Megyn Kelly opened the second block of her prime-time show on Tuesday evening by introducing Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, serial author, seasoned Clinton antagonist, and current Donald Trump apologist. The Kelly File segment was ostensibly focused on the familiar staples of right-wing cable news: polls numbers, Trump’s dwindling chances, WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches, and the like. The conversation, however, quickly devolved into a more prurient discussion about sex. In what has become a regular occurrence during this unpredictable and interminable election cycle, a split screen separated a calm woman from a frothing man spewing bizarre remarks that, wittingly or not, diminished the significance of sexual assault.

Gingrich accused Kelly and the rest of the media of spending a disproportionate amount of time discussing the 11-year-old Access Hollywood tape that caught the Republican nominee bragging about grabbing female genitals and trying to bed married women while his third wife was pregnant (Gingrich had previously called the words “ugly” and “disgusting,” and the media’s attention to them “almost equivalent of a lynch mob”). He questioned why the same amount of attention hasn’t been paid to a speech Clinton made to a bank in Brazil.

The heat started building in Gingrich’s face when Kelly reminded him that if Trump is a “sexual predator,” as she put it, then that is a big story. “He’s not a sexual predator,” he barked. “I’m sick and tired of people like you using language that’s inflammatory and not true.”

“I think that your defensiveness on this may speak volumes, sir,” Kelly said, a cool smile building.

That about did it for Gingrich. “You want to go back to the tapes of your show recently? You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy.”

“Me? Really?” Kelly laughed. “You know what, Mr. Speaker? I’m not fascinated by sex, but I am fascinated by protection of women and understanding what we’re getting in the Oval Office.”

Gingrich goaded Kelly about Bill Clinton, who, of course, he helped to impeach during his time as Speaker while he himself was having an affair with the woman who would become his third wife. “Do you want to comment on whether the Clinton ticket has a relationship to a sexual predator?” he said. “I want to hear your words: Bill Clinton, sexual predator. I dare you. Say, ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.’”

Kelly flashed an almost imperceptible eye roll and clicked her tongue before reminding him that the American public is less interested in the misdeeds of Hillary Clinton’s husband than they are in those of a man himself running for president. “We’re going to have to leave it at that,” she wrapped up the segment. “You can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them, Mr. Speaker.”

This wasn’t the first time this election season that Kelly, whose contract is up at Fox News next year, has stood her ground in the face of a seething man defending alleged bad behavior. It’s not the second, third, or, fourth, even. In a historic cycle for women—one in which a female candidate was nominated by a major party for president for the first time in 270 years—it is Kelly who has been the one consistently making headlines for standing up for women. She prodded Trump about his treatment of women more than a year before the Access tape leaked, called out Roger Ailes when sexual harassment allegations against the conservative media kingpin surfaced, defended victims of sexual assault, and negotiated for what could be one of the most coveted cable news contracts in the coming years. It may have taken a few deplorable men to do deplorable things for it to happen, but Kelly has become an improbable feminist icon this election season.

Kelly was never the likeliest candidate to fill that role. She got her big break in television on Fox News, a network known for accepting little less than bottle-blonde beauties obliging the network’s no-pants policy. But something changed when she stood up to Donald Trump in the first Republican primary debate. Kelly asked Trump, then still a curiosity, about the offensive comments he’d made about women over the years—calling them “pigs” and making other remarks about their appearances. By now, we all know how the billionaire reality star took to her question; he railed against her unfairness, suggested that she was menstruating, and spent about six months referring to her as a “lightweight” journalist so biased that he didn’t even show up to another Fox Business debate at which she was set to moderate. A few months later, Kelly announced that she was coming out with a book, Settle for More, to be published the week after Election Day, and landed herself a network prime-time special as she turned up the heat on her upcoming contract negotiation. In the run-up to her special—during which she sat down with Trump for the first time since their spat for an interview that largely fell flat—Kelly made it known that she was keeping her career options open. “Whenever I go into a contract negotiation, I’m open-minded. As I always say, it’s a very fickle business,” she told Bravo’s Andy Cohen.

All of this occurred under the watchful eye of her then boss, Roger Ailes, a longtime friend of Trump and supporter of Kelly’s career. That was until July, when her colleague, Gretchen Carlson, filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against him, alleging he had made a series of inappropriate comments and had fired her when she rejected his advances. Kelly reportedly cooperated with the internal investigation into Ailes’s behavior launched by Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox, reportedly telling lawyers from Paul, Weiss that Ailes had sexually harassed her a decade ago when she was first starting out. Kelly urged her colleagues to come forward with their own stories, Sarah Ellison reported this month, telling them that they would not be alone.

Since then, more than 20 women have come forward with accusations against Ailes, who has denied all wrongdoing. He resigned from the network in July, two days after reports that Kelly had spoken to Paul, Weiss surfaced. 21st Century Fox settled with Carlson for $20 million and offered her an unprecedented apology.

Kelly hasn’t publicly commented on the Ailes allegations or her role in the investigation, though, as Ellison reported last week, she has added a chapter about him and the whole saga to her forthcoming book. But on her show, she’s ripped into guests who have blamed those who do speak out about assault or harassment. “The truth is that victims of sexual assault, victims of rape, victims of unwanted groping, they often don’t come forward. They’re humiliated. Especially back in the day, they were told: move along, it happens to all women, you gotta take it,” she said on the Kelly File earlier this month, when a guest questioned the women coming forward with stories about Trump. She laid into Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway last month when she claimed Trump has only made a few sexist comments over 25 years. “You know he has repeatedly made comments about women, about their looks, their size, their weight, even in this campaign, talking about Carly Fiorina’s face, re-tweeting a negative picture of Heidi Cruz’s face, criticizing Hillary Clinton in her look,” she said. “Kellyanne, this is an issue for him, is it not?”

And then there was Gingrich on Tuesday night, who, with a straight face, on her own show, accused her of being fascinated by sex because she has covered the dozen or so women who have come forward with sexual-assault allegations at the hands of a major party nominee in the final weeks of a presidential election.

Watching the split screen of the interaction, it’s hard not to see the comparisons between Kelly and Gingrich on her show and Clinton and Trump on a debate stage. In both cases, Kelly and Clinton easily figured out how to get under these men’s skin with a few choice words—for Clinton, simply referring to Trump as “Donald”; for Kelly, calling out Gingrich’s “defensiveness.” Both men struggled to control their temper as the women remained unruffled and on message.

As of now, this has served Clinton well in the polls. She’s crept toward a double-digit lead and an even stronger hold on female voters as the election nears. It’s worked for Kelly, too. James and Lachlan Murdoch, the C.E.O. and co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, respectively, are pulling out all the stops to get Kelly to renew her contract, Ellison reports, with the possibility of a huge new salary to rival her male counterparts at the network by the time her book comes out.

That they’ve had to climb over lots of dirt and a few dirty old men to reach these heights is a shame. It’s sad and unfortunate and shouldn’t be that way. But a seat in the Oval Office and a massive contract in cable news are still remarkable achievements, regardless of how messy it was to get there. This is politics and media. No one ever got to the top without shoveling shit first.