Megyn Kelly admits she fears a rabid Trump supporter may actually harm her in front of her kids

Meanwhile, Trump reportedly warns of even more "bombs" that could take down the entire Fox News empire

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published April 4, 2016 7:09PM (EDT)

Megyn Kelly, Donald Trump   (Reuters/Brendan McDermid/Jae C. Hong)
Megyn Kelly, Donald Trump (Reuters/Brendan McDermid/Jae C. Hong)

A newly published in-depth and excellent profile of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in New York Magazine is certainly a must-read. Salon has compiled just nine of the most explosive revelations in the piece, but one stand-out is Gabriel Sherman's reporting that before his messy fallout with Fox News, Trump negotiated an exit deal for the notoriously closed cable news network's most prominent defector -- a man who reportedly held major revelations about the network described as "bombs" that could cause Fox News to crumble.

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump told Sherman, bragging of his role as lead negotiator after Fox News chief Roger Ailes fired longtime public relations adviser Brian Lewis, a man whom he accused of leaking company secrets. According to Sherman, the Trump negotiated settlement reportedly involved Fox News paying Lewis millions to go quietly, with Trump somehow in possession of everything the former close Ailes confidant “had planned to leak.”

Perhaps aware of Trump's arsenal of anti-Fox News secrets, the network's (arguably) biggest star reveals in a new interview that the Republican presidential frontrunner and namely his supporters, continue to scare her.

After Megyn Kelly dared to ask Trump about his past sexist comments, his rabid supporters lashed out online and with threatening letters to her office. "I perceived it as a veiled threat," Kelly said of Trump's response during that memorable first debate exchange in August during a "CBS Sunday Morning" interview over the weekend. "Because he said he might not be nice to me after this debate."

Kelly explained to CBS' Charlie Rose that Trump's blustery, if not empty, threats serve to "gin[] up anger among so many. So it manifests in my life in several ways."

“It’s not that I’m worried someone’s actually going to come shoot me down,” she told Rose. “But I do worry someone’s gonna try to hurt me in the presence of my children.”

Trump's attack on Kelly hardly slowed down after she first publicly revealed the death threats from his supporters months ago. As recently as last Friday, Trump took to Twitter to again attack Kelly:

Still, Kelly told Rose that she would "absolutely" host Trump any time. "He does not have to apologize." The rest of the Kelly interview was in-line with a continued media tradition of  glowing Kelly profiles that as Media Matters' Tyler Cherry noted completely ignores Kelly's history as a lead propagator of right-wing misinformation.


By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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Donald Trump Election 2016 Elections 2016 Gop Civil War Megyn Kelly