Back in January, ABC News anchor David Muir took a break from covering the headlines to make some of his own when he was caught cinching the waist of his safety jacket with a clothespin while covering the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.
The World News Tonight host may not have learned from his mistakes because eagle-eyed viewers noticed something unusual about the t-shirt he was wearing while reporting in Texas on the deadly flash flooding.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mark Halperin, host of MK Media’s Next Up with Mark Halperin, to discuss the latest fashion faux pas and why Muir might just be “the vainest man in television.”
The Evidence
Muir has been in Texas this week to cover the catastrophic flood damage in Kerr County for ABC News, and his wardrobe choices have gotten some attention. Here is what the 51 year old looked like while filming a stand-up report:
As you can see, he was was wearing a very form-fitting black t-shirt that hugs his biceps and appears to nip at the waist just so. “When you zoom out a little bit, you can see the shirt has a little flare below the middle,” Megyn said. “That is not how t-shirts work. Men’s t-shirts do not cut in in the middle and then flare down below.”
To prove her point, Megyn’s team found a part of the report in which Muir was walking around in what seemed to be the exact same shirt – except it fit a little differently.
“It looks like a normal t-shirt when he is in the field and there is obviously no cinchers,” Megyn surmised. “He has tucked it in because I think he wants to show off his fanny… [but] it’s got the normal drape to it.”
While she called it “just a suspicion” based on “circumstantial evidence,” Megyn posited that Muir is still employing his not-so-secret styling tricks because “he wants the world to know he is super, super tiny in the waist [and] super muscle-y in the arms.”
Why It Matters
This is worth scrutinizing, Megyn said, because it is indicative of a larger issue in legacy media. “The reason this matters is because vanity is amuck in TV news in general,” she noted. “And amongst our evening news anchors, it already brought down [former NBC Nightly News anchor] Brian Williams with his need to embellish his life, his reporting, himself. And I would submit to you that this is like that in a different form.”
Given the gravity of the situation Muir is reporting on in Texas and in L.A. before that, Megyn said there is a certain unwritten dress code journalists usually subscribe to. “We all know that when we go on site to report and people have died, glam is not a thing. You don’t do it,” she explained. “If anything, you play it down. Everybody knows that.”
Case in point: CNN’s Pamela Brown has been reporting from the same area this week in a CNN-issued jacket and jeans with her hair in a ponytail; CBS News’ Maurice DuBois was wearing a simple button-down shirt, as was his NBC News colleague Tom Llamas for their respective broadcasts. Megyn said all three hit the right note with their less-is-more looks.
Halperin, who once worked with Muir at ABC News, admitted that “if there is another contender” for the “vainest man in television award,” that person is “a distant second.”
Ultimately, Megyn had some advice for guys in the business. “If you are a man on camera, you need to not be worried about your waist circumference or how tight you look around the middle when you are reporting from natural disaster,” she concluded. “You need to be a man… and you need to be in control.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Halperin by tuning in to episode 1,104 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.