Megyn Kelly has back from vacation for two days and crushed Rachel Maddow in ratings both nights — which might seem like an act of vengeance, if you caught a misleading headline on Breitbart last week.
Maddow edged “The Kelly File” in the key news demo of adults age 25-54 a few times this month… when Kelly was on vacation. Omitting that italicized fact, Breitbart ran a story with the headline: “Rachel Maddow Catches Megyn Kelly in Key Demo as MSNBC Surges.”
The headline was misleading, as nobody caught Kelly: Her chair was filled last week by guests Martha MacCallum, Sandra Smith and Trish Regan.
When your humble correspondent pointed this out on Twitter, Breitbart quickly changed its headline to, “Rachel Maddow Catches ‘The Kelly File’ in Key Demo as MSNBC Surges.”
Breitbart also added to its story, noting that Kelly was on vacation – a key tidbit that was not in the original version.
Stephen K. Bannon, who just became CEO of Trump’s campaign, was previously executive chairman of Breitbart News.
Since the August 2015 debate in which Kelly upset Trump by asking him about his treatment of women, the site has accused her of flirting with Michael Moore and failing to ask Marco Rubio tough questions. It has also compared her to Kim Kardashian, said she called Trump “Lord Voldemort” and squeezed the word “bimbo” into a variety of headlines.
On Monday, Kelly returned from vacation to average 538,000 in the demo compared to only 393,000 for Maddow.
When it comes to total viewers, Kelly topped Maddow by a million viewers. “The Kelly File” averaged 2.8 million viewers compared to 1.8 million for Maddow, but Fox News tends to win the total viewer crown even when Kelly is on vacation.
Tuesday was Kelly’s second night back and she averaged 456,000 in the demo while Maddow averaged 415,000. Again, Kelly won total viewers by more than a million people.