Kirsten Powers is an American analyst and political pundit and also an on-air personality for the Fox News cable channel. Born to archaeologist parents in Fairbanks, Alaska, on December 14,1967, she was raised in her hometown with a family who helped generate her interest in politics and debates as she was "expected to state and defend my positions on the issues of the day every night at dinner”. Her parents were of an Irish-American background. She studied at and graduated from the University of Maryland and subsequently she attended the Georgetown University Law School for a short stint of 18 months.
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She currently writes for USA Today and is an on-air political analyst at CNN, where she appears regularly on Anderson Cooper 360°, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, and The Lead with Jake Tapper.
Prior to CNN, Powers worked at Fox News as a political analyst and contributor, where she appeared regularly across the channel including Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News Sunday, The Kelly File and The O’Reilly Factor.
Powers previously was a columnist for the New York Post and later The Daily Beast, which she left to join USA Today. Powers' first column appeared at The American Prospect and her numerous articles have appeared in USA Today, Elle, the New York Observer, Salon, and the Wall Street Journal.
Powers began her career as a staff assistant with the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team in 1992, followed by an appointment as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Public Affairs in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998. She subsequently worked in various roles, including press secretary, communications consultant and party consultant.
In her career, she held many positions as the Deputy Assistant U.S. for Clinton Administration; America Online’s Vice President; a trade representative for the Public Affairs and later she even served as the Vice President for the AOL-Time Warner Foundation. Besides, she also worked for ‘Vote No on 3’ campaign and she also briefly served as a press secretary to the DNC (Democratic National Committee). She was a consultant for many NGOs like the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW) and the Human Rights First.
Kirsten was raised by her parents as an Episcopalian, but most of her adult life was spent as being an atheist. When she was in her mid 30s she once again turned to Christianity and was an evangelical Christian. This conversion came to her when she was dating a Christian religious man who introduced her to a pastor, Tim Keller, of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Subsequently, when she was travelling to Taiwan in 2006, she believes that Jesus had visited her after waking up in the middle of the night. She has called her conversion "a bit of a mind bender" due to her political beliefs and former atheism, and prefers the term "orthodox Christian" over "evangelical" to describe herself, given the cultural baggage around the latter term. She has said that the biggest impact her new-found faith had on her political beliefs was that she came to "view everyone as God's child and that means everyone deserves grace and respect." On October 10, 2015, Powers was received into the Catholic Church.
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She got married to Dr. Marty Makary a public health professor at the Johns Hopkins University, in January 2010. Her husband is also is a medical commentator on TV shows and also had written several books related to medicine. The couple appeared in public to be a typically happy married couple, but rumors began to circulate that the two were having marital problems. In 2013 the two decided to call it quits and filed to divorce. The couple have no children.
On November 16, 2016, Powers announced her engagement to fellow journalist Robert Draper.
Prior to her meeting her husband, Powers had a brief dating season in 2002, with Anthony Weiner, a former Congressman. The relationship broke owing to Weiner’s predatory behavior and sociopathic lying. Though this relationship ended, the pair remained good friends, but even this was not for long. In 2011, Powers termed Weiner as a predator always looking for women and asked him to resign from the congress, terming his behavior as "classic sexual harassment".
Powers supports universal health care, believing to be a moral imperative to supply health care to all Americans. Thus, she initially supported Obama's health care reform but later became critical of its implementation. She lamented that the laws resulted in a doubling of costs: "if I want to keep the same health insurance, it's going to cost twice as much."She later opined: "A lot of people who have really been screwed over by the law [and] are left without insurance or with extremely expensive insurance", and agreed with a Ron Fournier headline in National Journal, "Why I'm getting tired of defending Obamacare."
She opposed the "don't ask, don't tell" on homosexuals serving in the military, and supports civil unions for same-sex couples. She also believes that churches should be left "to perform the kinds of marriages that they want".
Powers opposed the Fairness Doctrine, and a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. She also supports comprehensive immigration reform and providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and favors gun control. She also supports closing Guantanamo Bay and transferring its prisoners to federal prisons.
Powers opposed the Iraq war and supports the right of countries to choose their own governments free of outside influence. However, in 2011 she criticized Americans' lack of concern about the Muslim Brotherhood rising to power in Egypt as "naivete". Her concern partly derived from her then-husband Marty Makary being of Coptic origin.
Powers opposes the death penalty. She opposes elective late-term abortions. Though she is against establishing theocracies, she supports a country’s right to choose its own government without outside influence.
At 49 years of age, this intellectual personality appears on screen, her writings appear on paper and she manages to voice out her opinions regarding political matters loud and clear. Her presentable and smart personality added up with her know-how of the political world has made her one of the best sought after political analyst in today’s world.
Last Modified: Apr 8, 2020
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