BROOKE BALDWIN (HOST): And Gabe, just turning to you, you had some awesome scoop in this piece in New York magazine, beginning with, specifically -- you say that the infamous statement from Fox yesterday about the Ayatollah and Putin and if Trump were president. You say it came from Roger Ailes.
GABRIEL SHERMAN: From the very top, from the founder, the chairman and the CEO of this network. He drafted the statement. And what is so fascinating is that for really the first time I've covered this network -- I wrote a book about Roger Ailes -- his own executives are doubting his judgment. I've heard about internal dissent at the highest ranks of the network, the most senior producers who thought it was a bad idea to send out this childish statement that called Donald Trump basically scared to meet with Putin and the Ayatollah. And they said, “don't do that, that's not the way a news network handles a presidential candidate.” Ailes went ahead and did it and we saw the blowback. It did not work out.
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BALDWIN: How -- to you Gabe, then how -- because you bring up this other issue in your piece about then if you're missing the frontrunner of the Republican race, how do you program the debate, how do you ask questions as moderators?
SHERMAN: It's a technical television challenge. Do you bring up Trump, do you ignore him? If the other candidates start attacking him, he's not there to answer, is that fair? Trump has really just thrown the Fox News playbook out the window and has created chaos. I'm hearing that they don't know what to do. There's emergency meetings, they cancelled his appearance on Hannity last night.
BALDWIN: But he's on tonight.
SHERMAN: He is showing up on O'Reilly tonight. How does that make Megyn Kelly look that Trump is showing up on the hour before her show? I mean it's complete chaos.
