Jeanine Pirro defends Trump: Was he supposed to shoot Putin?

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on Tuesday defended President Trump’s performance in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking, “What was he supposed to do, take a gun out and shoot Putin?”

“I mean come on, snap out of it everybody, the guy is doing what he’s supposed to be doing and that is protecting us,” Pirro said while making an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

{mosads}”What was he supposed to do, take a gun out and shoot Putin? Putin said, ‘I didn’t meddle in your election,’ so the president should say ‘hang on, let me execute this guy?'”

Pirro also pushed back when questioned about Trump’s refusal to stand by the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. 

“The same intelligence community that said there were weapons of mass destruction that got us in a war,” Pirro responded. “The president has conceded that there was meddling. I think what the president did here was he got defensive about his being the president.”

Pirro later acknowledged that there was meddling in the 2016 election, but said that it had no effect on the outcome. 

Pirro, a former judge who served for years as a district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., is known to have a friendly relationship with the president. Trump has appeared for interviews on Pirro’s show, “Judge Jeanine,” twice since taking office. 

Her statements came just a day after Trump and Putin concluded a high-stakes summit in Finland. During a joint press conference, Trump attacked special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe as a “disaster” and said he saw no reason why Moscow would interfere in the U.S. election. 

His remarks were widely condemned by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as many members of the media.

Earlier Tuesday, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade urged Trump to accept the fact that Russia interfered in the most recent presidential election. 

“The president’s under the impression — and I don’t know why still — that if he says the Russians hacked, it makes his election look illegitimate,” Kilmeade said.