Nov 5 (AP/UNB) - Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly delivered a fiery speech supporting Donald Trump during an event billed as his "closing message" on Monday night, a full-circle moment after the former president and the onetime Fox News star feuded bitterly during Trump's 2016 campaign.
 
Invited to the stage in Pittsburgh, Kelly defended Trump against recent controversies, including his repeated pledge to be the "protector" of women, and pressed his case on border security and his opposition to transgender athletes participating in sports.
 
"He got mocked by the left by saying he would be a protector of women," Kelly said. "He will be a protector of women and it's why I'm voting for him. He will close the border and he will keep the boys out of women's sports where they don't belong."
 
Trump stood to the side, grinning and beaming, as he listened to the commentator he once called "nasty."
 
Afterward, she posted a selfie with the former president on X that was captioned in part: "God bless him. Go vote for him!"
 
Kelly was a popular Fox News host in 2016 when she questioned Trump during the first debate of the Republican primary about whether he had the temperament to be president.
 
Trump largely dismissed Kelly's question at the debate, but later he went directly after her, first overnight on Twitter and later in interviews.
 
"She's not very tough and not very sharp," Trump told CNN in a phone interview. "I don't respect her as a journalist."
 
Referring to Kelly's questions during the debate, Trump said, "There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." The comment was widely viewed as a sexist reference to menstruation.
 
Trump later boycotted another debate on Fox because Kelly was one of the moderators.
 
Kelly left Fox for NBC News. She was taken off the air following an uproar when she suggested it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween.
 
She now hosts a SiriusXM satellite radio show that she has built into one of the highest-ranked on Chartable's list of news podcasts.
 
"All that nonsense between us," Kelly said last year, "is under the bridge."
 
Kelly's appearance with Trump comes as early voting suggests a gender gap that favors Democrat Kamala Harris.
 
Kelly was critical of some of the speakers who delivered crude and racist comments at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally last month. One suggested that Harris, who is vying to become the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be elected president, began her career as a prostitute.
 
The speakers, Kelly said, "took what was an amazing celebration of Trump, exciting and well-attended and hugely enthusiastic, and gave themselves a big black eye."
 
 
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