sterilizing them as mere 12-yr-olds who cannot possibly consent to no future kids/no sexual pleasure. Their arms/colons get gutted to build fake… https://t.co/vjN5lbuHyB
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 19, 2025
She went from being an unapologetic anti-Islam hawk who rejected the word “Islamophobia”:
Islamophobia is a fake term made up to silence us. We’re allowed to not want Islam taking over American cities. Don’t be shamed out of that totally sensible position. https://t.co/PvBdXOTr6G
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 27, 2025
To completely switching sides, now claiming that anti-Muslim rhetoric “originates with people who are very, very pro-Israel”:
Here’s Megyn today bragging about her and Tuckers new audience of young Muslim men pic.twitter.com/pWIRNH8kT0
— WestCoast_Life (@westcoast_lyfe) May 5, 2026
She refused to apologize to Donald Trump, but offered a groveling on-air apology to NBC viewers for her comments about race-bending Halloween costumes:
It’s the one constant of her chaotic career: You’ll always find her riding high on whatever bandwagon is — for the moment — best for Megyn Kelly.
When being a fiery Fox News conservative paid her bills, Kelly played the part with gusto. When the #MeToo movement was ascending, she parlayed her role in getting Roger Ailes fired into an NBC job offer and attacked Donald Trump, and Oscar-winning beauty Charlize Theron portrayed her in the movie Bombshell. When NBC was her employer, she trashed her conservative credentials, supported trans kids, and tearfully apologized to minorities for her (mainstream) views on Halloween costumes: “I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise… This past year has been so painful for many people of color. The country feels so divided, and I have no wish to add to that pain and offense. I believe this is a time for more understanding, more love, more sensitivity and honor, and I want to be part of that.”
Then, after losing her NBC job, she reinvented herself as a Ben Shapiro clone — a conservative, pro-Israel, pro-Trump, right-wing YouTuber. She dunked on the Dems, lampooned the left, and gave the P.C. police the finger.
She was also all-in for President Trump:
Bumped into a true winner at the Super Bowl. Thank you Mr. President! pic.twitter.com/BSjdVDOtDz
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) February 10, 2025
An incredible night in Pittsburgh with President Trump. God bless him. Go vote for him! LFG America! pic.twitter.com/CngF3fEWz4
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 5, 2024
Not anymore. Shortly after Charlie Kirk’s death, she reinvented herself once again — this time as a Tucker Carlson/Candace Owens-clone who’s a critic of Israel, supports Islam, and despises those vile, nasty “neocons” like Levin and Shapiro.
And instead of calling Trump a “winner,” she now says the president is “not a moral man, he’s not the greatest husband in the world, and he’s extremely petty and thin-skinned.” Additionally, he’s “too weak” and “too gullible to see through the lies” about Iran.
According to Kelly, her latest transformation has boosted her ratings — and she’s now crushing Ben Shapiro:
Thank you to our audience for another incredible month on the @MegynKellyShow - we had 138 million views on YouTube in Feb alone - that’s twice every show on CBS News combined, 50m more than all of NBC News… and 117m more than Ben Shapiro. Just our one show with its 5 producers.…
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) March 5, 2026
Unfortunately, her math doesn’t add up:
Megyn Kelly Falsely Claims Ben Shapiro's Videos 'Have Like 500 Views' One Day After He Put Up Over 500,000 — 7x More Than She Did https://t.co/IOqwqIibAj
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) May 8, 2026
Megyn Kelly claimed on Thursday that the videos uploaded to Ben Shapiro’s YouTube channel have “like 500 views” apiece during a scornful conversation about her former friend with Tucker Carlson.
But Wednesday’s edition of Shapiro’s show actually racked up over 500,000 views on the platform, more than seven times the number Kelly’s show amassed on the same day.
After playing a clip of Shapiro arguing that the United States is winning its conflict with Iran and urging President Donald Trump to press his advantage, Kelly marveled at “the pressure Trump is under from Shapiro, [Mark] Levin,” and others.
“You wonder where the pressure’s coming from. I mean, those are clearly the spokesmen for the coalition applying pressure, but they’re not in themselves powerful figures,” replied Carlson. “I mean, Mark Levin has almost no viewers. Ben Shapiro’s going out of business.
“You look at his videos on his website, Tucker — on like his YouTube channel — each one has like 500 views!” exclaimed Kelly jubilantly.
But when Mediaite crunched the numbers:
Yet the whole basis of the conversation was faulty. Shapiro’s show from Wednesday, May 6, had tallied up 504,671 views as of Friday morning. Kelly’s show from the same day put up 69,156.
The gulf between those two figures is no outlier. Shapiro’s show from Tuesday has hauled in 511,613 views; Kelly’s brought in 147,953.
For Shapiro, his previous two shows before that racked up 568,937 and 580,851 views, respectively. Kelly accrued 74,012 and 116,451 on the same days.
On the Apple Podcast charts, Kelly (#3) comes in just ahead of Shapiro (#5) in the News category. Shapiro (#8) has Kelly (#10) beat by the same number of slots on Spotify’s version of the same chart. According to The Righting’s analysis of Q1, 2026 Castbox data, Shapiro’s podcast dwarfs all competitors in subscribers with 891,932. Kelly’s show finished third with 206,128.
Kelly protested that she was referring to Levin, not Shapiro. Even if she was, Levin’s audience on YouTube, radio, and Fox News is significantly more than 500:
[Mark Levin’s] last five YouTube videos came in at around 2,400, 258, 632, 1,800, and 4,300 views, respectively. He placed ninth in The Righting’s podcast subscriber ranking, with 82,903. Levin also hosts Life, Liberty & Levin on Fox News, which drew an average of 1.4 million viewers per show during the first quarter of 2026.
Levin’s radio show is on 150 stations, plus SiriusXM, and has 12 million weekly listeners.
Either way, Shapiro’s numbers unquestionably dwarf Kelly’s. According to Andrea Shaffer, Megyn was goosing her stats by uploading exponentially more YouTube videos — mostly shorts — whereas Shapiro’s videos are far longer:
Kelly’s higher recent view total is largely attributable to her strategy of releasing a significantly higher volume of short-form clips and YouTube Shorts compared to Shapiro.
Kelly posts far more short-form content overall, often hundreds to 1,200–1,500 Shorts and clips per month (for example, her April 2026 Shorts playlist contained roughly 1,499 videos, with May already at hundreds), frequently clipping segments from her longer episodes.
By contrast, Shapiro uploaded around 197 videos across the 30-day period, focusing more on long-form content, with his Shorts accounting for only about 11.5 million of his recent views (roughly 46% of his total). This higher short-clip output by Kelly provides important context for the view metrics and gives a more accurate picture of their content strategies.
Although Kelly, Carlson, and the Washington Post mocked Shapiro for losing 20,000 YouTube subscribers over the last 30 days, Shaffer pointed out that Kelly actually lost twice as many subscribers — 40,000 — over the same exact period.
Five years from now, ten years from now, I suspect Laura Ingraham will still be on national TV. She’s built her audience from the ground up, consistently delivering a conservative worldview. New trends will rise and fall, but her ideology is her North Star. That’s because Ingraham is a conservative first — and a “personality” second.
The same goes for Shapiro, Levin, and others.
Not so for “Me Too” Megyn Kelly, the ultimate bandwagoner. When she was at Fox News, she was a conservative. When she was at NBC, she was a racially sensitive, pro-trans liberal. When she was following Shapiro’s model, she was a pro-Israel, Trump-loving right-winger. When she switched to the Carlson/Owens’ model, she became Granny Groyper, archenemy of the neocons, hater of Israel, enemy of Trump — and a friend to Islam.
From one “Me Too” movement to the next, Kelly is our industry’s lagging indicator of political trends. Don’t listen to her to see where we’re going next, because that’s not her strength.
But if you need to know which way the wind blew yesterday, “Me Too” Megyn is our Girl Friday.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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