Will Megyn Kelly Moderate The Upcoming GOP Debate?

The next Republican presidential debate will once again be hosted by Fox, will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Last week Fox announced that there will be both an undercard (which you may know as the "kid's table" debate) as well as a primetime debate. The primetime event will begin at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, and last for two hours. In addition, Fox announced who it will have as moderator's for the fourth meeting of the GOP candidates, a topic of great interest after such fiery exchanges between moderators and the candidates (especially Donald Trump) after the first debate, which Fox also hosted. In particular there were intense verbal melees between Fox's Megyn Kelly and Trump, where Trump took cheap (and sexist) shots at Kelly both during and after the debate. This, of course, raises the question of whether Megyn Kelly will moderate the next Republican debate, and have to contend with Trump's antics on primetime all over again.

This time around, the Republican candidates will have to answer to Fox Business's Managing Editor Neil Cavuto, Global Markets Editor Maria Bartiromo, and Wall Street Journal Editor-In-Chief Gerard Baker, according to Politico. This means that Kelly gets some additional time off from dealing with debate drama and hopefully will also keep Trump off her back, at least another couple of months. (It's worth mentioning that Fox Business is a different network from Fox News, on which Kelly is a host.)

Kelly is of course no stranger to dealing with tough politicians (she's been with Fox since 2004), and showed a lot of grace in the way she dealt with Trump's ridiculous remarks about Kelly supposedly being on her period during the debate (to which he attributed her tough line of questioning), but if I were Kelly, I'd want to put off another confrontation with Trump for as long as my contract would allow. Yes, it's her job to report on the presidential campaign and to grill the candidates when her turn is up to moderate, but that doesn't mean it's any fun to put up with Trump's ludicrous behavior.

Though the candidates will have to face Kelly again in the new year, when she is slated to host a GOP debate in January. Alongside her previous co-moderators Brett Baier and Chris Wallace, I don't expect that Kelly will be at all deterred from pushing any of the candidates on their respective track records and future plan for office. Trump accused Kelly of being "unprofessional" in the way she asked challenging questions during the first GOP debate, but Kelly (and everyone else) knows that it is her job as a moderator to get as much information about of the candidates as possible.

By January the stakes will be much higher for remaining GOP candidates, who will surely be working to impress voters in the state where the debate will take place: the all important Iowa. Given that Trump remains the front-runner of the Republican herd, it's possible that he will remain the candidate to beat by the time Kelly moderates again. There will be about a month remaining until the Iowa caucus come January, and we can bet Kelly will again be ready to ask the hard questions.