Even Trump’s Staunchest TV Allies Struggle With His Comments On Foreign Dirt

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 12: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a meeting with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, in the Oval Office the White House on June 12,... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 12: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a meeting with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, in the Oval Office the White House on June 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. The two leaders are scheduled to attends meetings at the White House before speaking at a Rose Garden news conference. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Even President Donald Trump’s most dependable yes men are struggling to spin his comments on accepting foreign “oppo research” and not telling the FBI.

The comments came from clips of an interview Trump did on ABC that aired in part Wednesday night.

Brian Kilmeade, a “Fox and Friends” host, called on Trump to clean up the comments.

“You don’t want a foreign government or foreign entity giving you information because they will want something back,” he said Thursday morning. “If anybody knows that it is the President. There is no free lunch. If someone wants information they want influence. I think the President’s got to to clarify that…He opened himself wide up to attacks.”

Laura Ingraham, host of Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle,” directed her ire at Trump’s staff.

“Setting aside the question of why you would have George Stephanopoulos standing over the President in the Oval Office —I don’t know who approved that — what about this notion of accepting foreign intel about an opponent?” she asked Wednesday night. “Is that a risk for President Trump, getting pulled back into Mueller? Again, why he was put in that situation is beyond me.”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tried to squeeze a different meaning out of Trump’s words.

“The President wasn’t answering questions about soliciting information, he was saying, if someone came to you and said ‘Hey, I have some dirt’ –and he was talking more colloquially, again, I think the President’s words, often, are imprecise and not necessarily — you know, that’s why I think he didn’t want to be interviewed with Bob Mueller, is that he can sort of ramble and talk about things more loosely,” Santorum said on CNN. “And I think he was talking more of a general political context, that we get opposition research all the time.”

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