Following the fourth Republican debate on Wednesday in Alabama, which NewsNation moderated, “Fox & Friends” morning show co-host Brian Kilmeade got into a heated exchange with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy was with Fox News reporter and morning show co-host Lawrence Jones in Tuscaloosa when the shouting match took place live on the air, The Western Journal reported.
Initially, Jones was critical of Ramaswamy’s attacks on fellow GOP contender and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, which he calmly addressed. But when Kilmeade began asking the questions, the exchange quickly became heated after the co-host focused mainly on Ramaswamy’s policy propositions regarding the Ukraine-Russia war.
“His policy—it’s just ridiculous on Russia and Ukraine,” said Kilmeade. After confirming that the candidate could hear him, Kilmeade spoke to the candidate directly.
“Hey, Vivek, are you comfortable with Russia taking as much of Ukraine as they want? Are you comfortable pulling all our aid out? And do you really believe that Vladimir Putin will agree not to have an alliance with China?” Kilmeade asked.
He responded by saying that it is important to “play hardball” and should go beyond just sanctions and include a “maximum pressure campaign.”
“What I’m saying, Brian, is the clear principles are: This war doesn’t advance U.S. interest. The Russia-China alliance is the top threat that we face,” Ramaswamy said.
But Kilmeade countered that the war there is in U.S. national interests.
“Vivek, are you comfortable giving up Eastern Europe? Because, you know, they’re already taking Moldova, already making moves on the Baltic, they’re taking more and more pieces of Georgia, and all we’ve done is sit there and send blankets and MREs, and we got an invasion,” Kilmeade said.
The candidate’s response received a round of applause from an audience behind him.
“Because we have no idea how Ukraine has spent $200 billion of our money. We’re forking over more taxpayer money so some Ukrainian kleptocrat can buy a bigger house. That’s corrupt, and I’m not going to stand for that,” Ramaswamy said.
At that point, co-host Ainsley Earhardt attempted to intervene but then stopped short, as her fellow co-host and the candidate continued debating the alleged parallels between the current situation in Ukraine to World War II, with some mention of the chaos along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I think it is offensive that people would sooner spend $200 billion of our resources to protect some other nation’s foreign border — that’s not a democracy — when in fact, we’re not even doing that effectively here on our border,” Ramaswamy said, as the audience applauded again.
That led Kilmeade to insist that the country could fund both endeavors, even as the national debt has now surpassed $34 trillion, leading the candidate to label that “neo-con wisdom.”
At that point, Jones intervened and stopped the back and forth.
The Western Journal added:
Kilmeade clearly had an issue with Ramaswamy even before the interview began.
Five minutes before Kilmeade had even begun speaking with Ramaswamy, he criticized Ramaswamy’s attacks on Haley during the debate the night before.
“He had the most speaking time at that debate stage — Vivek Ramaswamy spent much of it in those scathing attacks against Nikki Haley,” Kilmeade said.
WATCH:
Another GOP candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, also attacked Ramaswamy after the last debate.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash following the event, Christie was supportive of his confrontations with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ramaswamy throughout the debate, and while he also criticized former South Carolina Gov. Haley, he did come to her defense during the event after Ramaswamy attacked her again.
After referring to himself as a “truth teller,” Christie also said he respected Haley as a “smart” and “accomplished woman.”
“I think Vivek does have a woman problem,” Christie said. “I do think he insults women’s basic intelligence. He’s done it over and over and over again. And I guess tonight, I just had had enough. I had enough of listening to his garbage, and as I said, his smart-ass Harvard mouth, because that’s what it is when he’s dictating to me. Nikki Haley.
“We have committed ourselves to public service while he’s been off stealing from seniors to make his fortune. Yeah, I’m not going to put up with him anymore,” Christie alleged, going on to label Ramaswamy a “jackass” after alleging that Haley could not distinguish between Israel and the U.S. on a map.
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