Megyn Kelly Essentially

The Megyn Kelly Essentially format, also called Euphemism Megyn Kelly, pairs a photograph of the Fox News anchor with a two-line caption that dismisses something horrific as mundane, always closing with the word 'essentially'3. Typical entries make light of pepper spray, torture, drone strikes, or other human rights abuses by reframing them as food, weather, or harmless consumer products. The joke works because Kelly's actual on-air line downplayed a chemical weapon being used against seated student protesters, so recycling her verbal tic turned her own softening rhetoric against her1. Most examples reuse the same broadcast still of Kelly and stick to the two-line advice-animal caption structure, with the setup asking about a violent act and the punchline dismissing it with the trademark closing word.

Users typically start with the same news-desk photograph of Kelly, then write a two-line advice-animal caption. The first line asks about a violent or serious topic (pepper spray, waterboarding, a war crime), and the second line dismisses it as something benign, with the sentence ending on the word 'essentially.' The joke lands hardest when the euphemism is absurdly softer than the reality being described, mirroring Kelly's original 'food product' framing.