After Fox News mega-star Megyn Kelly floated the possibility of leaving the network when her contract is up, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough advised Kelly to consider Glenn Beck’s tumble to irrelevance, which prompted a fiery response from Beck on Thursday.
In his regular Washington Post column, published Monday, Scarborough suggested Kelly call Beck, who launched TheBlaze conservative media group in 2011 after a two-year stint on Fox, before making any final decisions.
Scarborough recounted how Beck, shortly after joining Fox News, landed on the covers of Time and Forbes magazines, raked in tens of millions, and gained a controlling stake in “America’s political and cultural zeitgeist.”
Beck began to believe he had outgrown Fox boss Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and News Corp, the MSNBC host wrote, but “he was wrong.”
“Beck has been largely irrelevant to the 2016 campaign. That may be, in large part, because his business has fallen apart since Beck left Fox News,” Scarborough said, noting Beck’s dreams of creating a “media empire” with TheBlaze “never materialized.”
He continued: “Perhaps Kelly could succeed where Beck has failed. But if I were Kelly’s agent, I would take a long hard look before telling my client to take that leap.”
Beck indirectly responded to Scarborough Thursday, making clear in an open letter addressed to Kelly he did not take kindly to the MSNBC host’s using his career trajectory as a cautionary tale.
Although he never names Scarborough, Beck fires several thinly-veiled shots back at the former Republican congressman from Florida.
“There are far worse places you can be,” Beck wrote. “You could do a morning show you don’t own, on a network that no one watches, where your opinion is controlled and dismissed. Imagine how that must feel. Sad.”
TheBlaze founder also praised Kelly for putting principles “over your own interests,” saying, “this characteristic is more rare in media than the average person can imagine.”
Beck also advised Kelly to consider how working for another network could impact her editorial voice.
“Imagine if when you walked the halls people would whisper that you were only there as a ‘token’ to provide a ‘balanced’ perspective but not because you had any talent?” Beck asked in the open letter.
The pundit closed the Medium post with another string of hypotheticals, writing how tragic it would be to “transparently and indirectly address someone or something that had nothing whatsoever to do with you.”
“Could you imagine how sad it would be to feel compelled, of your own volition, or by someone else’s, to use a topical story as cover to take shots at someone who your own mother loves?” In 2013, after Scarborough said his mother is a fan of Beck’s, the pundit responded by sending her an autograph.
Kelly has had her own ups and downs with Scarborough. In a 2014 interview, Kelly referenced “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski as “a blonde woman on set interrupting you at every turn” and ended the interview with the send-off, “If you want to see more of Joe, you can join his four viewers tomorrow morning.”
