How Roger Ailes Picked Trump, and Fox News’ Audience, Over Megyn Kelly - NYMag

[WillyT]

How Roger Ailes Picked Trump, and Fox News’ Audience, Over Megyn Kelly
By Gabriel Sherman - NYMag
August 11, 2015 1:32 p.m.


Photo: Getty Images

<snip>

In the fallout since the first GOP debate, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes has found himself caught between Donald Trump, who has the full backing of Fox’s misogynist audience, and Megyn Kelly, the star anchor whom Ailes has nurtured and sees as the key to reaching younger viewers. For a few days, Ailes didn’t know how to handle Trump’s full-throated attack on Kelly, who accused Trump of sexism during the debate. Eventually, as I reported yesterday, he made the same choice he always does: follow the ratings, and mend fences with Trump. But that process has meant that Fox has had to mute its defense of Kelly, who is now watching uneasily as the Fox audience turns on her: According to one high-level source, Kelly has told Fox producers that she’s been getting death threats from Trump supporters.

While Trump barnstormed rival media outlets over the last few days, dissing Kelly and Fox at virtually every turn, Ailes remained surprisingly restrained in his response, even after Trump told CNN on Friday that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” during the debate. Paralyzed by the volume of pro-Trump emails from Fox’s loyal viewers, Ailes’s only statement, released a day after the debate, said that he was “extremely proud of all of the moderators.” Fox’s famously aggressive PR apparatus has not gone after Trump to defend Kelly, and although Kelly’s executive producer Tom Lowell did send out an email to colleagues thanking them for their support in recent days, that support has been private.

Trump is now back in Fox’s fold, but the lengths that Ailes went to in order to win Trump back revealed a rare moment of weakness for the Fox chief. Since Trump’s “blood” comment on Friday, some Fox executives have wanted Ailes to personally call Trump and broker a truce. But, according to a Fox source, Ailes and his lawyer Peter Johnson Jr. felt that calling Trump was a risk they couldn’t take, given Trump's erratic behavior on the campaign trail. What if Trump leaked the conversation on Twitter like he did with Lindsey Graham’s cell-phone number? (When reached by email about this story, Johnson responded: “The reporting is false and obviously fabricated.”)

Ailes’s unwillingness to pick up the phone meant that Fox was flying blind. “They didn’t know what Trump was thinking,” one source explained. It was left to emissaries to try and discern Trump’s next move...

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More: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/fox-news-picked-trump-over-megyn-kelly.html

[delrem]

1. I have no sympathy for Megyn Kelly. She knows who she's in bed with.

[WillyT]

3. Well...She Definitely Does Now

[delrem]

5. It's "family values", for them.

[Skittles]

2. "......a risk they couldn’t take, given Trump's erratic behavior"

that about says it all

[WillyT]

4. :loveya:

[Skittles]

6. BACK AT YA BABE

[ibegurpard]

7. Cersei Lannister

Can tell you what happens when you unleash forces beyond your control.
The entire Republican machine is seeing that now. The monster they have created over the past 60 years is loose.