Settle for More

305 Pages·2016·15.81 MB·English

by  Megyn Kelly

Dedication
For My Family
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: Tough Questions
1: No False Praise
2: Mean Girls
3: Silent Night, Holy Night
4: Who’s Getting Hit First?
5: Trial Team Barbie
6: Legally Blond
7: Self-Pity Is Not Attractive
8: Calling and Calling; Nobody’s Home
9: “Who’s Here?” “Me!”
10: Lawyer, Broadcaster, Journalist
11: So Long, Little Miss Perfect
12: Nights of Fear
13: Writing the Wrong Things
14: All the Days of My Life
15: The Best Line
16: Now Everyone’s Here
17: Ready for Prime Time
18: On “Having It All”
19: Election Season
20: The First Debate
21: Fallout
22: Relentless
23: The Trump Tower Accords
24: Paying it Forward
25: Settling for More Today
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Photos
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Tough Questions
D
ebate day: August 6, 2015. I woke up in Cleveland, excited for what was to
come. We had been preparing for this for more than two months—powering
through countless meetings, calls, and arguments among members of the debate
team as to which questions lived and which died—and tonight would be the
culmination of all that hard work. I would be co-moderating the first Republican
primary debate of the 2016 election season.
The election had been a mess so far. Still in the running were nearly twenty
candidates, most with impressive résumés and a long list of accomplishments.
That meant we had a real job to do: give the American people some actual
information on these contenders so they could begin deciding who they might
want to replace Barack Obama. The lower-polling candidates, those ranking
below tenth, would appear in a separate “undercard” debate. We only had to
worry about those polling in the top ten: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio,
Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, John Kasich,
and Chris Christie.
I’m an overpreparer, so I had researched and rewritten my questions over and
over again until I believed they were as tight and pointed as possible. Before
getting out of bed, I looked at my iPhone, which was where I kept the questions.
I scrolled through them yet again, toggling back and forth between that file and
incoming texts and e-mails from friends and colleagues: Knock ’em dead! Good luck!
You’ll do great!
I ordered breakfast in my room, threw on some jeans and a T-shirt, and out the
door I went. I felt great. It was a beautiful day in Ohio, and I was as ready as I’d
ever be for that night’s event.
The car picked me up at my hotel at 10:00 a.m. to take me to the convention
center. The debate team was going to meet one last time to go over the questions
and logistics, and to take into account any news of the day.
“Oh, Ms. Kelly!” the driver said when I got into the car. “I’m a huge fan of
yours! I want to help you. I will answer phones for you. I will do anything you
want me to do today. I will iron your suit. I will run errands. May I go get you a
coffee?”
coffee?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m good.”
“Let me get you a coffee!” he said.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m really okay. They have coffee there.”
“I insist!” he said. “I’m going to Starbucks to get you a coffee!”
Now, I don’t really like Starbucks coffee. I prefer plain old convention center
coffee, and a lot of it. But I didn’t want to be rude, so I said, “Okay.”
I walked into the hall feeling fine, excited that this day had finally arrived.
Once there, I ran into Howie Kurtz, our Fox News media critic. I remember
telling him that if the public had any idea what had been happening between me
and Donald Trump the past few days, it would be the biggest story in the
country. Among other things, he had threatened me in an angry phone call,
called Fox News executives to complain that my coverage of him was not to his
liking, and made multiple attempts to interfere in the debate process. Trump had
announced his candidacy only two months earlier, and he was already the front-
runner for the nomination.
Howie, good reporter that he is, wanted to know more.
“Someday,” I told him.
Little did I know how that story—a few phone calls and some menacing
words from a candidate few thought had any real chance—would pale in
comparison to the one that would emerge that night on the debate stage and that
would come to dominate the next year of my life.
The night before the debate, I’d called my friend and colleague Dana Perino,
former White House press secretary under George W. Bush and now a host on
Fox News. She’d already been attacked by Trump. I read her my lead question
for him, the question no one was asking, even though it was key to his future as
a candidate. Essentially, it was: Given your reputation for saying controversial
things about and to women, how will you fare against a female candidate? Dana
said she thought it was fair. So did I, but we both knew that Trump wouldn’t like
it, and there could be blowback. He had tried to embarrass Dana on Twitter after
she criticized his announcement speech. And that was just for a passing
comment she made on the air. This was a presidential debate stage. I didn’t want
to be attacked, but I had a job to do, and that was that.
I joined the fellow members of my debate team inside the Cleveland Cavaliers
stadium. My co-moderators, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, our digital politics
editor, Chris Stirewalt, and Bill Sammon, the head of our debate team and
Washington bureau chief, were all there, along with our producers and limited
support staff. We tend to keep these meetings small—the questions are inviolate.
Leaks would be unthinkable. This is a race for the Oval Office. There can be no
improprieties. No cell phone calls inside this room, no outsiders unless they are
improprieties. No cell phone calls inside this room, no outsiders unless they are
sworn to secrecy. The five of us knew one another very well—our strengths,
weaknesses, idiosyncrasies—and were full of respect for the team.
There was no time to waste, and we got right to work. Bret, Chris, and I were
bunched together at the end of the long conference table. Bill Sammon was next
to us, pacing. Everyone else was scattered about. We spent a fair amount of the
morning reviewing Bret’s opening question one last time: Would they all pledge
to support the eventual Republican nominee?
We wondered if anyone would raise their hand, other than possibly Trump or
Rand Paul. Were we still comfortable with that opening? It would be a dramatic
and potentially important moment, we knew, and we kept it.
We had a number of other questions to discuss. What if everyone wanted a
chance to respond to a likely opening attack by Trump? Would any candidates
be looking for “a Newt Gingrich moment,” where they went after the
moderators, as Newt had in 2012? What would we do if Trump attacked me? I
told Bret and Chris, “Don’t jump in.”
We were on LeBron James’s turf, and we were pumped for the start of the
game.
About ninety minutes into our meeting, Abigail Finan, my assistant, came in
with a large Starbucks coffee.
“Did you order coffee from your driver?” she asked, confused.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
Abby put the coffee down in front of me, and the meeting continued.
Oh, what the hell, I thought, and I started drinking the Starbucks.
Within fifteen minutes, about halfway through the coffee, I got a splitting
headache.
Could you get me some Tylenol? I e-mailed Abby. She sent someone in with it, but
only one pill. At 12:38 p.m. I e-mailed, There’s only one here—I need two.
Within fifteen minutes of that, I was white as a ghost. It was very clear I was
going to throw up. I had a little private office in the convention hall. I sprinted
out of the meeting and past Abby and my research assistant Emily Walker, ran
into the bathroom, and threw up. I came out and told Abby what had happened.
Her eyes were enormous. It was just a few hours before the debate. We were
expecting millions of viewers. All the candidates would be there. We had been
preparing for months. The stakes were enormous. The timing could not have
been worse.
“It’s nerves!” Abby said, hopefully.
It was not nerves, and she and I both knew it. I’d done presidential debates
before, and been on TV in front of millions of people more times than I could
count. Nerves are rare for me at this point. And when I do get them, what
count. Nerves are rare for me at this point. And when I do get them, what
happens is that my heart starts pounding so hard that I worry the microphones
will pick it up. What does not happen is nausea.
I tried to go back into the debate room, but when I got there, I was shaky and
very ill. The conversation around me was whizzing at warp speed. I wasn’t able
to concentrate. I felt terrible. Soon I realized I had to throw up again.
Was the milk in that coffee spoiled? I wondered. Did I get food poisoning at
breakfast? My illness came on so suddenly, and was unlike anything I’d ever
experienced. But I was in no position to open a CSI investigation. I could barely
stand. (I later learned there was a stomach virus going around—Rand Paul was
also sick that night.)
“I have some very bad news,” I told the team. “I don’t feel well, and I need to
go back to the hotel right now to lie down.”
You should have seen those guys’ faces. They were scared shitless. We were a
team. We were going to do this together. What’s more, it was very clear that
Bret and Chris did not want to ask my questions. And I didn’t want them to—
especially my question about Trump’s history of controversial comments about
women. It was my question, it was on point, and I wanted to be the one asking it.
The guys were supportive. They could see that I looked like I was about to
pass out.
“Go,” they said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
“We’ll see you later,” they said as I walked out. It was as much a question as a
statement.
It was all I could do to make it back to the hotel before I was hanging over the
toilet, violently ill.
En route, Abby called my doctor in New York. He prescribed medication over
the phone. Once I was back in my room, she went and picked it up.
“Take this pill,” she said when she returned, after a rather horrific hour. “The
doctor says if you can keep it down for thirty minutes, you’ll feel better.”
Who knew that, thanks to modern medicine, you don’t have to throw up
anymore in this country? To this day, I still don’t know what Abby gave me. I
didn’t care; I would have taken anything if it meant I might be able to make the
debate.
As I lay there in bed, curled up in a fetal position, my hair matted on my face,
profusely sweating, barely able to speak, I saw the look in Abby’s eyes: She’s
never going to make this debate! DEFCON 1! DEFCON 1!
It was 3:28 p.m. I did everything I could to keep my stomach calm for thirty
minutes to hold down that pill. I looked out the window and stared at spiders on
a spiderweb. I tried Pandora. I meditated. I started chanting, “One, one, one,