I'm starting to like bill again!
Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly's rivalry felt in halls of Fox News
The animosity between O'Reilly and Kelly is an open secret in the halls of Fox. People there disagree about its origins, but they agree the two prime time hosts are highly competitive with one another.
"He's never had a serious challenger like her before," said one high-ranking source at Fox.
The channel's ratings and brand haven't suffered as a result. But the tension between the two stars is a source of intrigue and sometimes a cause of headaches for Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Both hosts' contracts will come up for renewal next year.
The strained relationship was most recently visible on the air when O'Reilly interviewed Trump on Wednesday night. Trump had publicly pledged to skip Fox's GOP debate the next day -- a protest, he said, of Kelly's unfairness and Fox's defense of her. O'Reilly, who has been friends with Trump for decades, pleaded with him to reconsider.
The conversation stretched out over two blocks of O'Reilly's 8 p.m. show, so O'Reilly had plenty of time to stick up for his colleague, whom Trump had harshly criticized incessantly for nearly six months. But when Trump said he had "zero respect" for the "highly overrated" Kelly, O'Reilly was silent.
Kelly's own show started 45 minutes later. She didn't say a word about it. But inside Fox, others were buzzing. Ailes was not happy. One Kelly supporter went so far as to call it a "betrayal."
Outside Fox, the snub was widely noticed. O'Reilly "let all the attacks stand," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the next morning.
Scarborough's co-host Mika Brzezinski added: "O'Reilly should have said 'Excuse me? Excuse me? You're talking about her intellect? She's a lawyer. She's done this. She's done that. She's a mother of three. You do not, you do not undermine the credibility and the intellect of my colleague.' Where was that, Bill? Hello?"
[
link to money.cnn.com]
United States
