Growing tension between Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity bubbled over on Wednesday with — what else? — a snarky tweet.
It all started when Kelly mused aloud on her show The Kelly File about Donald Trump’s preference for only appearing on her colleague Sean Hannity’s show.
For a bit of context here, Hannity and Trump’s relationship does go well beyond your usual interviewer-interviewee dynamic. Hannity has become something of a Trump surrogate, hosting notoriously softball Trump town hall events, using his private jet to fly Newt Gingrich to meetings with Trump, openly saying that he wants Trump to win, and most recently appearing in a campaign video for the Donald — although Fox News did at least put a stop to that.
So it was a bit more than sour grapes when Kelly complained on her show: “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 doesn’t exactly expand the tent for either one of them.”
(Kelly also threw some shade after the first presidential debate, saying, “We’ve got Trump speaking to our own Sean Hannity. We’ll see if he speaks to the journalists in this room after that interview.”)
Hannity responded to Kelly by taking the high road and refusing to respond to her provocations. Just kidding. He sent out a tweet accusing Kelly of — quelle horreur — being a secret Clinton supporter.
In his tweet, Hannity reminded Kelly that Trump did, in fact, speak to her — although it might have been more accurate to say that Trump spoke at her. Kelly has long been a favorite target for Trump’s vitriol against women and the media.
Hannity followed up his first tweet by going on a low-key reply-tantrum.
The beef comes at a time of tightening ratings between the two hosts. Hannity’s show
still trails behind Kelly’s, but he surprised many by besting
her in the 25-to-54 demographic for the month of September. And with the Fox News’s post–Roger Ailes identity very much unsettled, there’s this to consider:
