Megyn Kelly slips in mild dig at Sean Hannity. Hannity hits back with worst insult he knows.

Things seem to be getting a little snippy at Fox News, especially between the host of the 9 p.m. show, Megyn Kelly, and Sean Hannity, who goes on at 10 p.m. Last week, after the first presidential debate, Kelly made a brief comment about Hannity not being a real journalist — something Hannity has said himself — and on Wednesday's Kelly File, she called Hannity a "safe space," a phrase anathema to anti-politically-correct conservatives.

Kelly made her comment at the end of an interview with GOP strategist Stuart Stevens. Hillary Clinton is in a "presidential protection program," doing only safe interviews, but so is Donald Trump, she said. "Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10:00, 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."

Lots of people have made a similar point, but Hannity, linking to an article at Mediaite on Kelly's seemingly mild dig, hit back on Twitter with his version of a stinging rebuke:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Kelly, a highly educated 45-year-old white woman, is part of a demographic that tilts toward Clinton, but there's zero evidence she is going against the editorial lean of her employer network. Reacting to the high-profile "civil war" between two of Fox News' biggest stars, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sees Kelly's non-FNC ambitions on display and ends with a thought that is probably as much wishful thinking as anything else: "I suspect we'll learn that [ousted CEO Roger] Ailes was the rancid glue that held that operation together."