Greg Kelly

Overview

Greg Kelly is two things at once: a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and 20-plus-year broadcast journalist, and one of the loudest pro-Trump voices on cable television. The first half of that identity rarely makes it into the stories written about the second. Kelly spent nine years as a Marine attack pilot flying the AV-8B Harrier — 158 aircraft-carrier landings, flights over Iraq in Operation Southern Watch — before becoming a war correspondent, a White House correspondent for Fox News, and a decade-long New York morning-show co-host (All American Entertainment). Since 2020 he has anchored Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax TV and hosted The Greg Kelly Show on WABC radio and as a podcast, positioning himself as a pugnacious defender of Donald Trump and of American law enforcement (Simon & Schuster).

That pugnacity cut both ways in late September 2026. Weeks after Karoline Leavitt left her job as White House press secretary, she described a private lunch in Britain at which Trump had berated then-prime minister Keir Starmer over immigration — and Kelly, from inside Trump’s own media universe, publicly attacked her for it (Dagens.com). His X post accused her of gossiping about private presidential meetings and called the disclosure “a breach of trust” of both the president and the nation — a notable moment precisely because it came not from Leavitt’s usual critics but from one of her side’s own outlets, as Dagens observed (Dagens.com).

From the cockpit to the anchor desk

Kelly’s journalism career began after a full military career. He flew as an attack pilot in the United States Marine Corps for nine years, specializing in the AV-8B Harrier jump jet, amassing 158 carrier landings and flying over Iraq during Operation Southern Watch, the enforcement of the United Nations-imposed no-fly zone; he is a licensed commercial pilot who reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves (All American Entertainment). He is a Fordham University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in political science, where he worked as an on-air reporter for the university’s WFUV station (All American Entertainment).

He started in local television as an anchor and reporter for News Channel 34, the ABC affiliate in Binghamton, New York, then became a reporter for New York 1 News, covering New York City politics and reporting live during the September 11, 2001 attacks (All American Entertainment). Kelly joined the Fox News Channel in 2002 as an anchor and correspondent and served as its White House correspondent from 2005 to 2007 (All American Entertainment). He covered the Iraq war extensively, with four long-term assignments in Baghdad; during the 2003 invasion he was embedded with the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade, and became the first television reporter to deliver live pictures of American forces infiltrating Baghdad, along with exclusive reports from the storming of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace (All American Entertainment). He later spent almost a decade as co-host of Good Day New York on Fox 5, interviewing figures across politics, law enforcement, education, and entertainment (All American Entertainment).

The Newsmax years

In 2020 Kelly moved to Newsmax, where he began the primetime nightly news-and-opinion show Greg Kelly Reports; shortly afterward he started a daily talk-back radio show on WABC (All American Entertainment). His publisher’s biography now describes him as the anchor of Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax TV, the host of The Greg Kelly Show on WABC and The Greg Kelly Podcast, and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve living in New York with his wife and two daughters (Simon & Schuster). He is also the author of Justice for All: How the Left is Wrong About Law Enforcement, which his publisher frames as a defense of American policing with a warning about what follows if police are defunded and derided (Simon & Schuster; All American Entertainment).

His on-air and online style has drawn its own coverage. TheWrap has noted his “unconventional style that includes Trumpian arbitrary capitalization” — a trait visible across his social-media posts (TheWrap).

Controversies and clashes

In 2012, Kelly was the subject of sexual-assault allegations that were investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which cleared him. “We have concluded that the established facts do not constitute a crime under New York criminal law,” a spokeswoman for the DA said (Adweek). Because Kelly is the son of then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, the investigation was handled by the DA’s office rather than the police department (Adweek). Kelly took a leave of absence from the Fox-owned station during the investigation; afterward he issued a statement saying, “I am so thankful the investigation established what I’ve known all along, that I am innocent of the allegations that were waged against me,” and thanked co-host Rosanna Scotto and supportive viewers as he returned to the Good Day New York desk (Adweek).

In 2021, Newsmax said it was “reviewing the matter” after Kelly posted and then deleted a series of tweets about improved military “morale” under white leadership, which were screen-captured before deletion (TheWrap). The tweets said that when Kelly was “flying around the Pacific Ocean off of ships,” knowing the Secretary of Defense was “white, just like me” made “a big difference with ‘morale,’” and that “just knowing that President Clinton, who was in office at the time, was a Caucasian male made it ‘all worthwile’” (TheWrap). A Newsmax representative told TheWrap: “We understand a series of tweets were posted by Mr. Kelly that, in their totality, indicated his opposition to racism. We at Newsmax never countenance the posting of racist views or views that appeal to racists. We are currently reviewing the matter” (TheWrap). One tweet in the series remained on his account: “Now the TRUTH: being a MARINE had nothing to do with RACE. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t ‘a thing’ — the EXPERIENCE brought us together, no matter what we were,” accompanied by photos of Kelly with the late David Dinkins, a Black former Marine who had officiated his wedding (TheWrap).

Then came the Leavitt episode. Less than a month after Leavitt left the White House podium, she appeared on Sean Hannity’s podcast and recounted a private lunch in Britain at which Trump abandoned diplomatic niceties and attacked Starmer’s immigration policies — “Your policies here are so stupid, you need to close your borders,” she recalled him saying, adding that she and adviser Stephen Miller had exchanged a look as the awkward scene unfolded (Dagens.com). Fox News separately covered her account of the meeting (Dagens.com). Leavitt presented the anecdote as evidence of Trump’s consistency — that he speaks privately the way he speaks publicly. Kelly heard something else entirely.

His objection, posted on X, was not mainly about what Trump had said to Starmer; it was about a former senior White House official recounting a private presidential conversation at all — and about the timing, with the midterm elections approaching (Dagens.com). “Unbelievable. So now that she’s an Ex press secretary, Karoline (with a K) Leavitt GOSSIPS about PRIVATE meetings the President had with world leaders?” he wrote. “We’re in the middle of MIDTERM MADNESS and Karoline (with a K) ‘dishes’ Without a Care In the World. A BREACH of Trust: The President’s, and the Nation’s. So IMMATURE!!!!” (Dagens.com) Dagens noted the role reversal: Leavitt had spent her White House career defending Trump from reporters seeking behind-closed-doors details, and now faced a fierce attack from a prominent Newsmax personality (Dagens.com). The outlet also attached an explicit caveat worth carrying forward: Kelly’s post “represents his own criticism of Leavitt and does not establish that she violated any legal or formal confidentiality requirement” (Dagens.com).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not give Kelly’s exact birth date — Wikipedia lists December 17, 1968, but no citable source read for this profile confirmed it, so no date appears. It does not name his wife or daughters; the read sources say only that he lives in New York with “his wife and two daughters.” It dates his criticism of Leavitt to “late September 2026” because only a non-citable aggregator snippet, not a read source, attached a specific day to his X post. It does not name the accuser in the 2012 matter and does not go beyond what the District Attorney’s office concluded — that the established facts did not constitute a crime under New York criminal law — which ended the matter as a legal question. It does not report any outcome of Newsmax’s 2021 review of his tweets, because no read source gave one, and it repeats Kelly’s own framing of those tweets only as his and Newsmax’s stated positions. Finally, it claims no calendar dates for his Marine Corps service years and no publication year for his book, because the sources read here give neither.