Megyn Kelly: Trump-Inspired Death Threats, Fears For Her Kids, and Her O’Reilly Beef

One doesn’t usually expect news to be broken on CBS News Sunday Morning, the enjoyably drowsy show featuring the warm, buzzing tones of host Charles Osgood — at most, you might be startled by an occasional squawk from easily-rattled correspondent Mo Rocca. But during a profile of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly this week, a couple of depth-charge explosions were detonated.

The interview was conducted by Charlie Rose — again, with his syrupy drawl and lobbed softballs, not your usual go-to guy for searing exposes. But perhaps lulled into cozy comfiness by Charlie, the Kelly File host felt that this show was a safe place to confide a few things. She confirmed with a grim nod that, in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on her, she has received death threats, presumably from supporters of Trump, who, she said, “gins up anger among so many.” She added that she fears that “someone’s going to try to hurt me in the presence of my children.” (Kelly and husband Douglas Brunt have three children under the age of seven, Rose noted.)

A few minutes later, Rose — working off notes some hard-working staffer had doubtless put together by reading a recent issue of More magazine — asked the same More question, about whether she feels her Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly should have come to her defense in his own frequent summit meetings with Trump. Kelly said that, had the tables been turned she “would have defended him more,” and when gently pressed by Charlie, added that “Bill did the best he’s capable of doing.”

Yikes. I had assumed that Kelly’s similar quote in More magazine would have been her sole Fox-permitted snipe at O’Reilly, but she reiterated her sentiments and added that fresh bit of psychoanalyzing — suggesting that, so massive is his ego and sense of self-threat, O’Reilly sees the ever-more-popular Kelly as someone to whom he is constitutionally incapable of extending support, even in the face of Trump’s scurrilous, appallingly sexist attacks on her.

Fox News runs a tight ship. You don’t often witness one anchor verbally slapping another, and Kelly’s emphatic second public criticism of the O’Reilly Factor host was fascinating on two levels. First, Kelly, trained as a lawyer, chose her words carefully and slipped the knife into O’Reilly’s rib cage with exquisite precision. Second, I would be shocked if Kelly’s mentor, Fox News head Roger Ailes, had not signed off on this gesture.

Elsewhere on Sunday Morning this week, the profile of country singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton was both welcome and a shameless plug for that night’s CBS airing of the Academy of Country Music Awards. But for the umpteenth time, I was frustrated by the way Sunday Morning so often chooses interesting musicians to train their cameras upon (Rosanne Cash and Gwen Stefani spring to mind as recent examples), but then conduct slack, lackluster interviews devoid of insight into the subject’s music. It’s maddening that so potentially-intelligent a show should so often come up short.

CBS News Sunday Morning airs Sundays at 9 a.m. on CBS.