With skepticism growing over the rationale used by the White House to kill top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani—even among senior administration officials—Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt on Monday took issue with those critical of “our intelligence community’s decision” while calling for the American public to place its undivided trust in the Trump administration.
“I find it so interesting that people are critical of the president’s decisions, of our intelligence community’s decisions, of our generals’ decisions,” Earhardt huffed at the top of Monday’s Fox & Friends broadcast.
“They want details,” co-host Steve Doocy noted.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Well, they can’t have it,” Earhardt snapped back. “They can’t have it. Everything can’t be made public.”
The conservative Fox News star went on to note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted on Sunday that the intelligence behind the administration’s claims that Soleimani was planning an “imminent attack” was sound but that they can’t publicly release everything.
Earhardt, who once wondered aloud if the nefarious “deep state” intelligence community was responsible for comedian Samantha Bee's criticism of Ivanka Trump, would finish her point by approvingly recapping that the administration is telling the American people that “you just have to trust us basically.”
It didn’t take long for the Fox host’s stance to face online mockery, especially considering the network’s long-running narrative that actors within an anti-Trump intelligence community—often referred to as the “deep state”—have been waging a coup or disinformation campaign against the president.
“These are the same people who spent years arguing that the intelligence community could not be trusted, “ former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti tweeted on Monday morning.
Earhardt is far from the only Fox News personality to suddenly stop railing against the “deep state” and demand everyone take seriously the intel community’s findings. Immediately following the administration’s claims last week that Soleimani’s assassination disrupted an “imminent attack,” many of Fox’s biggest Trump boosters quickly dropped their overt criticism of intelligence agencies and openly defended and applauded them.
