In preparation for moderating her first presidential debate, Fox News research assistants put together massive binders on the candidates, on everything they’d ever said on every topic. As she read Trump’s, a couple of themes began to emerge. The one that hadn’t been explored was his sexism. Knowing that if Hillary were to be the nominee she’d hit him with that issue, Kelly had her first question. “I wrote it. I researched each line item myself. It was interesting to me after the debate when people started fact-checking my question. My own reaction was ‘Bring it on.’ You think I’d go out there and ask a question like that at the first G.O.P. debate without making sure I was bulletproof on every single word?” She drafted and re-drafted it, and showed it to her fellow moderators, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier, whose initial reaction, Baier recalls, was “Wow, let’s think about this … there clearly was going to be pushback.”

Kelly almost didn’t get a chance to ask it. The morning of the debate, while doing debate prep, she got violently ill. But, she says, “I would have crawled over a pile of hot coals to make it to that debate. No one was going to be sitting in for me, reading my questions. And I can say with confidence that neither Bret nor Chris wanted to read my questions—for many reasons!” She did the debate with a blanket over her legs and a bucket to throw up in by her side.

The Kelly-Trump exchange made headlines worldwide, and Kelly, much to her alarm, had become the news. “I felt like Alice Through the Looking Glass,” she says. To casual viewers, it seemed an obvious win for Kelly. But Trump supporters unloaded a truckload of venom, reportedly sending her death threats, tweeting that she was a “c--t” and a “hag.” The candidate was intent on taking her down, with his top deputy re-tweeting, “gut her.” For the folks at Fox News, it wasn’t immediately obvious how to respond. Trump’s supporters made up a good chunk of the Fox News viewership, and Trump was a “friend” to a number of on-air personalities, who seemed terrified to lose his favor. Hannity, Geraldo Rivera, and Brian Kilmeade tweeted rather limp pleas for him to stick to the issues. A few days after the debate, Steve Doocy began an interview with Trump with the hopeful and slightly tragic words “Glad we’re friends again.” According to a report in New York magazine by Gabriel Sherman (author of the recent book about Fox News, The Loudest Voice in the Room), Ailes wavered in his support for his anchor. Kelly says this is “complete nonsense.”

“I talked to her on the phone every day,” says Ailes. “Whenever there is a crisis Megyn is a cool customer.” According to Kelly, “We were eye to eye on what we both wanted. Which was to move forward.” Immediately following the debate, her viewership climbed by 9 percent.

What with all the male bullies she’s put in their place, Kelly would be perfectly positioned to become a leader in women’s issues such as equal pay and reproductive rights. But Kelly, whose position on abortion, she says, is known only to her husband and herself, claims these issues actually divide women. “Why can’t there be an acknowledgment that, in some instances, women remove themselves from the workforce for a long time and when they come back of course they’re not going to get exactly equal pay?” she asks. “It’s like some of these things are anathema—if you say them, you get booted out of the feminist club…. Gloria Steinem doesn’t get to kick those other women out of the feminist club, or the female-empowerment club, because she says so!” Sensing herself getting uppity, she laughs and does a sassy snap across her face for emphasis.

UNFLINCHING

She was violently ill the day of the debate, but “would have crawled over a pile of hot coals to make it. . . . No one was going to be sitting in for me, reading my questions.” Photograph by Patrick Demarchelier. Styled by Jessica Diehl.

In the smaller political arena within Fox News itself, Kelly, it seems, has taken the same, rather delicate tack in pursuing women’s empowerment: to fiercely pursue one’s needs while rejecting anything that sounds like lefty dogma. Her team is made up mainly of women, many of whom are pregnant or have just had a baby. “I’ve said to all of them, ‘If you feel overwhelmed, please come and talk to me and let’s try to find a solution.’ I don’t want all the young mothers to be driven off the show because they feel they have to choose between devotion to the show and devotion to their child.” According to a Fox News colleague, Happening Now host Jenna Lee, who has sought out Kelly’s advice on balancing children and work, “Megyn really owns who she is. When you see someone who really owns who they are, it inspires you to own who you are.”

In keeping with owning who she is, Kelly isn’t reticent about what she wants next: to do longer, more in-depth interviews, in the vein of Charlie Rose or Winfrey, which would be “less immersed in angry political exchanges.” She reports that some prime-time specials, featuring longer interviews, are coming down the pike at Fox News, but one senses that she’s already thinking one step ahead of this development, and restlessly pushing at the constraints. “Charlie Rose does it, and he does it very well. But that doesn’t mean nobody else can do it,” says Kelly. “I think that there’s a spiritual component to my personality that is completely unutilized in my current job.” Note to television executives everywhere.

Clarification: This article has been updated to accurately reflect the period during which Kelly’s ratings surpassed Bill O’Reilly’s.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Lou Dobbs’s position at Fox Business Network. He is a host.