After Tuesday evening’s stunner from Donald Trump, who said he won’t be gracing the Fox News GOP debate on Thursday, the media chuckled. Yahoo! came right out and titled their reported piece as “Megyn Kelly Has Defeated Donald Trump.” Folks are genuinely amused to see how the great negotiator can’t get along with a debate moderator. She simply refuses to be wooed, and now the big bad wolf has retreated to his private airplane where he says Fox News will lose advertiser dollars. The cable-news channel, which has been trolling Trump for a full day, hasn’t begged Trump to reconsider.
Kelly reported the news as it happened on The Kelly Files, where vocal Trump enemy and enthusiastic sign-holder Michael Moore just happened to visit. Like many others have noted, Moore believes Trump is afraid of Kelly:
“What’s he afraid of? I’m sitting here. I don’t feel any fear … Donald, come now, come sit beside me, I’ll hold your hand. She’s fine.”
Moore also gave kudos to Kelly for grilling Trump on his “disparaging” remarks toward women and called Trump’s withdrawal “historic”:
“Donald Trump today said I’m not playing ball with this network. That’s a historic moment, and it’s going to be interesting to see where the real power is. Trump thinks he doesn’t need Fox News. I think Fox News probably has something else to say about that. And it’ll be interesting to see where do the powers that be go with this? … You asked a great question, by the way. The war on women. God bless you, Megyn Kelly.”
Meanwhile, Team Trump continued to hammer at Kelly. Trump threatened Kelly onstage during the last Fox News debate, and now Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski threatens her again. Raw Story quotes Lewandowski as saying, “Megyn had a rough couple of days after that last debate … would hate to have her go through that again.” What does that mean? Well, Trump would love to “send” Kelly on another unannounced vacation, so he can do the debate with easy questions. Fox News is standing by their anchor, and the channel is rolling its eyes at Trump and his (rather obvious) attempt to get Kelly booted from the debate:
“Donald Trump is refusing to debate seven of his fellow presidential candidates on stage that night, which is near unprecedented. We’re not sure how Iowans are going to feel about him walking away from them at the last minute, but it should be clear to the American public by now that this is rooted in one thing — Megyn Kelly, whom he has viciously attacked since August and has now spent four days demanding she be removed from the debate stage. Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards.”
Fox adds that Trump is still welcome at Thursday’s debate, but Kelly is staying on the moderator panel. The cable-news network adds that Trump “will be treated fairly” as he always has, but Trump’s not used to anyone opting out of the softball questions. Hey, he’s not calling her a “bimbo” this time, folks.
I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016