Former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes once famously told his troops, “We prefer people in the tent not dumping on other people in the tent.” He was bitter about staffers who were unhappy about the hiring of Glenn Beck, and talking about it to the media. But the past is the past. And this is not Ailes’ Fox News anymore.
Tonight on her show, Megyn Kelly was talking about how both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump carefully choose their TV interviews so as not to be challenged. Kelly said, “Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10 o’clock, will go on Hannity and pretty much only Hannity and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which does not exactly expand the tent for either one of them. There. That’s my two cents.”
Well that didn’t sit well with Hannity, who fired back on Twitter, saying Kelly “clearly” supports Hillary Clinton.
One of Hannity’s followers said he should be standing by his colleague, to which Hannity replied:
These are unsettling times at Fox News. Kelly’s contract is up soon. Greta Van Susteren exercised the “key man” clause in her contract, which allowed her to leave because Ailes was gone. She resigned last month. Sources have told us Shepard Smith was also considering exercising the same clause by taking meetings at other networks. But a source close to Smith said no outside discussions were had. Bill O’Reilly told me over the summer he might be ready to move on. “I go day to day,” said O’Reilly. “I don’t want to work this hard much longer, I know that.”
Tonight’s Hannity-Kelly rift didn’t just make public what may be happening behind closed doors at Fox News, it also left some competitors flummoxed:
What the –? https://t.co/76S6f0cdZ1
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 6, 2016