Panicky Fox & Friends hosts beg Trump to walk back invitation for foreign meddling in 2020 election

President Donald Trump stated that he would be willing to accept foreign assistance to his re-election campaign, and "Fox & Friends" hosts explained how he could walk back those remarks -- possibly on an appearance on his favorite show.

The president told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that he didn't consider foreign assistance to be wrong, after insisting for two years that he didn't accept Russian aid in 2016, and Fox News host Brian Kilmeade mapped out to his most famous viewer what was wrong about those remarks.

"Put it this way -- nothing is free in this world," Kilmeade said. "You don't want a foreign government or foreign entity giving you information because they will want something back. If anybody knows that it is the president. There is no free lunch. If someone wants information, then they're going to want influence. I think the president has to clarify that."

The hosts told viewers that Trump was going to call in to the show Friday morning, and Kilmeade urged the president to clean up his statements during that appearance.

"I'm glad he is coming on tomorrow," Kilmeade said. "He opened himself wide up to attacks. I think you agree -- if China does say, 'Hey, President Trump, I have got information on Pete Buttigieg -- because we know in South Bend, you can get up to a lot of no good and a lot of things going on there -- the president should say, 'Hey, keep it, I got this, because I don't want to owe China or Russia something in return."

Co-host Steve Doocy then tried to draw a comparison between Trump's invitation and the dossier compiled by a former British spy in 2016 -- which he falsely claimed had spurred the counterintelligence probe that then turned into the Mueller investigation.

"Think about it this way though," Doocy said. "The Steele dossier, which started the whole spying thing on the Trump campaign, let's see where did that come from? That was funded initially by Republicans doing opposition research against Donald Trump."

"The Russian influence came in started gathering information, unverified, a number of the sources were close to the Russian government," Doocy added, "and who paid for that? That was dirt from Hillary Clinton and the DNC."

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt agreed, and they threw out a few of Trump's catchphrases about the dossier.

"DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign they funded Fusion GPS, they hired this British spy, foreign operator, British spy to write this dirty dossier that turned out to be a hoax and not true," she said.

Doocy suggested those efforts might have been illegal, and Kilmeade said it should not have been done.

"Put it this way, it was wrong," Kilmeade said, "and I don't want to see it done again."