Fox News Host Claims Trump Fawns Over Putin to ‘Taunt’ Critics Into ‘Shrieking Insanity’

Fox News’ Outnumbered covered the big news this afternoon of Robert Mueller‘s office indicting 12 Russian intel officers with hacking, and at one point the co-hosts talked about President Donald Trump‘s public praise of Vladimir Putin ahead of their summit.

The Russians have been charged with hacking Hillary Clinton‘s campaign and the DNC. Trump famously said maybe the DNC hack wasn’t from the Russians but from a 400-pound guy on his bed.

Melissa Francis brought up a Fox News poll that found 53 percent of Americans believe Trump is not being tough enough on Russia, before saying it’s “insulting” for politicians who “should know better” to try and criticize Trump over this summit.

Charles Hurt said a lot of them are caught up in a “wild conspiracy theory” about Russia, dismissing the Fox poll results about people not thinking Trump’s tough enough on Russia by saying “they get told by the media that 17000 times a day!”

He also called it a “meaningless number” because “the idea Donald Trump is not tough enough on Putin––it’s absurd on the face of it, especially when you look at him confronting Germany about the gas line from Russia to Germany.”

Harris Faulkner suggested Trump may just have “respect for the power of Putin and he says things that are perhaps more flowery than his actions would convey,” while Dagen McDowell made this argument:

“You know why he does it? He does it and his political opponents here and many members of the media––they don’t have enough schoolyard sense to know he’s doing it to taunt you! To send you into a swirl of hysteria, of shrieking insanity. ‘Cause that is literally all they can talk about.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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