Fox mocks Trump as war of words escalates

Trump released a video on social media early Tuesday morning in which he asked his supporters if he should bother showing up for the debate given that Kelly is scheduled to moderate.

“Megyn Kelly is really biased against me,” Trump said in the video. “She knows that. I know that. Everybody knows that. Do you really think she can be fair at a debate?”

But Fox seems to have had enough of Trump’s threats, and released a sarcastic response implying that Trump won’t always get to pick and choose who he deals with in life.

“We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president – a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings,” a Fox spokesperson said Tuesday afternoon.

Fox also made it clear that it won’t be ditching Kelly. The network’s chief called Trump’s bluff Tuesday, suggesting they have no problem if he wants to sit out the event.

“Megyn Kelly is an excellent journalist, and the entire network stands behind her,” Fox’s Roger Ailes told the Washington Post. “She will absolutely be on the debate stage on Thursday night.”

Trump has been grumbling about Kelly for months, and reiterated his complaint earlier this week.

“I don’t like her,” he told CNN Monday. “She doesn’t treat me fairly. I’m not a big fan of hers … I thought she was very unfair in the last debate. A lot of people said I won that debate. Everybody said I won the last debate.”

Back in August, a feud broke out between Trump and Kelly after the first GOP primary debate. Trump said it was “unprofessional” for Kelly to ask him to address disparaging remarks that he has made about women. Things took a turn for the worse after Trump seemed to suggest in a subsequent CNN interview that Kelly was menstruating during the debate.

The two never really patched things up, and Trump has used his Twitter account repeatedly to attack Kelly and her show.

There have been moments since when it appeared Fox and Trump had kissed and made up, putting the supposed hostilities to an end. But those brief ceasefires have all failed, as the casino tycoon has sporadically gone on the offensive against Kelly, who has mostly ignored his insults.