NRA host Dan Bongino appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the timing of the FBI’s announcement of new indictments against Russian officials on Friday, noting how it coincided with President Donald Trump meeting the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II and right before the president meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki Monday.

“There are obviously a lot of people, me included, who think the Mueller probe is a witch hunt, that there’s no there there,” Bongino told the couch. “This is being done, this investigation, exclusively to tarnish the reputation of Donald Trump. If you are looking to be a nonpartisan above the fray actor in this like [special counsel] Bob Mueller should be and [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein, then why would you do that? Why would you announce it on a Friday?”

“Listen, that may appeal to red meat liberals, oh look we got Trump, we got him again he is going on Helsinki summit and we are going to announce these Russian actors trying to infiltrate our election,” he continued. “But to the people you need to convince, middle America who may be persuadable somehow this is an above the fray investigation, you just lost just about everybody. The timing of this could not have been more atrocious.”

Meanwhile, Rachel Campos-Duffy asked if the president could potentially use the timing to his advantage to put the pressure on Putin, and Bongino agreed that he could.

“This is the perfect time to face-to-face look Putin in the eye like the dealmaker we know he is and say listen… we nailed you. Here is the information. It’s very serious and detailed. What are you going to do about this? If you don’t could something about it, we are not getting rid of these sanctions and you guys are going to suffer a lot worse than we are.”

Griff Jenkins pointed out that Neal Katyal said on Jake Tapper‘s show that a meeting between Trump and Putin would be like “LeBron James playing basketball against my kid.”

“More like Buster Douglas against Mike Tyson is what it is,” Bongino replied with a laugh. “It’s an chronically underestimated guy in Donald Trump that keeps managing to win.”

“Vladimir Putin had to rig an election to win it and had to steal money to get his billion dollars. Donald Trump actually did it as a capitalist and won the presidency with zero political background whatsoever. You may want to rethink that stupid analogy media guys infected deeply with T.D.S. (Trump Derangement Syndrome)”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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