Jen Griffin Goes OFF on Putin ‘Apologist’ Guest on Fox News: ‘What He Just Said Was So Distorted’
An astounded Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’ national security correspondent, vigorously fact-checked a previous guest’s “apologist” claims about Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s goals in Ukraine.
“I just heard your last guest, and I feel like I need to correct some of things that Colonel Doug Macgregor just said,” Griffin told host Trey Gowdy. “And I’m not sure 10 minutes is enough time to do so, because there were so many distortions in what he just said, and talking about the west and NATO vilifying Putin and sounding like an apologist for Putin.”
The retired colonel had taken Gowdy by surprise by suggesting Putin is only aggressing due to weapons accumulated at the Ukrainian border, arguing that the U.S. should not supply Ukraine with any military aid, and claiming without citing evidence that Putin does not intend to move troops westward.
Macgregor said he is unsure what Putin wants to do with eastern Ukraine “whether he forms another republic, annexes it into Russia because historically it has been Russian,” but claimed he is “happy” to leave western Ukraine as a neutral state.
Gowdy offered some pushback, saying: “I am not a military expert, I’m not even an expert on geography, but if he takes Ukraine and Ukraine abuts Poland, then he’s going to have a NATO country abutting him. So if that’s what he doesn’t want, then isn’t he going just have to keep going until he runs out of NATO countries?”
Macgregor reiterated his claim that Putin “has no interest” in heading west of the Polish border.
“We’re imputing to him things that he does not want to do in our usual effort to demonize him and his country,” he said. “We need to remember that Ukraine is fourth from the bottom of 158 countries in world as corrupt. Russia is perhaps three or four places above them. This is not the liberal democracy, the shining example that everyone says it is, far from it, Mr. Zelenskyy has jailed journalists and his political opposition.”
He added that the U.S. should stay out of the war, saying, “We should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.”
“So when you say stay out of it, you mean no sanctions, no military aid, just let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take?” Gowdy asked.
“Yes. Absolutely,” he replied. “I see no reason why we should fight with the Russians over something that they have been talking about for years, we simply chose to ignore it.”
Griffin, who came on the show almost immediately after Macgregor, rebuked Macgregor’s claim that he knows where Putin plans to stop his expansion.
“I don’t think anyone that I’ve spoken to here at the Pentagon or elsewhere in western intelligence believes they know how far Putin wants to go,” she said. “I think that the world has seen what Putin is capable of, and to blame NATO membership for what we’ve seen Putin unleash, we’ve seen from Putin’s own words that he is talking in czarist terms.”
“What he just said was so distorted that I do feel that our audience needs to know the truth,” Griffin said, noting she started her career at Fox in Moscow and has seen Putin operate since 1999.
Gowdy told Griffin he found Macgregor’s “take on it stunning and disappointing.”
As he wrapped up the segment, Gowdy added that he “did not understand Colonel Macgregor’s analysis that they don’t want weapons on their border” because “if they keep taking countries, they’re going to have weapons on their border.”
Watch above, via Fox News
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