than 40% in the last 15 years and two-thirds of all migrants now live in just 20 countries. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. we'll see you next week. >> hey, good morning. i'm brian skelter. what a week. it's time for a special edition of reliable sources. >> they can't toy with me like they toy with everybody else. >> donald trump verses fox news. a slow burning fire exploding this week in a trump-free iowa debate. >> let's address the elephant not in the room tonight. >> while republicans ranked number 2-7 on stage, the g.o.p. front runner hosting his own rival event just miles away. >> when you're treated badly, you have to stick up for your rights. >> playing out on the national stage, a battle between the two titans of the american riot. trump and fox news' roger ailes.

as for fox, their response was simple. we can't give into any terrorizations toward any of our employees. the prize, nothing less than the soul of the republican party and caught in the cross fire, megan kelly. she clashed with trump in the first debate. >> you call women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. >> and angry trump called her bias. >> she gets out and starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. >> it wasn't always like this. trump praised her in 2011. >> do you think you're a better moderator than i am? >> no, never close. you have done a great job. >> fox defended kelly.

quote, we learned from a secret back channel, both intend to treat donald trump fairly when they meet with him. for trump, that was the last straw. >> i came here to do the debate. when they sent out the wise guy press releases a little while ago done with some pr person along with roger ails, i said bye bye. >> to the debate. >> now the fault lines are drawn. it's trump verses fox. and the rest of the conservative media is taking sides. >> this is what it looks like when some guy stands up to the rules in the game and says screw yours. i'm looking out for me first. >> incredible few days for the media. the g.o.p.'s front runner verses the g.o.p.'s favorite media outlet. in all of years covers media

news i never thought i would see this. isn't that what reporters have been saying for months. finally, tomorrow, we're going to see some voting. to this hour, we're going to drill deeply into this fox trump feud and talk about what it reveals about politics and media in 2016. we'll try to answer these questions. whose winning this feud and why? let's start out with two of the smartest people i know. tv insider and the founder of me -- thank you both for being here. jeff, let me start with you here in new york. you say this experience between trump and fox is actually a key tell about all of trump's campaign. why? >> because fox news has always assumed it had the support and the enthusiastic eye balls of republicans and conservatives. when i worked for cnn back in 2004, the convention, the republican delegates surrounded

us and were chanting watch fox news. >> i remember that. >> what's happened here is just as trump is building a base that is not fundamentally conservative, he's broken with conservati conservati conservatism, taxing the rich, single payer. says he can work with democrats. his supporters do not take the side of fox when they go up against trump. they are trumpettes. anybody who goes after trump whether it's msnbc, new york times, fox, can't be telling the truth. that tells you how important it is to understand trump's support is not fundamentally traditionally conservative at all. >> trumpettes, that's not a terrible term. >> do you think they miscalculated by mocking trump with that statement causing him to skip the debate? >> i don't. i think if you only view this through the prism of did fox want donald trump to do the

debate? sure. fox is looking at the bigger picture. again and again donald trump is insulting megan kelly again and again and again and it got to the point where fox did what it does so well. it's brash, it's harsh, it's sarcastic. that's how they've gotten to where they are. i think if roger set around and continued to let donald trump attack megan kelly, it would have undermined the credibility fox has with the community. this is a win for fox in the end because roger got to stand up to trump and defend megan kelly and on the other hand, i think it's a win for donald trump because he gets to in my view pretend he's taking on megan kelly in saying no more, i'm not going to take this anymore. >> win, win's lead to the conspiracy theory this was all made up by the two of them. there's a lot of animosity. don't we have to look at this

from a deeper level which is trump did not want to be at this debate and face cruz. fox gave him a reason to skip it. this wasn't about megan delhi at all. >> if that's the case, while agree with most of what dan said, the fox people did over play their hand with that insulting suggestion that trump is a paranoid. >> if you've ever gone up against fox, they'll smack you in the face. >> they've smacked me before, yes. >> this is a case where they've overplayed their hand. after this point, after seven months, i don't think we can say whether trump wanted or didn't want. this guy is marching to his own drummer. >> almost 30 years ago he said if you do something outrageous,

they'll cover you. >> this is the rough and tumble of cable meaning donald trump is the great glad appreciator or cable, for a network like fox. in the world of cable, people have to remember, the rules are different than broadcast. i see people saying this is not what abc news or cbs or nbc news would have said or done. >> that's right. absolutely right. they never would have done anything like this, nor should they have. when you're fox news and you've been in the rough and tumble of the political media landscape as long as they have, i think this just adds to the respect that many will have for them which is to say you know, you can only push us so far. you can say the language and oh, did he have to be that sarcastic, et cetera. maybe. i think that we should give them some credit for saying to donald trump at some point stop. we're not going to listen to

this anymore. if you want to make fun of us, we're going to make fun of you right now. great reviews for it. let's talk about the polls from last night. trump's debates did not hurt him in iowa. they didn't care. let's look at the -- 28% support caucus goers. let's look at the democrats too. the poll shows a very tight race. hillary clinton has a 3-point lead over bernie sanders. this is exactly what news executives like to see. a tight race on both sides which creates a lot of interest and ratings. >> no question. the closer to race, the bigger the win for them. what i don't buy is this notion that it's the media's fault for making it close. i hear people blaming the media for making donald trump. then how did bernie sanders happen. the bottom line is what we're

seeing is not the media being able to sort of impact all of this but social media, individuals have the power to be able to get together on more partisan blogs and more partisan communities, et cetera being able to gather and say you know what, we're not happy with our main stream candidates and that's what the trump folkings are doing on the right and the sanders folks are doing on the left. >> do you disagree? >> i don't disagree up to the last point. it's not a media creation they've done so well or sanders. these are real political impulses. what i'm sure you're going to be able to blame the media for is overstating the caucuses. 500 people decide whether the blaring headlines will be cruz on life support because he lost iowa or trump suffers serious set back first loss in his life and it may amount to as few of what happened in 2012, 34

people. trying to use the caucuses in these highly unrepresentative events. you don't know how many people are for sanders or clinton. nobody. they have these state delegate equivalent formulas which i d y defy. >> it's so much about perception. not necessarily about the reality on the ground. >> it's a great point because we in the media and the public get caught up in the issue of what's

trending. every day we have a new poll. why? because we're looking for a new story line to take and iowa is a real opportunity to find of blow that out of proportion and suggest oh my goodness look what happened. a stunter out of iowa. just as jeff lays it out and as we know from history, as much as we like to follow iowa and new hampshire in the media, the reality is very often they have very little impact on what ultimately happens in terms of which candidate ends up getting elected. >> one small point. because iowa insists on being first and holds their caucuses, there's a snowstorm heading for iowa. it may arrive at midnight. if it arrives five hours earlier, you may have 305 people up because everyone else won't be able to get there. >> and then on to new hampshire. thank you. coming up here, new reporting

i've got about donald trump's decision to counter program fox news' debate. did trump out success roger ails? we have more to talk about it after this break. to truly feel healthy on the outside

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do you think it was an

unprecedented move? >> without trump, the debate had 12.5 million viewers which is huge and the lowest rating debate on the g.o.p. side. that is in comparison. more than 24,000 viewers. donald jumped to the fact that the debate numbers dropped. he reiterated the belief in a tweet this morning. take a look at this. these are aulll the debates befe this week. they were on a downward rating path already. nobody believed the new debate could have been in the 24 million rating mark. here's my reporting about what's going on. above the surface, there might be a truth now between fox and

tru trump. trump continues to use twitter to take swings at the network. joini dylan, what's the buzz there? do they believe they come out ahead by having the debate without trump? >> well, look, each side is trying to spin it their own way. you just showed the ratings. it's hard for me, maybe 12 million more, maybe not. it's hard to imagine the debate would have been a much bigger media event especially with the build up between donald trump and megan kelly, all that had donald trump shown up. if you talk to some of these people from fox news privately on the trail what they'll tell you no question it was a blow for us.

it was a ratings blow for us and then there's the reputation for fox news. on one hand they're standing up against donald trump saying we call the shots. on the other hand, it doesn't look very good when the front runner in the republican party can stand up to the fox news network and actually seem to do quiet well, draw ratings and maybe come out of the caucuses monday night with a victory. >> it is clear trump did take away some audience from fox. you profiled last year. it's hard to get access. it's hard to get him. >> i think he obviously wanted trump to be at that debate. he was on the o'riley show a night before the debate. understand they're good for each other. i think with that statement, the mocking statement, roger was just fed up.

he was fed up with trump mocking kelly. >> he was trying to take heat off megan kelly. >> do you think megan had a good night? >> i think megan had a great night. >> don't you wish we could have seen the video they prepared for donald trump. >> i wish we could have. i tell you what, i can't agree with dan saying earlier a win, win for fox. all of us on the panel know that maybe certainly not 24 million but the expectation was 18 million. 12.5 million was a very small audience. obviously, they're hurt that way. i think they're hurt in a deeper way. it's this. donald trump has been hammering away at their core brand identity. they've built this ratings jugger knot on fair imbalance. he is saying on twitter

relentlessly fox is not fair. fox is not fair. now, some of the people who set their dial to fox at 8:00 with bill o'reily are also people who are responding to the anger that donald trump is attacking. he's threatening their core identity. that's much of what this is about. the statement i think really hurt them because it's the statement of a political operative. not a journalistic institution. bill o'reily begged trump to come on that show. i've written he is the johnny carson of cable, prime time television. he's flawless in terms of his performance. he was not only off his game, he looked pathetic. donald trump was the adult that

said we can't have nianymore mi shakes. something happened here and we have to behave like adults and you have to be punished. >> the milk shakes were strange. dylan, you wrote a must read story this week about how some conservatives think fox is not conservative enough anymore. tell us what this argument is and what you've heard from people. >> let's pull back and listen to the last 20 years. fox news being the voice for the republican party, the voice for conservatives against a main stream establishment media that is secretly in codes for the democrats. that's how the narrative goes. that doesn't work if you have a large body of conservatives. as we've seen this sort of fisher in the republican party,

what you're seeing is a lot of conservatives growing frustrated with the establishment voices on fox news. what donald trump was able to do by going up against fox news was he was able to tap into that anger and capitolize on the anger and go with the folks who are going to go to trump and not go with the folks and tap into the folks that don't feel like fox news wakes up to them. that's a wake up call to associate fox news with a right wing. >> they want to be fox news. news maximum and oen. they broadcast fox's debates live. we don't know how many people watched it but it's interesting to see that programming. trump beating up on the female reporter, do you think there's

an issue with trump and female journalist specifically about gender. >> i think it could be a problem for trump in a general election if he gets there. that's what megan was trying to get at with the original question. the democrats aren't goi going g this up. let's be clear. they were massage nis statements. the fact he was encouraging his twitter followseers to bash her. everybody should have a problem with that. >> i have to wonder if this happened with any other network if this would happened. i wonder if there's a double standard in the press.

>> i think there's definitely a double standard. >> i'm not on a rival network. back in august i started handling fox from the other side saying they should have been much stronger in their defense. they had the journalistic high ground and trump was a hot dog and theshld come at him. they didn't do that. trump in fairness put out a statement. they didn't rally around her that way because they, i believe, it was because they didn't want to alienate trump. no, he should have done it in

august, september, october, november and december. >> doesn't he get credit now. >> i think now he had no choice and he took the wrong turn. remember when barack obama said we couldn't cover events at the white house. now, donald trump can't tell us who our moderators are going to be. he didn't do it that way. he did it with a snarky soft din can i do you have thing. you didn't know if it came from him for the press office first. >> i think it came from ryan. i'm out of time here. thank you for being here. stick around. coming up here on the birmingham, trump's actions seemed to provide a conservative media. it's hard to know whose at home

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hey, welcome back to a special edition of reliable sources. let me read this to you. in a democracy politicians and presidential candidates should not dictate who is or not good reporting. donald trump has brought his grudge match with the media to a dangero dangerous level for freedom of the press. now advocating for journalist in the u.s., trump's media bashing has not spared any outlet. the reason why his sput with fox news is different is because of a civil war of sorts. listen to what allies of fox have been saying. >> i think trump is shaking up

the way people look at fox news as maybe not always our network. >> trump has come along and for whatever reason flushed out the not quiet so conservative. >> he has a bit of a problem here. he realizes donald trump is walking off with america. >> he's teaching everyone a lesson. don't mess with me. >> joining me now, steve. steve, where do you stand in this divide? >> i think it's legitimate. i think they're going way, way overboard and doing harm that is not going to be easy to repair. >> whose doing harm? >> i think the national review. the editorial and having 22 writers on to trash trump. we had two i love and respect

greatly that next day. neither says if trump is the nominee they would support him. >> is it fair to say your pro trump? >> it's fair to say i'm supporting the network. >> we get e-mails every single day. i calls on my show. nine out of 10 say we switch to fox because we're tired of the way they treat fox. was a conservative media this outspoken against mitt romney or john mccain and you could argue they are classified as many. donald trump has not only done great for the republican party and energized the base out there, they are going to vote

for trump. let me point this out. she doesn't say the word women anymore because of her poll numbers. domd trump, donald trump, donald trump. >> you're pivoting to the general election already. >> trump has very, very high unfavorables as well. do you think there's any way for him to improve that? >> yes. i think he will tone it down and become more main stream and more polished once he wins the nomination. i think that goes without saying. >> you think he'll stop demonizing reporters so damn much? i'm concerned about the way he's continuing to so distrust.

>> i think reporters without boarders should have better things to do than criticize donald trump. let them really fight where freedom of the press doesn't exist. if donald trump were under fbi investigation, his last name every time his name was mentioned would be who is under fbi investigation? >> as far as we know clinton has not been investigated by the fbi. the headline isn't whose under fbi investigation. >> i bought you so many vanilla milk shakes you owe me. would you consider, just consider it. oh me milk shakes, i'll take

them off the ledger if you consider it. >> i was curious, steve, as a broadcaster what you thought of that. was that desperate on the part of o'reily. >> i tweeted out he was begging. it was the next worst thing. the other worst thing heifer did was interviewed president obama during half time of the super bowl. this was pathetic. on one hand, roger ails at fox says we're not going to be intimidated. we're sticking up for megan kelly. trump trashed megan kelly to bill o'reily and he didn't say anything. >> we're going to get into more in a couple of minutes. who better to talk about these news than people who use to be at fox news. when we return two former fox news hosts join me.

talking about fox news, the cable power house. it launched 20 years ago yesterday. it has never found itself in a position like this. how well is the channel doing given all the headaches they've endured with donald trump especially this week? let's talk about this with two former insiders. bob and lorie, i appreciate you both being here today. >> thank you so much. >> i would like to know what you think happened this week. do you think fox or trump came out ahead? >> i would have to say it's a win/win for both. i think i'm echoing what dan dan said earlier. fox and trump both won. trump won because he was able to hold his ground saying i'm not coming on today no matter what. he got to avoid the genius of fox news playing those videos.

trump got to avoid that. i think roger ails and fox news won because they decided to call trump's bluff on this. so it seems to me that fox news continues to have a lot of attention on it and trump has a lot of attention on him. >> bob, do you agree? >> i do. first of all, i've got to look at this thing from a standpoint who has done caucuses seven times and listen to trump making the decision not to go on was a calculated because he didn't want to get himself hurt in the last debate, maybe. although he's not known to do calculated things. on balance, here's a guy who says the most outrageous things about people and gets upset by that.

he's going to get that upset by them saying he's going to be intimidated by putin? >> i think it was a matter of timing between the statement and whatever kind of communication was going on back channel between roger ails and donald trump. it's spresing roger ails and fox issued this statement which got so much attention which i think was brilliant and vintage fox news channel and then i think there were possibly some phone calls that happened because we then saw trump go on cnn and say fox news apologized and were too nice with me. i just wonder if there had been phone calls made between the two of them would mr. ails have issued that statement? >> tough interview, by the way. trump seems to fear megan kelly's questions. let me ask you both about the megan kelly dynamic.

>> bob, there is animosity between bill o'reily. i think it was unusual he didn't stand up for megan kelly. >> i don't watch o'reily. he came after me because i said there was some tension. >> let's play that, actually i want to hear you react. >> cnn was strange. they use their usual hat chet men to attack fox news. anderson cooper was fair. the worst old bob beckel. o'reily is scared to death of megan kelly because she's been beating him in ratings. >> of course, that is absolutely false. >> that is false, not true. that's why beckel doesn't work here at fox anymore.

he could not careless about facts. >> bob, it is a fact. bill o'reily does have animosity towards megan kelly. >> it's sad to be honest with you. i think what i said was something that anybody who follows television knows. that there is going to be that kind of tension. particularly with someone like bill standing on top of the network for so long. it's not a big deal. he can call me out but he calls me out on the facts. i was surprised to say the least. >> one of the sub text in this story is her contract is up next year. fox wants to hold on to megan kelly at all course. they had to defend her aggressively. people had to defend her aggressively this week.

>> well, they were going to defend her aggressively anyways. they have to look at what the country has done and say they were defending her anger. of course they want to keep her happy. no offense, brian, i think you're a bright star too. >> i agree with you. she's a star and hot. >> i'll tell you bill o'reily helped her be a star. >> that's for sure. in the end, what were they suppose to do? did trump really they they would take megan kelly off the show. >> magical thinking. >> that's why i think he wanted a way out of the debate and used megan kelly as an excuse. there's another debate in a few days. if he doesn't show up to that

one. >> he's going to show up. his biggest fear right now is people are going to show up in iowa. i was out there and know that state well. it may be that trump, this was not such a skillful move on his part. >> i disagree. i think trump is a highly intelligent guy and i think that this is going to end up possibly reaping big rearwards from him. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you, brian. >> new data showing when it comes to twitter trump is in a category all by himself. i'll explain after the break and tell you how to impacts candidate coverage. stay tuned. i've smoked a lot

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one of the many reasons this election is so unpredictable, the media volume has changed so much. consider the last iowa caucus, donald trump was still the star of "the apprentice," bernie sanders was an unobscure senator. no one heard of snapchat. periscope app hadn't been invented yet. flip phones were more common than smart phones. now, four years later, poll something a whole lot more complicated. internet surveys are becoming more commonplace. bernie sanders is running a nine-day ad campaign on snap chat to drive the young people turnout. periscope, an app that did not exist four years ago. my phone bes every time donald trump tweets. did he it five minutes ago. actually, he did it two minutes ago. i can't help to wonder if his

twitter account is more effective than a tv ad. to look ahead to the caucuses and talk about how much has changed, let's bring back political analyst jeff greenfield and the critic for the baltimore sun. trump has been ahead for many, many months. so much has changed in polling, we don't know how reliable they're going to be until tomorrow. >> that's especially true in a caucus state. it's so much harder to participate than a primary where you can show up any time and click a vote. the other part about this is the enormous expectations that have been build up for marco rubio to come in a, quote, strong third. whatever the heck that means. that, much as i dislike the caucuses, could have a real impact eight days later in new hampshire where you have four relative moderates, if that's the word, contesting for that slot. a big show in iowa can have an impact and may make the nontrump, noncruz voters in new

hampshire say, well, maybe that's the alternative. >> meantime, all people are talking about is donald trump, as much as marco rubio or ted cruz might want the attention. a new poll from twitter shows he has been the most talked-about man on earth except for the one day, it was david bowie, the day of his death. do you think from now on in every election cycle, candidates are going to learn from what trump has done here? >> one of the things that trump hasn't done, i don't think trump has been on the ground in the same way that other -- some other candidates have. he has been much more on twitter, on social media in other way. >> right. >> you know, he's not -- he's the candidate who didn't dress up in blue jeans and put on a checked shirt like he was trying to get in the chorus line of oklahoma and look at this -- for the fair and put a stock alk of whatever in his mouth, play curly. he didn't do that. he was remote in a way.

i think it's a much more mediated campaign in that way. and i think in some ways that's a bad thing, brian. also, jeff had this excellent piece in politico that really got me thinking about how iowa has given this false importance and all the things wrong with that. one of the things he made me think about was when i applied it to my own beat was we cover iowa, just like we did 20, 30, 40 years ago from the state fair to the snowy bus rides to all of that. and that's probably -- surely not the best way to cover it anymore. even though we have all these revolutions in media in terms of distribution, in terms of lifestyle consumption, in terms of business model we're still using the same coverage model we did many years ago. and i don't think it's appropriate anymore. >> let me ask about one more change, david, in the 30 seconds i have left. one year ago yesterday, brian williams embellished a story about iraq on the nightly news.

it was noticed other questions were raised. he left the chair. tomorrow he is anchoring iowa caucus coverage on msnbc. you've been highly critical of him. i was just curious, will you give him a chance one year later? >> brian, i will absolutely give him a chance. and, you know, he doesn't need me to give him a chance, number one. but i do have to say, it wasn't in -- it is not -- i am very, very -- trying to be protective, i think, that the stage of my career of us as a profession, having any integrity. our credibility is eroded on every side, by all sorts of forces that we can control. one force we can control is to behave honorably and be honest and truthful and fact-based as we can. i thought -- this is where i was critical. the person who was the managing editor of nbc news and the anchor should not be telling lies, and those were lies. >> on that note, i have to leave it there. jeff and david, thank you both for coming back today.

>> thank you. >> we'll be back in a moment on "reliable sources." when heartburn hits fight back fast tums smoothies starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue and neutralizes stomach acid at the source tum, tum, tum, tum smoothies! only from tums

we're out of time now. i'll see you on twitter and see you back here at this same time next week. stay tuned for "state of the union" with jake tapper. only one more day. candidates make their final pitches before the final votes are cast. and we're all over iowa. bernie sanders joins us. >> if there is a large voter turnout, i think we win. >> will he deliver hillary clinton's second iowa loss? >> plus -- >> that's so nice. >> -- as the clock ticks down, donald trump continuing his tough attacks on ted cruz. >> ted cruz may not be a u.s. citizen. he is an anchor baby in canada. >> and in an interview with us, cruz punches back. >> if i was