‘With All Respect to My Colleagues’: Brit Hume Fires Back After Fox News Hosts Slag His Praise For Biden’s Speech
Brit Hume doubled down on his thoughtful defense of President Joe Biden after several Fox News colleagues took issue with his initial praise of Thursday night’s Oval Office speech.
The network’s chief political analyst opened the Fox News reaction to Biden’s address to the nation on Thursday, calling it “one of the best, if not the best, speeches of his presidency.” It was a notable bit of praise on a network dedicated mainly to criticism of the president. For example, it took only 90 seconds for Martha MacCallum to question where Biden’s leadership was after Biden called for political unity in the face of adversity.
Following Hume’s praise, notable Fox News hosts and anchors took turns criticizing both Biden and Hume’s praise. Dana Perino admitted she really wanted to like the speech but felt disjointed, comparing the president’s address to a high school student who had gotten the papers of his speech mixed up.
John Roberts agreed with Perino and asked, “Where was the Ronald Reagan and the Kennedy moment and the George Bush moment to fire a warning shot across Iran’s bow and not just say don’t, don’t, don’t, but stay out of this?”
” I don’t want this to be gang up on Brit night,” Hannity then offered, but shocker — he agreed with the criticisms of Biden. “I share a lot of John’s and Dana’s sentiments,” before calling the speech “disjointed,” “cliched,” and curiously lacking in the details of the “barbaric brutality that took place in Israel in the terrorist attacks.”
Baier then gave Hume a chance to clean up his initial comments, saying, “Brit, I want to have you respond. You’ve now sat around after your first statement. What are your thoughts?”
Hume: (laughing). I’m a little bruised here… Well, with all respect to my colleagues, I would make this point: the case that Iran and particularly Hamas, Islamic Jihad and these terrorists are the bad guys and our friends, the Israelis, are the victims. And the good guys, was made by the events of October 7th and by the subsequent comments by the president and countless others. Since it is a overwhelming majority view, what is not such an overwhelming majority view and what is clearly on the president’s mind is keeping going. Our commitment in Ukraine, which, by the way, has involved not a single American soldier in any combat role or any role at all, really. And yes, a lot of money, but a tiny fraction of our defense budget, which has had the effect. May I add. Of gravely weakening Vladimir Putin’s army and armaments and his regime and his place in the world, it is subjected. As he pointed out, Putin to the loss of a huge slice of the territory he thought he’d gained in Ukraine. And given the weakness displayed by Mr. Biden in pulling out of Afghanistan, it created a situation in which we are where we are there. And if we pulled out of Ukraine, the penalty would be awful,I think in terms of our standing in the world, in Iran and in in China and Russia and elsewhere.
So I think he was wise to focus as much of the speech as he did on Ukraine and whether it seemed jumbled to to people listening to the speech. I doubt actually, I think he was he was trying very much to weigh the two together, and that’s why he went back and forth between them. I don’t think that was a fault in the speech.
“It seems that the task has been laid out.” MacCallum followed up and quickly returned to the undermining point of view that Fox News viewers love. “The question is whether or not this president can handle the enormity of the threat to civilization, as Dana put it, that exists out there and whether or not he is up to it, frankly.”
Perino got one more shot at analysis and used it to praise her colleagues, saying that she and the other pundits “all articulated it a lot better than he did tonight.”
Watch the above via Fox News.
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