I was kind of surprised how aggressively O'Reilly implored Trump to reconsider. Watch, at Fox News, "Donald Trump weighs in on GOP debate controversy," and "Donald Trump weighs in on GOP debate controversy, Part II."
And see the New York Times, "With No Détente, Donald Trump's Feud With Fox Takes Center Stage":
For months, Donald J. Trump had kept up a relentless and sometimes personal barrage against the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, in retaliation for the tough — and, he said, unfair — questioning she submitted him to in the first Republican debate last summer. And for months, Fox News and Ms. Kelly had avoided taking the bait, intent on sticking to Ms. Kelly’s vow to avoid becoming part of the story.Keep reading.
Fox’s decision to fight back this week after Mr. Trump demanded Fox remove her from its panel of moderators at a debate scheduled for Thursday sent the already unconventional Republican race for president into uncharted territory just days before the first critical contest in Iowa.
With Mr. Trump declaring he will skip the debate, the most potentially consequential fight on the campaign trail is not between Mr. Trump and his fellow candidates, but between Mr. Trump and the top-rated cable television news network, which is also one of the most important forces in Republican politics.
Neither Fox News nor Mr. Trump showed any indication of budging on Wednesday. That was in spite of furious discussions inside the network, inside the campaign, and in direct and indirect communications between the two sides. The talks even included a conversation between Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and the influential Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, who contacted her to gauge Mr. Trump’s seriousness but, network officials said, did not seek to change his mind.
Mr. Trump said the final straw was a sarcastic press statement Fox News released on Tuesday, which jokingly questioned how he would handle President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran if he could not handle Ms. Kelly. On Twitter on Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump called it “childishly written” and “taunting.” But network officials said the statement was, in fact, an attempt at levity composed by Mr. Ailes, who they said had reached his limit with Mr. Trump’s rants against Ms. Kelly, which ramped up over the weekend. Still, Fox’s stance was primarily about journalistic principles, the officials said.
Fox News said it would never accede to Mr. Trump’s demand that it remove Ms. Kelly from its panel of moderators, which also includes the network anchors Bret Baier and Chris Wallace...
RELATED: At Politico, "With no Trump, will Cruz be left out in the cold?"
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