Fox News anchors desperately flail to defend Trump from Ukraine allegations

The revelations that President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden — and ordered administration officials to suspend hundreds of millions in military aid a week before doing so — has created a political firestorm and fresh calls for impeachment.

Caught in this situation, the anchors at Fox & Friends — Trump’s favorite morning show and a huge promoter of the president — opted to aggressively gaslight their viewers.

Steve Doocy acknowledged the report "doesn't look like good timing to a lot of people," but added, "Fox News has confirmed that [Trump] wanted to make sure that the new president of Ukraine understood" he was serious about ending corruption. (This principled good-governance stance apparently doesn't apply to Saudi Arabia, which Trump is giving lucrative arms sales even as they dismember journalists with bone saws.)

Ainsley Earhardt, meanwhile, wrung her hands over the fact that lawmakers are accusing Trump of wrongdoing without hearing his actual call with the Ukraine president — it is "like saying Brian or Steve, you’re going to lose your job because of a conversation that someone says you promised someone, but we don’t know what you said. We don’t know what the conversation was. It’s ridiculous!" (Trump, bear in mind, already admitted he pressured Ukrainian leaders to investigate Biden.)

"If the president said 'I will give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,' that is really off-the-rails wrong," acknowledged Doocy. "But if it’s something else, you know, it would be nice to know what it is." (Trump himself could clear all of this up by releasing the transcript of his call and giving the whistleblower complaint to Congress, neither of which he has done.)

And Brian Kilmeade speculated — with zero evidence — that the whistleblower was just taking revenge on Trump for winning the 2016 election, and demanded to know — again, with zero evidence — whether President Barack Obama made any corrupt deals with the Cuban government.