Megyn Kelly returns to the debate spotlight, this time on NewsNation

Ms. Kelly is not the only Fox News veteran with a major role in the NewsNation debate.

Cherie Grzech, who produced 15 primary debates for Fox News before leaving in 2021, now leads NewsNation’s news and political programming. Chris Stirewalt, best known as the Fox News analyst who championed the 2020 election night call for Arizona — a projection that enraged Mr. Trump, alienated viewers and led to Mr. Stirewalt losing his job — is the political editor from NewsNation.

Mr. Stirewalt said he believed in the mission of his new employer. “The shortest way to securing an accustomed audience is to coddle them, flatter them and reinforce their prejudices,” he said. “The more difficult thing is to try to be ambitiously fair and report and analyze honestly, and not to reinforce existing opinions. It is a substantially underserved market.”

This may be a counterintuitive business model given the polarized state of the country, but NewsNation isn’t alone in trying it out. Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, wants to acquire The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, in hopes of expanding its reach to center-right consumers in the United States.

Similar experiments have struggled. Shepard Smith, another anchor who left Fox News, created a simple newscast on the financial network CNBC in 2020; it was canceled after two years. Chris Licht, Zucker’s successor at CNN, promised to reverse partisan opinion, but his programming efforts failed and ratings plummeted.

Ms. Kelly, who has no qualms about expressing strong opinions, is more opinionated than her temporary partners at NewsNation. Eric Bolling, a former Fox News colleague who is now an anchor at Newsmax, said this would work in her favor.

“She will be the biggest viewer of them all on Wednesday night,” Bolling wrote in a text message. “Unless Trump shows up!”