Fox & Friends lauds Trump's “leadership quality” after his vague and open-ended Afghanistan speech

Steve Doocy: Trump “laid out the Trump doctrine, which could be described as principled realism”

From the August 22 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

Video file

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST):There he is last night at the beginning of his half hour-speech at Fort Myer, just across the river from the White House. And essentially what the president laid out was the way forward in Afghanistan -- laid out the Trump doctrine, which could be described as principled realism. And we’ll go into some of the details, but the president himself started at the beginning as well talking about how when I was a candidate, I wanted to pull out. I thought this was a disaster. And, yet, I have got some big plans.

[…]

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Ainsley, it was fascinating to see because at the same time he said, “I sit behind the Oval desk and I changed my mind,” which shows humility, it shows reality, I think it shows a leadership quality that wasn't often on display over the past seven months, while stay saying, “I am not giving you deadlines. I'm not putting a financial number on this, and I'm giving my commanders the ability to fight the wars they've been trained to fight. You don't have to go to Washington. You can make those decisions in real time.” 

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Yeah. Brian, that reminds me. I know you did Outnumbered yesterday, and I've had the pleasure of being on that show before. And I remember we were talking about strategy for war. And I brought up the point that we need to trust our generals. I had heard someone say that before. I liked that talking point. I repeated it. And I remember being in the hallways of Fox News and Lea Gabrielle, who fought for our country, also works at Fox. She stopped me and she said, “Thank you for saying that because I fought for this country and you don't know what it's really like until you've been there on the front lines,” and the president is doing that. He hasn't been there. He is talking to the generals, he's talking to the experts, and he's finding out what they think. Yes, he wanted to pull out. Many of us, our instincts is we don't want to send our men and women, we don't want to send our kids over there to lose an arm or, at worse case, lose their life. But the reality is, if we don't fight terrorism over there, then they're going to come here and we're going to have another 9/11, and that's what we all need to remember. 

Related:

Wash. Post: Trump’s Afghanistan speech: Full of sound and fury, signifying very little

Previously:

Fox News gushes over Trump speech increasing troops in Afghanistan

Hannity: Trump's Afghanistan speech “was delivered perfectly”

Fox & Friends is Donald Trump's safe space