Megyn Kelly tore into Jennifer Siebel Newsom, blasting the California governor’s wife over resurfaced remarks about her sister’s death and mocking her views on women’s leadership.
“We’ve got to start with this nutcase, Jennifer Siebel Newsom… what’s going on?” Kelly said on Wednesday’s episode of SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
The conservative commentator seized on comments Siebel Newsom made in a past interview about a childhood tragedy.
“She casually references the fact that she accidentally killed her sister… which I don’t think most people knew,” Kelly said.
Kelly described the moment as jarring, saying: “Everything about that was a record scratch.”
The former Fox News host was reacting to Siebel Newsom’s comments in a 2015 documentary in which she discussed her work interviewing incarcerated youth.
“I told them about my own loss,” Siebel Newsom said in the film “The Mask You Live In.”
“I lost my elder sister a few days before my seventh birthday, and I blame myself for her death.”
Siebel Newsom drew a parallel between her experience and that of incarcerated juveniles, saying: “And I share that because they ultimately were accused of committing these violent crimes and sentenced for life.”
“And I think it shocked them that this, you know, blonde lady who was interviewing them had a similar story — was perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time — but wasn’t punished the way they were because clearly it was an accident, but theirs was probably an accident, too,” Siebel Newsom says in the film.
Kelly also criticized what she portrayed as a broader message about crime and accountability.
“Everyone who’s in juvenile prison got there by accident?… There’s absolutely no accountability,” she said.
The resurfaced clip has circulated widely online in recent days, drawing renewed attention to the decades-old tragedy.
Kelly went on to recount details of the incident, calling it “horrifically tragic” while assigning blame to the circumstances.
“Frankly, that’s the parents’ fault for letting six-year-olds be at the wheel of golf carts,” she said.
Siebel Newsom has said her older sister died in a golf cart accident during a family vacation in Hawaii when she was a child.
Accounts describe the cart moving backward while her sister was behind it, resulting in her death. She has publicly spoken about the lasting trauma and survivor’s guilt tied to the accident.
In another resurfaced clip, Siebel Newsom argued that change will come when “women come together and partner with our male allies… when more women are in the room making decisions, changing the status quo, and transforming culture and society.”
She also suggested that greater female participation in early Silicon Valley might have reduced “bigotry, racism, misogyny and hate online.”
Kelly pushed back, arguing that women have long held influential roles in the tech industry.
“There actually have been women in very big roles in tech virtually from the beginning,” Kelly said.
She pointed to prominent executives as examples.
“Elizabeth Holmes… How’d that work out?” Kelly added, referencing the Theranos founder who is serving a prison sentence for defrauding investors.
Kelly argued that Siebel Newsom overlooked those examples.
“She seems to be kind of clueless that they were even there,” she said.
A spokesperson for Siebel Newsom pointed to a tweet from the governor’s press office blasting coverage of the controversy as politically motivated.
“Trump is threatening to obliterate a civilization tonight… and Fox News is focused on running nonstop hit pieces on California’s First Partner,” the account posted on X. “This is the MAGA distraction machine — in full force.”
The spokesperson added that the resurfaced clip cited by critics is more than a decade old and stems from Siebel Newsom’s work interviewing incarcerated individuals for her 2015 documentary “The Mask You Live In.”
In that context, they said, she was discussing how many inmates felt defined by their crimes and unable to move past them — not equating their actions with her own experience.
The office also pushed back on criticism of her comments about women in tech, citing data that women make up roughly 25% of the tech workforce and just 11% of leadership roles.
The spokesperson said Siebel Newsom “continues to advocate for stronger pathways for women to advance in the workforce,” including in the tech industry.
