“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade showed his support for President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to border policy, adding that the migrant children who have been separated from their families “aren’t our kids.”
“Like it or not, these aren’t our kids,” said Kilmeade on Friday’s episode of the Fox News morning show. “Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country and now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”
Earlier in the show Kilmeade argued that “somebody has to deal with this issue” and that we “just can’t let everybody in that wants to be here.”
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt stated that Trump’s policy is in place to “vet who’s coming across the border, in case it’s MS-13 or drugs.”
Kilmeade went on, “Somebody has to deal with this issue. It doesn’t matter who the president is. If you don’t like his policy, he’s also open to your policy, rather than just criticizing his. He’s trying to send a message to the other countries, ‘this is not the way you do it,’ because this is a country that has rules and laws. We just can’t let everybody in that wants to be here.”
On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order he claimed would end the immigration policy he initiated that separated thousands of children from their parents at the United States-Mexico border. However, the executive order also aims to increase the government’s ability to detain kids with their parents indefinitely.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle ripped apart Kilmeade’s remarks on air, saying that she wanted to “point something out to our colleagues over at ‘Fox & Friends.’”
“I don’t think there’s anyone who is saying a life of a child in Idaho or Iowa means less than someone on the other side of the border,” said Ruhle. “I think this is about humanity and the mistreatment of children.”
“If you are so worried about how every American child is treated, think about the money that is being blown, spent, flushed down a toilet for this political theater. If you want to address income inequality, take the tens of millions of dollars going to this self-created crisis, and put it toward income inequality,” Ruhle added.
“Put WI-FI in rural areas, workforce development programs, improving the education system. This is noise and nonsense, and a crisis created by the president. So please, with your propaganda, that anyone is putting the life of a migrant child ahead of the life of an American child is simply nonsense. It’s ignorant. It’s stupid. It’s wrong.”
Friday afternoon, Kilmeade walked back his comments on his Fox News Radio program, “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” as well as on Twitter:
On his radio show, Kilmeade said: “All kids are important, all kids are special. What I’m just trying to say in this country when they come in, that as the President of the United States, you can only do so much for so many and that’s why we give so many aids to other countries.”
You can listen to his full statement here.
This piece has been updated to include Kilmeade’s Friday afternoon comments.