WATCH: Megyn Kelly Takes The Gloves Off, Publicly Scorches Rachel Maddow

The hypocrisy of Rachel Maddow and her exorbitant annual salary was too much to keep Megyn Kelly from flaying her at a recent gathering of media minds eager to hear her thoughts on everything from independent broadcasting to the machinations of the White House press corps.

For Kelly, who climbed the ranks at Fox News before a brief stint at NBC News and eventually launched her own podcast, Maddow represents everything that’s wrong with MSNBC. The struggling liberal network has been the source of progressive consternation this week following the axing of anchor Joy Reid and her show “The ReidOut” after five years.

Most of the staff for Reid will be let go, MSNBC confirmed at the time while encouraging them to reapply for jobs with the network. Maddow has covered her colleague’s firing several times since it was announced and has lamented the loss of talent.

That’s where Kelly drew the line on Thursday.

“I would never give out her address,” she told Semafor’s Ben Smith when queried on whether her attacks on Maddow have become “too personal.”

“That would be a bridge too far… but Rachel Maddow got out there and tried to act like, ‘Oh, I’m a woman of the working class. I’m here to represent the poor staffers who could lose their jobs now as a result of Joy Reid biting it.’ Meanwhile she’s collecting $25 million a year, she’s got multiple homes worth millions.

“You know what? Why don’t you take a $2 million pay cut and save 10 of those jobs?”

WATCH:

The conservative reporter’s incendiary remarks came after Maddow sharply criticized MSNBC for firing one of its two nonwhite hosts, calling it “indefensible” to dismiss Reid.

“I do not want to lose [Reid] as a colleague here at MSNBC. And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that, but that’s what I think,” Maddow said on her Monday night show.

“I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that, on a network where we’ve got two—count them, two—nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. That feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.”

Maddow, now in her 25th year with the network, continues to top the ratings, albeit at a time when viewership has fallen by more than half since the election. Last month, the network’s parent company, Comcast, announced its intent to spin off MSNBC into a standalone company, stripping its ability to remain solvent by relying on revenue from the more profitable NBC News network.

Reid has grumbled privately and publicly about President Donald Trump’s election, but viewers mostly tuned it out: Her ratings fell 28% in that time, and her audience in the critical 25-54 demographic cratered to its lowest level on record. She joins other former hosts including Phang, Alex Wagner, and Mehdi Hasan who saw their solo shows terminated in a broader restructuring by new network president Rebecca Kutler.