CNN's Erica Hill shut down a conservative journalist's justification of comments made by Megyn Kelly about Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of teenage girls.

The former Fox News broadcaster claimed on her eponymous podcast "The Megyn Kelly Show" that a friend with an inside view of the Epstein case believed the late financier was "not a pedophile" but was instead "into the barely legal type," and Hill asked The Daily Signal's Bradley Devlin to comment.

"She did add, all of this is 'disgusting,'" Hill said. "I have to be honest, I'm not sure what adding that changes. The thought of it and the thought of this person who she's discussing somehow seeming to make the case that it's okay if a girl is 15 versus 8. Bradley, why even raise that point?"

Devlin stopped short of defending Kelly but attempted to put her remarks into context.

"I don't know, but there is a comedian who has this exact bit where he goes through the different medical distinctions that the experts have determined and says, 'But if you mention any of this, you sound like a creep and you sound like a weirdo, and you probably shouldn't be talking about it.' I understand what Megyn was trying to do there, I just don't think –"

Hill interrupted to make a distinction.

"I'm going to stop you there because I don't," she said. "I'm going to stop you. But in all seriousness, right, this is not a comedy sketch. This is not – what was she trying to do? What is the point that you believe she was trying to make in that moment?"

Devlin struggled to explain what point he believed Kelly was making about Epstein's sex abuse of young girls.

"I think she was trying to say that these these types of of interactions, like the network that Jeffrey Epstein had created, was not the type of child sex trafficking that we had talked, that we talk about when we talk about young children overseas, etc., etc.," Devlin said. "Now, again, distinction without difference, as she pointed out."

Hill moved on to another panelist, Vox podcaster and journalist Noel King, who condemned Kelly's remarks.

"I have a 15-year-old niece, and what I would say is, I don't think Megyn Kelly needs to articulate every single thing that crosses her mind," King said. "It was an appalling thing to say"