A truce has been struck between Donald Trump and Fox News, as both parties chose to avert a path that could have threatened the summer ratings blockbuster the real estate mogul’s presidential campaign has become.

On Monday morning, after 72 hours on the brink, Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes called Trump to assure him that he would be treated fairly by the network. And Trump, who according to a source with knowledge of the situation had threatened to boycott Fox News altogether, agreed to appear on “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.”


“Donald Trump and I spoke today,” Ailes said in a statement released by the network Monday night. “We discussed our concerns, and I again expressed my confidence in Megyn Kelly. She is a brilliant journalist and I support her 100 percent. I assured him that we will continue to cover this campaign with fairness & balance. We had a blunt but cordial conversation and the air has been cleared.”

Trump made up too, in a tweet: “Roger Ailes just called. He is a great guy & assures me that ‘Trump’ will be treated fairly on @FoxNews,” he wrote. “His word is always good!”

(Trump’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

“Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” aren’t the next battlefields, they’re the reinstatement of normal relations. Trump gains back his Fox spotlight, while Ailes maintains his rights to the show and its revenues. A restaging of the original battle — say, a one-on-one sit-down interview of Trump by Kelly — is, at least, deferred. (On her own show Monday night, Kelly said she “will not apologize for doing good journalism,” and that “it’s time now to move forward.”)

Politically, it means little — Stuart Stevens, a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, notes that we’re still in the “phony war stage” of the 2016 contest, with nearly six months to go until the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. But from an entertainment perspective, there is all to play for: 24 million people watched Thursday night’s Republican primary debate, making it the most-watched nonsports telecast in the history of cable television. Fox News needs Trump; and Trump, with his desire to prolong the summer tour into the fall, needs Fox and its audience of loyal conservatives.

Trump is in an especially precarious position. To date, he has achieved success by channeling a conservative strain of anger and frustration among conservative voters and expressing it through bluster and blunt speak, perhaps his greatest political assets. That is why, despite all the death knells rung for him by pundits, Trump grew only stronger after offending Mexican immigrants and John McCain. It is also why his retort about political correctness at last Thursday’s debate played so well in Cleveland, despite the fact that he had just been branded a misogynist.

But as the summer moves toward fall, and the campaign season begins in earnest, Trump is being forced to transition to a more serious phase of his candidacy. Standing on a national stage in the company of Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, Trump’s finding that there’s a fine line between being the angriest man on stage and being the most ridiculous. His tête-à-tête with Kelly, and his subsequent remarks over the weekend — about the “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” — brought the comic as close as he’s come to playing the role of the clown.

For Trump, then, the invitation to “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” is a chance to once again make his case as a serious presidential contender — not to play to the base that had blindly supported him from the beginning, but to try to salvage his appeal with anyone who had started taking him seriously over the past two months. To prove that he is not a coarse, misogynistic.

The challenge for Fox News is perhaps even greater.

From the executives’ perspective, Trump is a ratings monster. From the journalists’ perspective, he is a prize target. The inherent tension there was on full display when Kelly aimed for her TKO at the Quicken Loans Arena: Here was the toupeed media phenomenon bringing 24 million viewers to Fox News, and Kelly – doing her job — was shooting to kill it. Ailes’ most recent calculation seems to be that this sacred cow has more milk to give, and isn’t yet ready for the slaughter.