A series of public spats between Fox News personalities has revealed the extent to which the coverage and handling of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has created an atmosphere of bitterness and back-biting at the cable news network.

The network’s relationship with Trump has been strained ever since primetime host Megyn Kelly launched an opening salvo at the New York billionaire during the Fox News Republican primary debate last August, which provoked a counter-offensive from the candidate that grew into a protracted feud with the network at large.

In an interview with Charlie Rose last week, Kelly renewed her sentiments that her colleague Bill O’Reilly should have done more to defend her in his interview with Trump when the GOP candidate continued disparaging her.

Kelly first aired this criticism in an interview with More Magazine last month, saying, “I do wish that O’Reilly had defended me more in his interview with Trump. I would have defended him more.”

But disagreements about the handling of Trump at Fox isn’t confined to just Kelly and O’Reilly. On Sunday night, The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld took aim at his colleagues Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity, mocking them for their perceived kid-glove treatment of Trump.

Gutfeld took to Twitter to ridicule Van Susteren’s Sunday night town hall with the GOP frontrunner.

During The Five last week, Gutfeld publicly acknowledged the in-fighting and tension within Fox News between pro and anti-Trump camps, saying, “We as a show are facing internal strife, from a micro level to a macro level… Look at The Five. On any given day, we have tension over this nomination, over this candidate. You can look at our network as a whole.”

The incident between former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has also sparked a public Twitter spat between Hannity and Fields, who once appeared regularly on the Fox Business Network show Cashin’ In.

After Hannity’s interview with Trump Monday night, Fields blasted him on Twitter for not challenging Trump’s criticism of her battery charge against Lewandowski.

he Fields incident in particular has exposed some of the tensions at Fox, with the anti-Trump faction led by Kelly (who last January dedicated an entire show to National Review’s “Against Trump” issue) featuring sympathetic coverage of Fields’ battery allegation, while the more pro-Trump factions like Hannity and Van Susteren have expressed skepticism.

On his radio show, Hannity said the battery charges were “insane” and that people’s perceptions of the Fields-Lewandowski incident “are based on who they support for the nomination.”

Nicknaming the incident “grab-gate,” Van Susteren took issue with the fact that it was being classified as a “crime.” On her show last week, she said: “Now, whatever happened in the scrum, and I don’t think the video or eyewitness statement is convincing, this incident never should have ended up as a crime. It should have ended with an apology.”

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace also weighed in on the issue. In an interview with the GOP frontrunner last week, Wallace agreed with Trump’s assertion that Fields exaggerated the incident. “I think she completely misrepresented it early on. I do,” Wallace said.

On The Five, co-host Dana Perino, who along with Gutfeld form the show’s anti-Trump faction, seemed to have a tense exchange with their pro-Trump co-host Eric Bolling when Gutfeld make a joke about Lewandowski grabbing someone and Bolling rejoined with, “did she fall down?” in reference to what he perceived as Fields’ exaggerated claim. Perino tersely replied, “She never said she almost fell.”

snip

for more material and the tweets that went back and forth see:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidenti...trump-coverage/

Quote: PzLdr wrote in post #3

---

The only host on FOX I can stomach is Van Sustern. Hannity's a bobble-head, O'Reilly's a raging narcissist, Kelly is using her spot, and her Trump attacks, to leverage her way to network TV, and Perino/ Guttfeld are a clown act without a car.

---

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #5

---

Quote: PzLdr wrote in post #3

---

The only host on FOX I can stomach is Van Sustern. Hannity's a bobble-head, O'Reilly's a raging narcissist, Kelly is using her spot, and her Trump attacks, to leverage her way to network TV, and Perino/ Guttfeld are a clown act without a car.

---

Not a bad summary of the situation at Fox with the one exception that I cannot abide Greta. The one show I still enjoy is "Outnumbered" but it's on early in the morn here, and, unlike the "Five", it is never rebroadcast; so if you don't see it in the am you are just out on all those nice legs, er, I mean, interesting discussions.

---

Quote: ThirstyMan wrote in post #6

---

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #5

---

Quote: PzLdr wrote in post #3

---

The only host on FOX I can stomach is Van Sustern. Hannity's a bobble-head, O'Reilly's a raging narcissist, Kelly is using her spot, and her Trump attacks, to leverage her way to network TV, and Perino/ Guttfeld are a clown act without a car.

---

Not a bad summary of the situation at Fox with the one exception that I cannot abide Greta. The one show I still enjoy is "Outnumbered" but it's on early in the morn here, and, unlike the "Five", it is never rebroadcast; so if you don't see it in the am you are just out on all those nice legs, er, I mean, interesting discussions.

---

It is pretty disgusting.

While Cruz says this: "Our campaign from the beginning has engaged in the highest level of integrity. When others engage in personal attacks and insults we don't engage in kind"
His campaign manages to get embroiled in plenty of dirty tricks accusations and under the table delegate shenanigans.
And then we have Donald Trump who has warned voters ahead of time that he will strike back harder than any attack, that "...my tone might have to be less-than-presidential".

I guess with Donald we've at least been forewarned and we know what to expect. I think this hurts him because they've started baiting him to get him going down that road.
But with Cruz he never seems willing to take responsibility for "his" side's dirty tricks. He goes on the attack rather than accept any blame.

Of the two candidate's responses, Trump definitely embarrasses me more but Cruz leaves me more dismayed.

Why? because Cruz smugly claims to be on the high road. He makes a rather pompous saintly claim for one engaged in this tit-for-tat 2016 campaign.

---