Weeks before the blackface imbroglio that resulted in her being pulled off the air, Megyn Kelly was looking for a way out of NBC. Her relationship with the peacock network had badly soured—in truth, it had never been good—and Kelly told friends she wanted to return to Fox News, according to two Fox News sources familiar with her thinking. “She wants to come back,” a person close to Kelly told me. Over the past month, according to two sources with knowledge of Kelly’s programming decisions, she made comments on air that would burnish her right-wing credentials for a prospective Fox homecoming. For instance, she vigorously defended Brett Kavanaugh on multiple occasions, calling Dr. Christine Blasey Ford a “Democrat donor” who was represented by a “well-known Democratic activist.”

Would Fox take her? The answer right now appears to be no. A source close to Lachlan Murdoch, C.E.O. of Fox News’s parent company “New Fox,” said he is “extremely pleased with the current lineup.” Two high-level Fox staffers said any final decision about Kelly would be made by Lachlan and his father, Rupert Murdoch the company chairman.

Many factors are at play. Fox sources say the Murdochs, and Lachlan in particular, are still angry that Kelly rejected a $25 million a year offer before decamping to NBC. Among Fox anchors and producers, Kelly also remains a polarizing figure. Fox staffers resented how she leveraged her feud with Donald Trump during the 2016 election for mainstream-media celebrity. Fox staffers also complain that she capitalized on Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit to position herself as a #MeToo crusader only after it was clear that Roger Ailes was going down. “There’s a lot of Schadenfreude,” one anchor said.

Another giant question is whether the Fox audience would welcome Kelly back. It’s hard to see the Murdochs making a spot for her in their pro-Trump primetime lineup, given her tangled history with the president. She could join the ranks of Fox journalists like Shepard Smith, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace, but her interviews at NBC with Vladimir Putin and Alex Jones were widely panned. In a world where cable-news stars have defined themselves by their affinity to the president, or rejection of him, she occupies an uncomfortable role.

Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Kelly, did not respond to a request for comment.

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