New York Magazine (Opinion)
By Gabriel Sherman
August 11, 2015
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. But, after Trump told Sean
Hannity in a weekend phone call that he was “never doing Fox again,”
appeared on four non-Fox public-affairs shows on Sunday, and did
interviews with Today and Morning Joe on Monday, Ailes raised
the white flag and picked up the phone on Monday morning. “Roger wanted
a friendly relationship,” the source explained.
Ailes
offered Trump the chance to do a special on Kelly’s prime-time show to
clear the air — an offer Trump flatly refused. “Donald was sufficiently
pissed off that there
was no way that was happening,” a person familiar with the call told
me. According to the source, Trump’s ire was especially stoked after
Howard Stern called to tell him about a 2010 interview in which Kelly
joked about her breasts and her husband’s penis.
Ailes offered other shows, and Trump agreed to appear on Fox and
Friends and Hannity, two venues that have been loyal boosters of his
candidacy.
Ailes’s
next order of business was getting Trump to disarm publicly. According
to a source briefed on the negotiations, Ailes called Trump "multiple"
times yesterday morning
“begging” him to tweet out that they had made peace. Trump refused at
first, but finally consented. “Roger Ailes just called,” he tweeted at
10:35 a.m. yesterday. “He is a great guy & assures me that ‘Trump’
will be treated fairly on
@FoxNews.
His word is always good!” (Irena Briganti, Ailes’s spokesperson, did
not respond to a call for comment. The
Trump campaign declined to comment.) Last night, Ailes put his own spin
on it and released a statement. "We had a blunt but cordial
conversation and the air has been cleared," he said, adding that Kelly
is a "brilliant journalist." For her part, Kelly addressed
the controversy only briefly on her show, saying simply: "I certainly
will not apologize for doing good journalism."
This
morning, Ailes got his wish: Trump returned with a chatty segment on
Fox and Friends. “I’m glad we’re friends again,” co-host Steve Doocy
said at the opening of the
segment. “We’ve always been friends,” Trump replied, disingenuously.
But
resecuring Trump access could prove to be a temporary victory for
Ailes. Having backed down to the GOP front-runner and all but sacrificed
one of his biggest stars
to appease the conservative base — a.k.a. Fox viewers — Ailes has set a
dangerous precedent. The message is clear: Fox reports, but the
audience decides.
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