'Fox & Friends' rips Drudge for 'totally irresponsible' Trump-Cheney headline
Hosts of "Fox & Friends," Fox News's flagship morning program, on Friday called out Drudge Report over its framing of former President Trump ripping former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), with a bold headline on its homepage reading "Trump calls for Cheney's execution."
During an event Thursday evening with former Fox host Tucker Carlson, Trump called Cheney "a radical war hawk."
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine-barrel shooting at her, OK," Trump said during the campaign event in Arizona. "Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'oh, gee, we’ll, let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.'”
The remarks set off a wave of criticism from the Harris campaign and liberal pundits. But "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade said he "totally gets the context" of Trump's remarks.
“There’s a ton of Americans that support this point of view,” co-host Lawrence Jones said. “I do think that is ironic right now when the Democratic Party is dealing with all these comments from the surrogates that they’re trying to grasp for something from the former president to say he’s calling for the assassination of Liz Cheney, I don’t think anyone really believes that.”
Kilmeade called out the Drudge Report's homepage in particular, which was flashed on screen.
"Totally irresponsible," Kilmeade said of "execution" headline. He said he initially thought the Trump-Carlson sound bite was "a waste of time" because "it's just two people talking about I don't want to go to war."
"Tucker is very anti-war; the president says we shouldn't be starting wars ... little did I know it was going to be abused like that," Kilmeade said.
The Trump campaign also released a statement blasting media coverage of the "war hawk" remarks.
“The press has been disgracefully covering these remarks by saying that President Trump suggested that Liz Cheney should be put in front of a ‘firing squad,'” it said. “Are these reporters malicious or dumb? President Trump was clearly describing a combat zone.”
Kilmeade's comments were first highlighted by Mediaite.
Once a vocal backer of Trump, Drudge has become one of the president's loudest online critics in the run-up to next week's election.
Fox, the top-watched cable news channel, features a bevy of hosts and pundits who often defend Trump despite his complicated relationship with its founder, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Trump joined "Fox & Friends" earlier this month, saying he planned to appeal to Murdoch directly asking him to stop airing negative ads about him.