Brian Kilmeade Confronts Trump NatSec Advisor With Russian Atrocities: Would Putin Give Back ‘20,000 Children They Stole’ from Ukraine?

In the parlance of Mediaite headlines, it didn’t quite rise to “go off on” or “grilled” — but credit where due.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade confronted Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz over Russian atrocities conducted in Ukraine since Vladimir Putin directed his military to invade the former Soviet Republic in 2022.

Why is this noteworthy, you might ask? Because Fox News’s opinion programming has largely been working hand in glove with President Donald Trump — really since he became the nominee for president, and particularly since he took the oath of office one month ago. And some astute observers have noticed that the massive shift in foreign policy, which will likely hurt the United States’ global standing, has essentially gotten a pass from the highest-rated cable news programs, which are all on Fox News and almost all highly pro-Trump in nature.

At most recent issue is Trump’s repeatedly blaming Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky for the war with Russia, despite the fact that his country was invaded. Not just blaming the victim, but Trump appears to be openly spouting Putinesque talking points that paint Ukraine as the bad guy and the Russians as more eager for peace (and the beneficiary of an illegal land grab).

The fact that Trump and his senior cabinet members, in this instance Waltz, continue to blast Zelensky for “bad-mouthing” Trump (as he did earlier in this segment) reflects a stunning shift in America’s standing, painting us the defender of bad actors and aggressors and no longer the defenders of helpless victims.

So it is in this context that Kilmeade’s even gentile pushback is noteworthy, and worthy of some behavior-modifying praise, particularly given past Waltz interviews in which Fox News anchors literally asked Waltz for direction on how to describe the sudden lack of moral clarity in the clear display by Trump and his minions.

“Wouldn’t it be great if the Russians handed back the 20,000 children they stole from the Ukrainian families, renamed them and handed them out to Russians?” Kilmeade gently asked at the end of the nine-minute segment. “Would they ever agree to give the children back?”

Yes, according to Kyiv and reported by Reuters, Russian troops took 20,000 Ukrainian children from their families and repatriated them to foster families in Russia. Just one of many examples of why Putin was labeled a “war criminal” by an international tribunal, and lays bare just how bizarre and even disgusting Trump’s support of Putin and blaming of Zelensky is to anyone raised to believe that Americans are always the good guys.

For his part, Waltz appeared unprepared to answer the specific question asked.

“You know, we talked about what we’re going to have to do in the territory, what we’re going to have to do in security guarantees, what we’re going to have to do kind of in the future, broader security arrangement, the future of our relationship and those kinds of exchanges, prisoner exchanges, children, what’s happened in some of these areas,” Waltz prattled on, in a reply that used many words but said nothing.

“It’s been a devastating war,” he added, but once again failed to note that the war is entirely the fault of Vladimir Putin. “All of that, you know, should be resolved. And we are trying to resolve.”

“But for everyone to just throw their hands up and say, well, we don’t like what they’re doing, but we don’t have a plan either, It’s just unacceptable,” Waltz concluded. “But it shouldn’t surprise anybody in Washington, D.C.”

Surely the war needs to find some sort of end, and the Trump administration did inherit an intractable mess that many politicians irresponsibly framed as “the most important battle for Democracy in our lifetime” but also not something important enough to which we’d commit American troops.

That said, the blaming of Ukraine for being invaded after all the atrocities Russia has committed? Good on Brian Kilmeade for having the balls to bring it up.

More of this, please.

Watch above via Fox News

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.