Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade Very Skeptical of Beto O’Rourke Because He Reads Books

If you are one of the Democratic presidential candidates who can read, you can forget about Brian Kilmeade’s vote.

The Fox & Friends anchor and his co-hosts were discussing the new Vanity Fair cover story about Beto O’Rourke on Thursday morning when Kilmeade revealed that literacy is unimportant to him in a president, saying “They also point out that he has this huge library, as if it’s a big plus that he reads books.”

It seems odd that a man who writes books of his own — or at least has his name on the cover — does not like presidential candidates who read them, but okay. Donald Trump reportedly won’t read anything longer than half a page of bullet points, so maybe Kilmeade is just afraid of change.

There is some other obvious snark in the segment, such as Kilmeade’s sneer that the cover story makes it seem as if Vanity Fair “helped launch his campaign.” Most likely it just means that Beto has a good publicist working for his nascent campaign, one who got the magazine to time the release of this story to the campaign announcement.

The Fox & Friends hosts go on to list some of Beto’s positions on issues, such as his opposing the border wall (like every congressional representative from a border district in the Southwest) and that he voted against ICE (whatever that means) and the Trump tax cuts. They sneer at his desire to take down border walls, with Kilmeade wondering what the people of Texas will think of that. Then they play a clip of Karl Rove on Fox News Wednesday night saying he finds it “interesting” that Beto made a campaign announcement “with the word ‘vanity’ in it.” Meow!

Watch the Fox & Friends crew on Beto’s announcement above, via Fox News.