Megyn Kelly Turns on Murdoch:

The former Fox News anchor blamed Rupert Murdoch for goading Trump into the Iran war — then admitted she spent 14 years making the exact same kind of mistake at his network.

Megyn Kelly has spent weeks criticizing the Iran war. On Tuesday, she stopped pulling punches about who she thinks is responsible for it — and turned the fire on her former boss.

"He'll be dead soon," Kelly said of 95-year-old News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch on her YouTube show, citing Bloomberg News reporting that Murdoch was privately pressing President Donald Trump to strike Iran. "He won't have to live with the consequences of what he's doing."

The line ricocheted across media circles within hours. But what made the segment remarkable wasn't just the attack on Murdoch — it was what Kelly said about herself in the same breath.

A Fox Anchor's Self-Indictment

Kelly, who spent 14 years at Fox News before departing in 2017, opened the segment with a declaration that amounted to a public confession.

"I spent 14 years of Fox News cheerleading these wars," she said, according to Newsweek's account of the broadcast. "I mean cheerleading them. … We accepted all the administration's bulls*** that was being shoved down our throats about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's now since come out that they just lied about Afghanistan and the alleged successes there for years, for years. And, I refuse to be a part of that."

Kelly said she takes "full responsibility" for amplifying government talking points during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — and framed her current opposition to the Iran war as a direct corrective. Newsweek reported she acknowledged that official accounts of progress in both wars later proved false.

The self-reckoning is notable in part because Kelly was not an antiwar voice during her Fox tenure. Her pivot on Iran, and her willingness to indict her own professional record, reflects a broader fracture in conservative media that has grown louder as the war drags past its third week.

The Target: Murdoch and Graham

The immediate catalyst for Kelly's Murdoch attack was a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appearing on Fox News Sunday, where he called for Trump to deploy U.S. Marines to seize Iran's Kharg Island — the loading terminal for nearly all of Iran's oil exports.

"We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. The Marines, my money is always on the Marines," Graham said.

Kelly was incensed. "Unbelievable," she responded on her show, per Mediaite's account. "6,821 US service personnel died in the battle for Iwo Jima, 19,217 were wounded. How dare he speak about it so cavalierly? How dare he? He doesn't have any kids. He's not sending a young son or daughter into battle."

Kelly called Graham a "bloodthirsty lunatic" and praised Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who had posted on X calling Graham's language "expendable cattle" rhetoric. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) similarly criticized Graham, and Kelly highlighted both as examples of Republican pushback on the interventionist wing.

Then she turned to Murdoch. Bloomberg had reported Saturday that the media mogul had been quietly lobbying Trump to press ahead with the Iran campaign. Kelly cited that reporting directly: "Now we learn over the weekend that Rupert Murdoch was one of the main people to be goading Trump into this war. Rupert Murdoch, who is 95 years old — he'll be dead soon. And he too is acting as if our troops are, quote, expendable cattle. You won't have to live with the consequences of what he's doing."

Fox vs. Itself

The significance of Kelly's comments runs deeper than one podcast segment. Fox News has largely backed the war, with hosts like Mark Levin and analysts like General Jack Keane and Mark Thiessen regularly offering supportive commentary. Kelly, who left the network nearly a decade ago, has emerged as one of the most prominent voices on the right to break from that consensus — at the cost of open conflict with figures still inside the Fox orbit.

Earlier this month, Kelly and Fox host Mark Levin traded pointed public insults over the Iran war. On Tuesday she expanded her critique to the institutional level, arguing that Fox's ownership structure makes objective Iran war coverage structurally impossible.

"You will not find that when you tune in to CNN or Fox," she told her audience, according to Mediaite. "Now we know that Lindsey Graham and Rupert Murdoch — the guy who owns the channel and the guy who's the face of it now — were the two biggest boosters… pushing this war. Do you really think you're going to get objective analysis now over there on how it's going? Do you? Of course not."

Kelly framed her own show as the alternative, noting repeatedly that she has no financial ties to the Trump administration or foreign governments. "There's no agenda pushing me to say one thing or another, anything other than my own opinion. I don't take any foreign money. I don't take any money from the government. I don't owe any favors to anybody in the Trump administration. Nothing."

The Tucker Carlson Thread

Kelly also came to the defense of Tucker Carlson, who has faced accusations — amplified on social media and by some pro-war commentators — of being financially influenced by foreign adversaries due to his antiwar stance. Kelly pushed back on those claims, framing them as an attempt to silence dissenting voices.

"I was also canned at NBC, though technically it wasn't a firing in any event," she said, per Mediaite. "I certainly had my show canceled. So eventually it comes for all of us if we're going to be super honest about the way we feel, because then we get dubbed controversial and we get dubbed all the terrible things and we have to live with that unfortunately, but it's worth it. It's worth it for living free. My God, it's worth it for living free. I live free. No one controls me. No one."

Public Opinion and the Political Calculus

Kelly's remarks land in the context of shifting poll numbers. She cited a Reuters/Ipsos survey showing 21 percent of Republicans disapprove of the Iran war, with 15 percent strongly opposed — noting that comparable Republican dissent over Iraq took years to develop. Independent voters, she argued, are the deciding constituency in midterms, and they are already souring on the conflict as gas prices rise.

Newsweek, citing Kelly's broadcast, reported that she questioned whether the Trump administration has a "clear definition of victory" — pointing to the administration sending more troops to the Middle East on Friday while simultaneously lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil and Trump suggesting he was considering ending the war, then threatening to target Iranian power plants on Saturday.

Kelly's prescription: "Just get out. Just declare victory and get out." The framing mirrors how critics described the exits from Iraq and Afghanistan — an exit strategy in name only, but one that ends American casualties.

What It Means

The conservative media ecosystem has not split cleanly. Levin, Ben Shapiro, and much of Fox News remain supportive of the war. Kelly, Carlson, and a vocal but smaller faction have broken away on "America First" grounds, arguing that fighting another Middle Eastern war is precisely the kind of overseas entanglement Trump promised to end.

What distinguishes Tuesday's segment is the explicit targeting of Murdoch as a principal actor — not just a passive news outlet — in the decision to go to war. Kelly is accusing the owner of the most-watched cable news network in America of lobbying a sitting president toward military conflict his own viewers may not want.

Whether that argument gains traction depends partly on what Bloomberg's reporting actually says and whether other outlets corroborate Murdoch's behind-the-scenes role. As of Tuesday, Kelly's attack on her former boss was being cited across media trade outlets — but the underlying Bloomberg reporting that triggered it has not been publicly challenged or denied by News Corp.