When Megan Kelly moves over to NBC News later this year, she will of course be surrounded with more liberal-minded colleagues than she’s currently used to. This means that sooner or later, and especially given the natural human impulse to acclimate and blend in to some extent, Kelly will be modifying her view that Jesus of Nazareth was “white,” which she declared on-air about three years ago.

Hollywood Elsewhere applauds Kelly’s move to bail on Fox News — a strategic chess move that will bestow a more middle-groundish profile than if she were to remain with Fox, which will probably become an even more toxic hotbed of disinformation once the Trump regime takes over on 1.20.

Soon-to-be NBC News anchor and correspondent Megyn Kelly.

Kelly reportedly could’ve earned $20 million annually if she’d stayed with the Murdoch-owned network, so her motive in accepting a $15 million-per-year NBC deal was obviously not first and foremost financial.

She’ll deny it for the rest of her life, of course, but Kelly obviously wanted to be cleansed, image-wise, of the stink of Fox News, not just because of its reputation for spreading highly suspect if not blatantly deceptive rightwing talking points but because of the after-aroma of the Roger Ailes era and a once-prevalent climate of sexual harassment, which Kelly herself had to grapple with.

Kelly is a conservative but she wants to be regarded solely as a super-smart anchor, reporter and interviewer, period, and not the top star of a notoriously toxic news network that has been cynically misinforming elderly white viewers and rural dumbshits for a long, long time.

At NBC Kelly will host her own daytime news and discussion program, anchor an in-depth Sunday night news show and become a regular contributor in the network’s special political programming and other big-event coverage.

A N.Y. Times story by Jim Rutenberg says the Kelly move “will herald a seismic shift in the cable news landscape, where Ms. Kelly had become the second-most watched host — after Bill O’Reilly of Fox News — and often helped define the national political debate, especially over the last year as Donald J. Trump regularly attacked her, at times in viciously personal terms.

“Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, which is controlled by the family of Rupert Murdoch, had offered Ms. Kelly more than $20 million a year to stay after her current contract expires this year. Rival networks seeking to hire Ms. Kelly away, including NBC News, had made it clear that they could not match that money from Fox, the cable news leader for the last 15 years running.”