Fox News hosts play down Russia’s attack

As Russia began an invasion into Ukraine, Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night welcomed a call in to her show from former President Donald Trump, who blamed the military strike on the “weakness and the incompetence” of the Biden administration.

Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ top-rated host, questioned why Americans hated President Vladimir Putin of Russia in a segment Tuesday night. On Wednesday, he labeled Ukraine “a pure client state of the United States State Department.”

As Putin mounts an offensive against Ukraine, despite diplomatic efforts by the United Nations and sanctions by the United States and other nations, the rhetoric from some of Fox News’ biggest stars stood in contrast to the reporting from the network’s own journalists.

Fox News has four correspondents reporting from Ukraine, with Steve Harrigan and Trey Yingst on the ground in Kyiv and Mike Tobin and Lucas Tomlinson reporting from Lviv.

Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’ national security correspondent, said in a report Wednesday night that Russia’s attack was “a fullscale invasion.”

“The way in which Putin is describing Ukraine, he is describing it as an existential threat to Russia,” Griffin said. “This is a figment of his imagination. This is a man — if you look in his eyes, you see someone who has gone completely mad.”

Griffin’s report came during an hour of breaking news coverage that preempted Fox News’ usual nightly offering, the conservative opinion show “Gutfeld!”

On Feb. 21, Griffin pushed back against host Sean Hannity, who suggested that President Joe Biden was to blame for the conflict.

“Sean, how we got to this point is a long story, and it predates the Biden administration,” she said. “It includes mistakes made by every U.S. president since the Soviet Union fell apart.”

Carlson has taken an isolationist approach in the lead-up to the invasion. On Tuesday night, he asserted that Democrats believed Americans had a “patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin” but questioned why the Russian president had been vilified.

On Wednesday night, Ingraham bumped her guest, journalist Glenn Greenwald, to speak with Trump. Ingraham described a speech by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine imploring Putin not to invade as “a really pathetic display.”