Fox & Friends had no choice but to correct Donald Trump just seconds after an interview on the show Thursday morning in which he falsely claimed Kamala Harris met with Vladimir Putin just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Republican nominee—who also used his time on the air to complain that all Democrats do “is make up lies about me”—claimed President Joe Biden “sent cne'srade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack.” He described the incident as a “little known fact” which the “press doesn’t want to talk about.”
The elaborate conspiracy theory he outlined came hours before her keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and amid surging poll numbers which have put his campaign on defense in swing states.
Trump said Harris, in the imagined meeting with Putin, “gave her case” but Putin still “attacked three days later” anyway. “He laughed at her,” Trump continued. “He thought she was a joke. Now he’s really laughing when he sees her. Can you imagine her negotiating with President Xi of China, with Kim Jong Un of North Korea? The whole thing is like we’re living in a fantasy land.”
When the interview ended around 20 minutes later, co-host Brian Kilmeade set the record straight.
“Just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin,” he said. “I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”
Kilmeade’s colleague Ainsley Earhardt then chimed in to say that she had repeatedly heard about the meeting, which never happened.
“I’ve heard that said a lot,” she told Kilmeade. “You don’t have confirmation that that’s true?”
“No,” Kilmeade answered. “I don’t think that—I don’t know if the vice president ever met Vladimir Putin.”