Trump’s latest challenger: Fox’s Roger Ailes

So where does this leave Ailes?

Ailes can perhaps respond to the former reality TV star’s refusal to apologize to Kelly by placing a moratorium on all Trump interviews. But considering that Trump has served as a major ratings booster for Fox, and considering that several Fox personalities are seemingly pro-Trump, some doubt Ailes will actually do this.

If Ailes’ demand for an apology goes ignored, and he does nothing in response, the Fox chief runs the risk of diminishing his public profile. Inaction will likely be seen as capitulation. Then again, if Ailes backs his demand with action, he’ll likely set up an ugly and drawn out war of words with a presidential candidate who has a talent for embarrassing his targets.

Trump seems to be steering Ailes toward a public fight. On Monday night, he let loose his Twitter account, jeering at Kelly as she hosted her first show since returning from her scheduled post-primary debate vacation.

“[Megyn Kelly] must have had a terrible vacation, she is really off her game!” he tweeted. “I liked The Kelly File much better without [her]. Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!”

Trump’s latest criticism for Kelly comes after he first attacked her in July for her handling of the first GOP primary debate.

The 2016 presidential candidate complained after his debate performance that Kelly and her colleagues, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, had treated him unfairly. His complaints soon turned ugly as he seemingly suggested at one point that Kelly was menstruating when she moderated the debate.

When it looked like the dust-up between Trump and Fox was about to reach a breaking point, Ailes reportedly reached out and brokered a truce. Trump was then granted multiple interviews with seemingly sympathetic Fox News hosts.

On Monday, however, all of that seemed to fall apart as Trump once again took up his cause against Kelly.

Ailes demanded an apology. Trump responded with a simple, “Nope.”

What to do?

“This is a fascinating gut-check moment for right-of-center populism, for conservative media, and for Fox itself. Right-wing media rose up as an angry, entertaining response to liberal media bias, but that was a good two decades ago,” Reason’s Matt Welch wrote shortly after Trump reignited his feud with Fox.

Welch, who used to co-host a Fox show, suggested that Trump isn’t merely flailing at Fox. His war with the news giant is actually careful calculated.

“Trump is clearly calculating here that his anti-establishment, anti-media, anti-decorum fanbase is angry enough at conservative elitism and sell-outtery that they’ll side with his brave attack against the 800-pound gorilla of anti-liberal media,” he wrote. “And I suspect he may well be right. The taglines write themselves: Too conservative for Fox! Too anti-PC for the shrinking violets scared of Megyn Kelly’s ratings! The only candidate willing to tell Roger Ailes to go f–k himself!”

It will certainly be interesting, he added, “to see whether the people who have profited so handsomely from cable news carnival-barking will ever become reflective about the story of Dr. Frankenstein.”

His last point is particularly interesting: Will the Fox personalities who’ve enjoyed Trump’s meteoric rise in the polls now distance themselves and rally to Kelly’s defense?

Sean Hannity, Geraldo Rivera and the hosts of “Fox and Friends,” for example, have had nothing but nice things to say about Trump. But will Trump’s many unkind words for their colleagues change things?

Though many of them remarked publicly on social media that they were unhappy with his most recent attacks on Kelly, their comments were couched in carefully worded caveats, as noted by Mediaite.

Rivera, for example, “urged his ‘pal’ to cool down,” the report read. “And [Brian Kilmeade] made it clear that he still ‘likes’ Trump despite his ‘unwarranted’ attacks on one of Fox’s biggest stars.”

Hannity’s remarks were also couched in friendlier terms: “My friend [Donald Trump] has captured the imagination of many. Focus on Hillary, Putin, border, jobs, Iran China & leave [Megyn Kelly] alone.”

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and Steve Doocy haven’t even commented on the ordeal.

Not everyone at Fox has been so tepid, though. Some have been much braver about standing by Kelly.

Brit Hume, for his part, asked whether Donald Trump was “a seven-year-old.”

Contributor Andy Levy tweeted, “perhaps [you] could stop being a giant man-baby. [Just kidding] I know u can’t.”

Fox’s Janice Dean and Bret Baier both said publicly that the attacks on Kelly “need to stop.”

Though there is support for Kelly at Fox, the difference in reactions from the network’s hosts and contributors shows a split in the network. For at least one media critic, the entire mess is of Fox’s own making.

“Fox News has been an integral part of Trump’s rise within the Republican Party, having lent him profuse amounts of publicity and the institutional support of its most popular hosts,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter wrote. “Trump’s most outrageous tendencies just happen to mirror those of Fox News itself. Before Fox News opines on Trump’s sexism toward Megyn Kelly, it might want to ask itself where Trump got the idea that attacking women — at Fox News or otherwise — would not only be tolerated, but rewarded.”

“The channel’s counter-reaction would be admirable, even understandable, were it not for the fact that Fox News has repeatedly and gleefully peddled sexist attacks on women for years,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter wrote.

For now, it’s uncertain how Fox will react to Trump’s continued attacks on Kelly.

The network’s coverage of his Tuesday press conference and campaign rally signals that its not quite ready to pull the plug on covering his campaign. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that Fox is ready to take Trump’s provocations laying down.

In fact, as David Zurawik wrote in the Baltimore Sun, Trump may have just stumbled into a fight that could get really ugly, really fast.

“If I know anything about the unpredictable media world in which we now live, it is this: Trump crossed a line with a very tough and powerful media executive,” he wrote. “I am guessing Trump is going to feel the fire of the Fox wrath, unless he apologizes to Kelly — something I cannot imagine him doing.”

Trump, for his part, seems unafraid.

“[Kelly] should probably apologize to me,” Trump said Tuesday evening during a press conference. “I was treated very unfairly at that debate.”

Prior to these comments, Trump’s Iowa co-chair Tana Goertz said of his ongoing feud with Fox News, “Don’t mess with the bull honey, or you’ll get the horns!”