Beyoncé kicked off her Cowboy Carter Tour on the west coast late last month to rave reviews. The New York Times gushed “the superstar’s new stage show turns reclamation, personal and musical, into joyful extravaganza.” Rolling Stone said the three-hour set “put Bey in a league of her own.” And The Guardian proclaimed Beyoncé “takes the narrative back.”
That “narrative” apparently includes making time to highlight the ‘haters’ of the pop star’s foray into country music. At one point in the show, Beyoncé rolls a series of clips of people commenting on the genre shift, which includes a very quick soundbite of none other than Megyn.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Glenn Greenwald, host of Rumble’s System Update, to discuss the mention and how Beyoncé seems to be playing the victim despite all of the praise and accolades.
Megyn’s Cameo
The very brief clip of Megyn, which you can see in the video above, apparently comes during an interlude in the show when other ‘negative’ media is played. It was pulled from an April 2024 interview Megyn did with Paul Murray on Sky News Australia.
Beyoncé pulled just 11 words from the appearance, honing in on when Megyn said: “Queen Bey decided to stick her big toe into the lane.” That led a social media user to declare the Grammy-winner was “dragging Megyn Kelly ol white supremacist ass lol.”
You can watch the full conversation between Megyn and Murray here, but they were discussing the Cowboy Carter album – specifically, the controversy surrounding Beyonce’s cover of “Jolene” – and the exchange started with Megyn talking about the narrative that surrounds Beyoncé in general:
“…She’s a good singer. She’s talented. I don’t deny that. Why does it have to be, ‘Yas, queen!’ ‘Queen Bey.’ No, she’s not a queen. People like her music. She sings some good music. That’s it, okay? She didn’t cure cancer. She’s not Marie Curie. Calm down. But so now she decides to take a step into the country lane, and it’s like, ‘Country music has been remade.’ Is it? Okay, we have a new player in country music. Country music’s been around for a long, long time. It goes right to the heart of America. And most Americans in red states have been loving and enjoying it long before Queen Bey decided to stick her big toe into the lane. But fine, okay, she comes over….”
She went on to state her issue with the cover, which features a very different story than Dolly Parton’s original. “[The song] is an interesting window into an insecure woman’s heart, and it is also kind of clever… That’s the story of the song. Or at least it used to be,” she explained. “Queen Bey got her hands on the song and God forbid she sing anything that make her look less than all empowered with the muscle. So, now she’s got to change it to ‘if you come by my man, I’m basically going to beat the hell out of you.'”
In Megyn’s view, Beyoncé’s version speaks to a modern interpretation of feminism that fails to recognize the true power move would be to not have to sing the song at all because you are not worried about your relationship to begin with.
Playing the Victim
In context or siloed, Greenwald joked that he has heard “a lot of Megyn Kelly’s slams, and critiques, and insults and very harsh attacks over the years, and that pretty much ranks at the very bottom of the list when it comes to rhetorical aggression.”
Megyn wondered why Beyoncé was zeroing in on the criticism instead of basking in the glow of all the praise she received. “It appears to be a setup for… her haters… I guess because I didn’t bow down to Queen Bey as she walked into country music,” she noted. “Let me tell you something, she had to scour the internet to find anybody who offered any criticism of this move whatsoever.”
Beyond that, Megyn said the victimization falls flat because of the success she has achieved. “Here is another one of the most privileged, beloved women in the world, and richest based on her own fortune – never mind the man [Jay Z] she is married to,” she explained. “But she still has to look for the one sliver where she could play the victim and be aggrieved because ‘big, bad Megyn Kelly’ said something completely milquetoast about her entry into country music.”
Greenwald agreed. “She is showing it as if there is some kind of deeply fascist, racist element, like there is this strain that has been attacking her viciously for daring to do country music,” he said. “And she is holding you up as a hate object.”
He likened it to the pity party another very privileged woman has been throwing for herself as of late. “She is going all over the world. People are screaming for her, as they always do. Like Michelle Obama… she has every conceivable material benefit, and fame, and adoration,” Greenwald explained. “And yet she has to depict herself as persecuted by finding one of the most mild Megyn Kelly statements I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Why do you need to be persecuted? Why is that such a desire to be victimized and to say, ‘Look at all my doubters, and haters, and attackers,'” he asked. Why do people go looking for that? Why do people need that and want that?”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Greenwald by tuning in to episode 1,083 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.