Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends on impeachment, 2020, and the Alamo

President Trump is often criticized by his opponents as a self-aggrandizing braggart, but if you ask Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Network’s “Fox & Friends,” Donald Trump’s decision to aim for the highest office in the land was the opposite of an ego trip.

“He sacrificed [the good opinion of] half the country to be president,” said Kilmeade, who has frequently interacted with Trump on “Fox & Friends.” “He was the most liked in urban communities — the people who didn’t like the president were the rich people, they didn’t think he was worthy to hang out with them. And the reason why he got elected president is because he’s like all of us — he’s more blue collar than white collar, he’s more Queens than Manhattan.”

Still, he acknowledged that the president’s words — often expressed in the 280 characters of a tweet — can get him into trouble.

“A lot of this is self-inflicted wounds,” he said, referring to the president’s tweets about former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last Friday.

His suggestion for Trump during the impeachment hearings is to “bow out of this.” If Trump manages to “control his responses,” the impeachment movement will be unsuccessful, Kilmeade predicted to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

“They’re going to look for, somehow, the president, directly related to his own personal political fortunes, and using the foreign policy to do it [sic],” he said. “It does not exist.”

To Kilmeade, the more appropriate way to handle the Ukraine issue would be to conduct Congressional oversight. He compared impeachment to putting a person in jail for life when their crime cannot be proven.

“I think this is a reason not to vote for [Trump]; it’s not a reason to impeach him,” he said.

Looking ahead to 2020, Kilmeade finds Elizabeth Warren’s campaign to be the best-organized at the moment, but does not see any of the Democrat candidates beating Trump. He certainly does not believe that Hillary Clinton could provide any real challenge.

“She has just handled these last two-and-a-half years as poorly as anybody,” he said. “There’s some glory in knowing how to lose — Al Gore showed you that, John McCain showed you that … We forgot how to lose in this country, and she is the latest example.”

From ‘Fox & Friends’ to the Alamo

Contrary to his daily “Fox & Friends” gig, Kilmeade’s newest book does not involve Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, or any of the people making headlines in 2019. Instead, he takes readers back to Texas in 1836 with “Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: The Texas Victory That Changed American History.”

“I have very little interests — I’ve got sports, news, and history,” he laughed. “I have very few hobbies … so basically, what I do is I study this stuff.”

In previous books, Kilmeade has written about Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and the Culper Ring that spied for the Patriots during the Revolutionary War.

“I try to find one story that helps personify America,” he explained.

While the Battle of the Alamo represents a source of pride for Texans, it’s a battle that is often forgotten by history students and teachers in the other 49 states — or it is framed as a story of American colonialism to be ashamed of.

“We have a self-esteem issue, we’re apologizing for everything, and in our past, and I feel the exact opposite,” Kilmeade said. “I don’t think for a second we’re perfect, but the Sam Houston Alamo story is a story of … one of the most miraculous military victories in modern military history.”

If time travel were to ever become a possibility, Kilmeade would never give up modern conveniences to go live in the past, but he does wish he could experience the American pioneer spirit of the 1700s and 1800s.

“The mindset of people who came here didn’t come here for the social safety net, they didn’t come here to protest — they came here for the opportunity to be successful and reach happiness, however you define it,” he said.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.