Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade offered President Trump advice on Tuesday for handling the latest round of public impeachment hearings: “Don’t tweet.”
“I just think, overall, the president should just ignore this whole thing,” Mr. Kilmeade said while co-hosting the latest episode of the network’s “Fox & Friends” morning program.
“Don’t tweet during it, don’t get outraged over it,” Mr. Kilmeade continued. “It ticks you off.”
Instead of taking his complaints to Twitter, Mr. Kilmeade recommended that the president let his defenders in the House of Representatives “fight [it] out and keep it on the straight and narrow from the Republican perspective.”
Mr. Kilmeade offered the advice Tuesday morning ahead of members of the House holding the first of several public hearings scheduled this week as part of ongoing impeachment proceedings threatening Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The president took to Twitter last Friday to criticize a longtime U.S diplomat and former ambassador to Ukraine amid her appearance before Congress.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Mr. Trump tweeted during her appearance on Capitol Hill last week.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, subsequently brought up Mr. Trump’s tweet during the hearing and asked Ms. Yovanovitch to respond.
“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is trying to be intimidating,” answered Ms. Yovanovitch.
“Some of us here take witness intimidation very seriously,” Mr. Schiff replied.
Mr. Trump appeared to have followed the “Fox & Friends” co-host’s advice until early Tuesday afternoon, when the president began sharing several tweets originally posted from other Twitter accounts about the morning’s impeachment hearing and one of its witnesses, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. The flurry of retweets started roughly four hours after the hearing started.
Mr. Trump frequently lauds “Fox & Friends” and references the program regularly on Twitter. He had a weekly spot on the morning show before running for the White House in 2016.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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