Fox News hosts spar over Donald Trump’s soft interviews

Donald Trump's choice of TV interviews has sparked a row between two of the Fox News channel's best-known hosts, Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly.

The US Republican presidential candidate has largely limited his television appearances to a select Trump-friendly few on Fox News, including Mr Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and a panel of co-hosts on the morning show Fox & Friends.

Mr Hannity, a conservative pundit, is a vocal supporter of the billionaire businessman and enjoys some of the best access to him when it comes to TV appearances.

Ms Kelly on Thursday night raised the issue on her own show, The Kelly File, when she accused Mr Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of avoiding hard interviews, describing them as being in "their own version of the presidential protection programme".

"Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10 o'clock, will go on Hannity, and pretty much only Hannity, and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which doesn't exactly expand the tent," Ms Kelly said during an interview with Stuart Stevens, a senior adviser to Republican Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign.

Hit back

She made the point after criticising Mrs Clinton for agreeing to soft interviews, such as one with singer

Mary J Blige

on the celebrity programme,

Entertainment Tonight

.

Mr Hannity hit back at his fellow Fox anchor, suggesting in a tweet that she was backing the Democratic nominee.

Ms Kelly did not respond.

Twenty minutes later, Mr Hannity answered a Twitter user who chided him for not standing by a colleague: “Sure. When they stand by me.”

Ms Kelly appeared to take the first swipe at her Fox colleague when she said during a broadcast after the first presidential debate last month: “We’ve got Trump speaking to our own Sean Hannity. We’ll see whether he speaks to the journalists in the room after that interview.”

Fox, the network favoured by conservatives and other Republican supporters, has figured prominently throughout this presidential election campaign.

Ms Kelly has been engaged in an on-off spat with Mr Trump since a testy exchange at the party’s first primary debate in August 2015, hosted by Fox News and co-moderated by Ms Kelly.

After the debate, Mr Trump suggested that Ms Kelly gave him a hard time during because she was menstruating.

The two seemed to patch up their differences with a high- profile interview in May, but he has not appeared on her show since then.

Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News who was ousted as chairman of the network over sexual harassment allegations in the summer, is advising Mr Trump on media strategy.

Mr Trump’s freewheeling interview style and propensity for off-the-cuff inflammatory comments makes him a popular draw for the TV networks.

In return, the reality-TV star has been able to use the media attention to maintain national profile for his campaign with free advertising.

SMG Delta, a firm that monitors TV advertising, estimated in March that the Trump campaign’s free advertising came to more than $2 billion (€1.8 billion).