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.”
Kilmeade says Trump needs to “clarify” comments about getting foreign dirt pic.twitter.com/w6bizjLOsK
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 13, 2019
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.”
Ingraham on Trump’s interview with Stephanopoulos: frets that he risks getting “pulled back into Mueller” pic.twitter.com/hllSKoCe6C
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 13, 2019
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.”
Santorum spins Trump’s foreign dirt comments pic.twitter.com/93CKkWIIJS
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 13, 2019
