Hillary Clinton took a veiled swipe at Fox News on Friday when she said that she would love to see Republicans stand up to and call out those on the far right who irrationally defend Russian president Vladimir Putin and his invasion in Ukraine.
Though she didn’t call out Fox News by name, on Friday’s “Morning Joe,” Clinton referred to one of MSNBC’s “competitor networks” and said it would be a “profile in courage” if Republicans in Congress declared, “I am not going to be on the side of Vladimir Putin, of Russian aggression.”
“Will there be the crazies who keep yelling and screaming and talking the stuff they do on one of your competitor networks?” Clinton said to hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. “Of course. But let’s narrow that audience by getting voices out there that have credibility.”
Clinton explained that Republicans are naive in believing that just because Putin presents himself as a strong leader with certain agendas that it somehow corresponds to the values of the Republican party. She said such actions play into the ambitions of Putin and of China who want to “divide and conquer” the West not through invasion but “by setting us against each other.”
“They could not be more mistaken. This man, he takes no prisoners, he kills them, he poisons them, he imprisons them,” she said.
But Clinton added that this naivete is a product of people in the GOP blindly echoing former President Trump in ways that are “against history, against common sense,” and that it’s now up to people to stand up to the far right in the press.
“Now they’re caught in a bit of a downward spiral where they’re afraid to stand against even the most outrageous comments,” she said. “Maybe this terrible aggression by Putin will stiffen the spines of a lot of Republicans in office who understand you cannot continue to give Trump and his enablers a blank check because they will lead us to a very bad place.”
Check out another portion of Hillary Clinton’s comments on “Morning Joe” here.
