Donald Trump called Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly “crazy” on Twitter this morning after Kelly discussed her ongoing feud with the GOP frontrunner in a recent interview.
In an interview in the April issue of MORE magazine, Kelly said that Trump crossed “‘a boundary one should not cross'” with his personal attacks on her following a Fox News debate she moderated last summer. She also said she wishes that her Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly had defended her more in his interview with Trump that took place before the billionaire and former reality TV star skipped a Fox News debate earlier this year.
On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted this response to the Kelly interview in MORE:
Crazy @megynkelly is now complaining that @oreillyfactor did not defend her against me – yet her bad show is a total hit piece on me.Tough!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2016
Earlier in the morning, Trump posted another tweet (also referring to Kelly as “crazy”) in which he referenced rival candidate Ted Cruz’s appearance on Kelly’s show last night. “Ted is desperate and his lying is getting worse. Ted can’t win!” Trump said in the tweet.
Kelly did not respond directly to Trump’s tweets on Thursday morning, but she did post a link to a Reuters poll showing that half of U.S. women surveyed hold a “very unfavorable” view of Trump.
In her interview with MORE, Kelly said: “‘I do wish that O’Reilly had defended me more in his interview with Trump. I would have defended him more.'”
Trump had previously attacked Kelly for what he deemed to be an unfair line of questioning during Fox News’ first GOP debate, which aired in August 2015. During that debate, Kelly brought up past instances where Trump had referred to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” Trump took exception to Kelly’s questions and later sparked a backlash when he said the anchor had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
Trump’s feud with Kelly and Fox News continued into 2016, with the Republican presidential candidate opting to skip the network’s second GOP debate just before the Iowa caucuses, which Trump lost to Texas Senator Cruz. (Trump returned for the third Fox News debate earlier this month, but his decision to skip a fourth debate, originally scheduled for next week, paved the way for that debate’s cancellation.)
Kelly talked to MORE about the perception that Trump’s decision to skip the second debate may have hurt his cause in the Iowa caucuses and said the results “‘will hopefully serve as a lesson to other politicians that they bully the media at their own peril.'”
She told the magazine: “‘It’s always fun to beat up on the moderators in the press—I get that—but there is a boundary one should not cross, and hopefully this helped define where it is.'”
Trump’s campaign for the White House has featured more than its share of skirmishes with the media, and the candidate also took exception on Thursday morning with a new Wall Street Journal editorial that describes Trump as “blustering his way to the White House.” Trump called the Journal’s editorial board “dummies” in a tweet after demanding an apology.
