Conservative satire site The Babylon Bee is being accused of “inciting murder” and “threatening to kill Megyn Kelly” for joking that the former Fox News star had gotten rid “of an old pager just to be safe,” invoking Israel’s 2024 electronic device attack on Hezbollah.
The Bee’s social media post and satirical article about Kelly, which appeared to reference her increasingly critical stance towards Israel amid its war in Gaza, were quickly deleted after the conservative podcaster tweeted “WTF” while tagging the site’s editor-in-chief, Seth Dillon.
The Babylon Bee has also come under fire from a number of prominent right-wing influencers and pundits over the post, particularly from those who are outspoken critics of Israel, who feel that the site was calling for violence against Kelly.
“This is a fun way for the Babylon Bee to call for murder,” paleoconservative podcast host Auron MacIntyre reacted.
The Independent has reached out to The Babylon Bee for comment.
The uproar over the Bee’s pager bomb joke further exposes the deepening fracture within the American conservative movement that was sparked by Tucker Carlson’s chummy sitdown with white supremacist and fervent antisemite Nick Fuentes, resulting in a MAGA “civil war” that’s only grown more bitter in recent weeks.
Kelly, for her part, has recently staked out a position as a defender of Carlson and far-right provocateur Candace Owens as they’ve faced allegations of fomenting antisemitism and peddling wild conspiracy theories, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
In late September, for instance, Kelly pushed back against calls to condemn the inflammatory rhetoric from Carlson and Owens, saying her “fight is with the left, not these two.” She would later double down on that sentiment amid continued conservative criticism of her defense of the pair.
“Too f***ing bad,” she exclaimed last month, adding that she “loves” Carlson and doesn’t think her ex-Fox cohort is “an antisemite at all.” As for Owens, she said it was now a “point of pride” that she wasn’t “attacking her” amid the condemnations on the right of the former Daily Wire host.
Kelly also brushed off criticism over her own positions on Israel’s war against Hamas, saying “it’s time to wrap it up in this American’s view” and she “will not be shamed out of it by being called an antisemite.” She’s since hosted Carlson on her show, where he told critics of the Fuentes interview to “buzz off.”
In an op-ed for The Free Press late last month, Dillon took issue with the viewpoint expressed by Kelly and other conservative stars that there should be “no enemies to the right,” which also came out after many right-wing media figures downplayed a racist Republican group chat.
“I’m a conservative, and it’s fair to say that a lot of the bad ideas we make fun of at The Babylon Bee are progressive ones,” he wrote. “Recently, however, I’ve come under fire from fellow conservatives for pointing out what should be obvious: There are bad ideas on the right, too. Never scrutinize your friends, I’m told. Focus on the enemy.”
In the short satirical piece published Thursday, the Bee wrote that Kelly “quietly tossed her pager in the trash this week in what her team described as ‘an abundance of caution,’” adding that “the garbage container outside Kelly's studio had been destroyed in a mysterious explosion.”
The article also contained a fabricated quote from Kelly’s spokesperson, noting that while the ex-Fox anchor “has no fear that she's in any danger from platforming antisemites” and “has no known associations with members of Hamas,” she was told to throw the pager away anyway.
“Last night @TheBabylonBee -- which should just re-name itself The Tel Aviv Bee -- threatened Megyn Kelly that she'd be murdered by Israel for refusing to de-platform all Israel critics,” contrarian podcaster Glenn Greenwald – who recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview – tweeted. “As Israel loyalists often do, they used the pager image to pretend it was all just a joke.”
Jake Shields, a mixed martial artist turned antisemitic pundit who has praised Adolf Hitler, claimed that the Babylon Bee was “threatening to kill Megyn Kelly.” Shields also took the opportunity to stand up for Fuentes during his criticism of the site.
“Babylon Bee is now inciting murder against conservatives who won't go along with their cancel campaign,” far-right social media account Aesthetica shared.
“The Babylon Bee, run by Israel First MIGA morons Seth Dillon and Joel Berry, published a call to murder Megyn Kelly, then quickly deleted it,” Vish Burra, booker and scriptwriter for Mat Gaetz’s One America News show, wrote on X.
While Kelly expressed shock and anger over the Bee’s post, which has since been deleted, some critics pointed out that she had a completely different take when another right-wing commentator made a similar joke about Israeli pagers blowing someone up.
Last year, after conservative activist Ryan Girdusky was banned from CNN after telling Muslim progressive broadcaster Mehdi Hasan “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off” during a back-and-forth on Gaza, Kelly rallied to Girdusky’s defense and claimed Hasan’s outrage over the comment was overly dramatic.
Mehdi Hasan leaned so far into playing the victim, he reminded me of those World Cup soccer players and their drama, pretending that they're hurt,” she said in a follow-up interview with Girdusky about the controversy.
Kelly, meanwhile, has courted controversy in recent days on an entirely different front.
Following the bombshell release of emails featuring deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein talking about Donald Trump, leading to the Epstein files saga once again taking center stage, Kelly drew intense blowback for arguing that Epstein wasn’t actually a pedophile.
“He was into the barely legal type,” Kelly declared. “Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this, I’m just giving you facts.”
