NEW YORK – Television producer David Simon and Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity are tossing vulgarities at each other on social media.

Simon, who made “The Wire,” sent out a mocking tweet about Hannity hosting a Donald Trump town hall meeting about issues confronting black America on Wednesday. Simon used a deliberately misspelled offensive term about blacks to refer to Hannity in saying that if Fox couldn’t get author Ta-Nehisi Coates or “Black Lives Matter” activist DeRay McKesson to host, “then who but you on the pulse of black America.”

Hannity tweeted back: “Maybe it’s just your ignorance about conservatives, or maybe you’re just a malicious (expletive).”

Simon, who is white, took some criticism online for his use of the common slur for blacks. He addressed a later tweet to the “hall monitors,” saying he intentionally used it to point out that it was wrong to use a white Fox personality for a show to address issues in the black community.

Hannity’s town hall meeting will take place in Cleveland on his 10 p.m. EDT show.