Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade on Friday took aim at President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, laying into White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during an interview on one of the president’s favorite television programs.
Mr. Kilmeade slammed the president’s plan to pull troops from Syria during an episode of “Fox & Friends” over its effect on adversaries including Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS.
“Sarah, he’s giving Russia a big win,” the “Fox & Friends” co-host said to Mrs. Sanders. “Vladimir Putin praised him. He also is doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing. He said, ’President Obama is the founder of ISIS.’ He just refounded ISIS because they have 30,000 men there, and they are already striking back with our would-be evacuation. The president is really on the griddle with this.”
Mrs. Sanders, shown on a split-screen, pushed back on the claim.
“Brian, I have to respectfully and vehemently disagree with you,” she responded. “The idea that the president has had anything to do with helping ISIS reemerge is absolutely outrageous.”
Mr. Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. military would leave Syria, contradicting the recommendations of several advisers and ultimately leading to the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
The four-star general announced his resignation Thursday in a letter that said he believed the president deserved a secretary of defense “whose views are better aligned” with his own.
The U.S. military entered Syria in 2014, three years after the start of an ongoing civil war widely blamed with contributing to the rise of ISIS.
Mr. Trump had previously accused former President Barack Obama of “founding” ISIS by removing U.S. troops from neighboring Iraq while in office and creating a power vacuum that gave rise to the group.
“He was the founder,” Mr. Trump said in 2016. “The way he got out of Iraq was — that was the founding of ISIS, OK?”
Mr. Putin, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, on Thursday praised Mr. Trump’s announcement as the “right thing to do.”
Mr. Trump was a weekly guest on “Fox & Friends” prior to announcing his candidacy in 2015. He has continued to make appearances on the program in office while in office, however, in addition to routinely touting the program on Twitter.
“Thank you to @foxandfriends for exposing the truth,” Mr. Trump tweeted in February. “Perhaps that’s why your ratings are soooo much better than your untruthful competition!”
Appearing on “Fox & Friends” is one of the “most effective ways of communicating” with the president, former Trump campaign surrogate Newt Gingrich said last year.
More recently, Mr. Trump said last week that he would review the case against a U.S. Army captain accused of murder, minutes after “Fox & Friends” aired a segment on the matter.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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