Here’s the real reason Donald Trump and Fox News are feuding: It’s good for business.

[Commentary] The debate between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Fox News has already gotten a huge amount of media coverage, and the prospect of the confrontation between Trump and Megyn Kelly will boost ratings even further. The network will make more money, and it won’t really lose anything. After all, everybody knew already that Trump isn’t afraid to stand up to them, and by keeping Kelly as one of the debate moderators they can look like principled journalists who don’t back down to bullying.

As I’ve noted before, Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’ genius has always lay in his ability to simultaneously achieve two goals with Fox: generating huge profits, and serving the interests of the Republican Party (as those interests are understood by Roger Ailes). Everything that has happened with Trump in this campaign shows that Fox’s power to do the latter has its limits; Ailes might have liked to use Fox to destroy Trump and the threat he poses to the party, but that turned out not to be possible. In the end, Trump gets what he wants (lots of media attention, and a reinforcement of his persona as a guy who goes around pissing everyone off because he’s so brave and politically incorrect) and Fox get what it wants (viewers and ad revenue). Everybody wins.