Jeanine Pirro went ballistic on her Fox News co-host Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday for suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin manipulated Donald Trump to further Russian objectives.
During a debate on “The Five,” Pirro suggested Putin didn’t invade Ukraine under Trump’s leadership because he was afraid of Trump. She also called Biden a “wuss” and declared him “responsible for the decline of the West.”
“How do you know that Putin wasn’t playing Trump?” Rivera asked his colleague, sending her into a tailspin.
“Oh, stop!” Pirro shouted. “He didn’t invade when Trump was president. It’s not about loving Trump. It’s about the fact that Trump had everybody against the wall.
“I don’t give a damn what Putin thinks. I only care what Putin did. And he was a wuss when Trump was president, and that’s the end of it!”
Trump and many of his allies in conservative media have been pushing the idea that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine under Trump due to what they perceive as his “strength.” Right-wing commentators have repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden for Putin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine and have cast him as weak as the U.S. treads carefully to avoid a NATO conflict with Russia that could ultimately trigger in a nuclear war.
Earlier in the segment, co-host Jesse Watters recalled “when Trump threatened to nuke everybody,” praising him for keeping things “relatively stable on the world stage.”
“Biden’s approach is so conventional,” Watters complained.
During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week, Trump said that if he were president, he would be boasting about U.S. nuclear capabilities and saying things like “we don’t want to wipe out Russia.”
Eric Trump told Hannity on Monday that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine during his father’s administration because “Putin was in with the KGB, he can read people, and he could tell that Donald Trump was a very strong person.”
The U.S. and its NATO allies have foisted unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia and provided hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. They have stopped short of any moves that could provoke direct conflict with Russia.
Trump repeatedly failed to call out Russian aggression against Ukraine during his tenure and often praised Putin and other autocrats while alienating U.S. allies.
During the same broadcast of “The Five,” Pirro also offered a heated defense of oil companies, telling Rivera to “leave ’em alone” after he accused them of profiteering as prices spike in part because of Biden’s ban on Russian oil imports.