Megyn Kelly opens up about how childhood incident taught her to deal with bullies

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly opened up about a childhood bullying incident during an interview Wednesday on TheBlaze Radio.

While discussing her new book, “Settle for More,” with Glenn Beck on The Glenn Beck Radio Program, Kelly said she had a “real experience” with bullying in the seventh grade.

“I had a brutal seventh grade year, in which my group of friends all turned against me,” Kelly said. “And I was in tears for much of the year and very, very alone with no friends. And it was hard. You know, this was 1983 when you didn't have helicopter parents intervening at every turn. But it does teach you a thing or two.”

“You can learn a lot about life in the seventh grade,” she added.

Kelly recalled that as a middle school student she used to be popular, before “suddenly one day, this group, they just turned on me, and I had no friends.” Her former friends would “flick the spitballs at me and try to trip me in the hall,” Kelly said, adding that they would also mock her weight and skin, “They would make fun of every vulnerability.”

Kelly said that one evening while she was at home with her parents on a Saturday and “the most popular girl was having a big party,” her family’s telephone rang.

“I said, ‘Hello.’ And she said, ‘You know, it's me.’ She said, ‘Do you know where all the people are from my party?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And they all screamed into the phone, ‘We're here.’ And they hung up. I hung up the phone in front of my parents who didn't know what had just happened. I lied and told them it was a wrong number.”

Kelly said she then went outside to her icy backyard and cried.

“I put my hands in my pockets, and I sort of skated across the ice in the darkness, with tears streaming down my face,” she said. “And I can remember it to this day, you know, just that feeling of ostracization and loneliness and just deep sadness and the desire to connect and feel like you belong. And so, you know, those scars they take a long time to heal.”

Kelly added that the ordeal taught her to “take bullying very seriously” and taught her how to address it.

The cable news star said that Donald Trump’s attacks on her during the presidential campaign were merely “an attempt at bullying,” because “there was no submission” and that her own experience with bullying taught her that “in dealing with the bully in general, the best course is to send the bully a message that he's nothing to you.”

“I think it really irritated Donald Trump over the months that I would not respond to him,” she said. “But I think that's a proven course for how to handle, as an adult, someone who is trying to push you around.”

“Adversity is an opportunity to grow and become stronger,” Kelly continued, “My year of Trump, as I describe it in the book, has done that for me.”

And it has been a difficult year in many ways. I mean, in particular, the security scares were bad -- and clearly unacceptable. No journalist should have to go through that just to cover a candidate. But I dealt with it. And I think I actually now have a bit of a blueprint for others in how to deal with it. And I hope when people close this book, they will understand that, you know, I think you can grow if hard times come your way. And it's an opportunity to evolve. And as far as Trump and I go, I think we're in a better place now.