Fox News' Brian Kilmeade To Trump: Don't Tweet During Vindman Hearing
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade had some advice for President Donald Trump ahead of Tuesday’s House impeachment hearing: Stay off Twitter.
“I just think overall, the president should just ignore this whole thing,” the “Fox & Friends” co-host said. “Don’t tweet during it, don’t get outraged over it.”
Instead, Trump should allow his allies to “fight it out and keep it on the straight and narrow from the Republican perspective,” Kilmeade urged.
The Fox News morning program is known to be a favorite of the president, who has routinely live-tweeted what he watches and has offered glowing praise of the show’s ratings. But it’s unclear whether Trump will take Kilmeade’s advice.
On Friday, when former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified about a smear campaign led by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that led to her May ouster, Trump assailed her on Twitter.
The president ripped Yovanovitch’s long diplomatic career, asserting that “everywhere” she “went turned bad,” and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “spoke unfavorably about her” in their July 25 phone call. Yovanovitch, shown the president’s tweets, told lawmakers the attack was “intimidating,” and Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggested it was “witness intimidation.”
Trump’s call with Zelensky is at the center of the impeachment inquiry. A White House summary shows Trump pressed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
On Tuesday morning, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, told lawmakers publicly about Trump’s call, which he monitored. Vindman previously testified that Trump conditioned a White House meeting with Zelensky on the probe into the Bidens, and that there was “no ambiguity” about the demand.
Vindman also said “there was no doubt” that Trump was taking aim at Biden, his Democratic rival.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where the gain would be for the president in investigating the son of a political opponent,” he said.
Jennifer Williams, a foreign policy aide to Vice President Mike Pence, testified alongside Vindman. Former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former National Security Council official Timothy Morrison are set to testify in the afternoon.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
