In a bitter ongoing public dispute, Fox News host Sean Hannity has accused anchor Megyn Kelly of supporting Hillary Clinton.
@megynkelly u should be mad at @HillaryClinton Clearly you support her. And @realDonaldTrump did talk to u. https://t.co/vsQiNMgHut
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 6, 2016
At Fox News, being accused of supporting a Democratic presidential nominee is about the lowest blow possible.
Hannity’s tweet came shortly after Kelly pointed out that Donald Trump had restricted his media appearances in recent weeks to friendly questioners like Hannity.
“With all due respect to my friend at 10 o’clock, Donald Trump will go on Hannity and pretty much only Hannity and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days,” Kelly said on her show.
Trump has been avoiding interviews with the media, including Fox’s news anchors, in favor of more sympathetic commentators like Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
Hannity was featured prominently in a Trump presidential campaign ad last month, prompting Fox to ban him from appearing in any future promotional materials. But Trump mentioned Hannity during the first presidential debate, saying he would back his unsubstantiated claim that he opposed the Iraq war prior to the 2003 invasion.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Kelly in strikingly personal terms since the first GOP presidential debate on Fox News, when she pushed him to defend his past remarks about women.
The extraordinary public battle comes at the same time Fox News correspondent Jesse Walters has been accused of racism for a report he did on Asian-Americans last night. Asian-American groups have denounced the unfunny and inappropriate segment as racist, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called the segment “vile.”