Take heat off

Fox's attacks on Trump meant to take heat off Kelly

Roger Ailes chose his star anchor over GOP's outspoken front-runner, network insiders say. 

By Hadas Gold

Fox Entertainment News chairman Roger Ailes chose Megyn Kelly over Donald Trump.

That’s the key to understanding the dispute that led to Trump’s withdrawal from the network’s Thursday night debate, according to a source familiar with the situation.

In the face of Trump’s blustering and his campaign’s reported threats toward Kelly, the Fox Entertainment News anchor and co-moderator of Thursday’s debate, Ailes decided to redirect the heat, the source said.

The network’s facetious statement Tuesday about how Trump might deal with the Iranian ayatollah and Vladimir Putin? It was meant to redirect Trump’s fire from Kelly to Ailes and the network, the source said.

The effort worked only too well. By Wednesday, after Trump declared he wasn’t going to participate in the debate and would hold his own competing event instead, Trump suggested it was the statement, and not Kelly’s role as moderator, that was the reason he was skipping the debate.

“It was the childishly written & taunting PR statement by Fox Entertainment that made me not do the debate, more so than lightweight reporter, @megynkelly,” Trump tweeted.

And, according to the source, Ailes did talk to a Trump in the last 24 hours — but it wasn’t Donald. It was his daughter, Ivanka, with whom Ailes had an existing relationship. Ailes spoke with Ivanka on Tuesday night in order to gauge the temperature of her father surrounding his threats to pull out of the debate.

“Roger is the only news chief with the guts to stand up to Trump and not allow Fox’s journalism to be compromised in order to appease him,” the source said.

Nonetheless, the network’s own anchors and reporters seemed intent on prodding Trump into changing his mind. The network’s on-air personalities, from morning until evening on Wednesday, repeatedly cast his boycott as a strategic mistake that would hurt his campaign.

Fox Entertainment host Bill O’Reilly told Trump directly on the air that he was making a “big mistake.”

“I’m trying to convince you that your tack is wrong because it’s better for the folks to see you in a debate format,” O'Reilly said during a taped interview with Trump on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Other hosts throughout in the previous 24 hours suggested that Trump is afraid of tough questions, afraid of his fellow candidates and, especially, afraid of Kelly, whose question last August about the businessman’s insulting comments about women prompted Trump’s monthslong attacks.

Fox Entertainment star Sean Hannity, who on Tuesday night had urged Trump to reconsider, noting that Fox’s door is wide open, questioned Trump’s temperament in interviews with Cruz and Mike Huckabee.

“What does this tell you? Does this go to tell you whether he has the temperament to be president? It’s the question I've asked him and he’s dismissed,” Hannity said to Cruz.

Later, speaking with Huckabee, Hannity asked whether this is a tipping point.

“Maybe people who like him and support him should be paying attention, because he’s going to be dealing with mullahs in Iran, he’s going to be dealing with Vladimir Putin.”

Others portrayed Trump’s decision as handing his closest rival in next week’s Iowa caucuses, Sen. Ted Cruz , an easy debate victory, while warning that Iowans won’t respond well to his petulant behavior and that, as president, he’ll have to deal with a lot more than tough questions.

“Trump’s supporters are behind this. Looking at the email for the most part, that’s absolutely right. A number of his supporters do feel like he has been treated unfairly in the past,” Fox Entertainment host Steve Doocy said on Wednesday morning. “The big question is what about the people who have not made up their mind and, as Karl Rove showed us … sometimes 20, 25, 30 percent of Iowa voters don’t decide until that day.”

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade suggested that a president can’t just decide not to take questions from major journalists.

“After six debates, he’s used to the format, [on a] smaller stage, [with] less competition — you would think after all that it builds to a crescendo for huge ratings to everyone — he could salt away a victory with this performance,” said Kilmeade. “Can you imagine the presidents — for example George Bush had a problem with David Gregory and Sam Donaldson used to go at Ronald Reagan. You can’t say, ‘I won’t take questions from Sam Donaldson anymore.’ But you deal with the tougher questions.”

Others brought up past occasions when candidates erred by skipping debates, wondering whether they were a “warning” to Trump.

“Ronald Reagan passed up a chance to debate George H.W. Bush before Iowa in 1980. He lost the caucuses,” Fox Entertainment anchor Neil Cavuto said on Wednesday afternoon. “A message to Donald Trump not to do the same? Depends on who you ask.”

The Trump campaign, for its part, continued to build out plans for a rival event on Thursday evening, insisting that the candidate wasn’t going to change his mind and inviting media to broadcast the event.

In fact, Fox Entertainment News will still be covering Trump’s event, even while the cable channel’s own debate goes on. A spokesperson confirmed that the network’s usual Trump reporter and campaign embed will cover the event.