Even Fox's Brian Kilmeade Thinks The Phony Outrage Over Hillary Clinton's Grandparents Is Absurd

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade defended Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after his Fox & Friends colleagues scandalized a Buzzfeed report about comments she made about her grandparents.

During a campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton described how her grandparents immigrated to the United States, and how her grandfather found a steady factory job in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “All my grandparents, you know, came over here,” she said according to Buzzfeed, “And you know my grandfather went to work in lace mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and worked there until he retired at 65. He started there when he was a teenager and just kept going.”

Buzzfeed subsequently reported that only one of Clinton's parents was born abroad -- Hugh Rodham Sr., who emigrated from the United Kingdom as a child. Buzzfeed noted that a Clinton spokesperson clarified her remarks:

“Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News." As has been correctly pointed out, while her grandfather was an immigrant, it appears that Hillary's grandmother was born shortly after her parents and siblings arrived in the U.S. in the early 1880s.

But Fox News seized on the comments to attack Clinton as deliberately lying, with Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck saying, “Again we see someone misspeaking, misleading.” Co-host Steve Doocy interjected, “She's trying to make a better story, but it's not true.” Doocy went on to state that “the Clintons have had a problem with the truth in the past.”

But Brian Kilmeade called out his colleagues for manufacturing outrage over such innocuous remarks, asking, “Is it that big a deal?” He defended Clinton's recollection of her family's immigrant heritage despite protests from the other hosts:

KILMEADE: I will defend her on this. I mean, the other day, when Heritage.com came in here, I did not know if my grandmother and grandfather were born here or not, because they came over on the boat....But they did have the immigrant experience.... If you've just come over as opposed to, you weren't over yet, is it that big a deal?

Clinton's retelling of her family's immigrant experience came during remarks she made about the current state of immigration in the United States, and how current policies turn away “people who really want to work” and who are “doing the best they can to try to make a good life for themselves and their families.”