Kilmeade: America never needed handouts to survive and thrive
'Fox & Friends' host Brian Kilmeade on President Trump's Kentucky rally and his new book 'Sam Houston & the Alamo Avengers.'
"Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade said his new book on Sam Houston and the 19th Century fight for Texas reminds readers of the American spirit and how their ancestors fought for important rights.
"Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers" tells the story of Gen. Sam Houston rallying his small army of Texas settlers in the wake of the Alamo massacre to beat Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna in the ensuing Battle of San Jacinto -- the decisive turning point that led to independence for what later became the Lone Star State, Kilmeade said Monday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
"All they wanted was a shot at success," he said of settlers who moved to Texas from what were the established United States at the time -- tying their cause into President Trump's own rhetoric during his Kentucky speech earlier in the evening.
"One of the things the president referenced at the end of his speech, he talked about Kentuckians who went out there with an ax, a rake, and they just had a gun, and they said, 'OK, if you just give me some room, America, I'd like to bring my family and have a shot at success' -- and the president referred to that," he said.
"That is the attitude of Texans... So, I'm looking at a group of people in Texas that left from America, and they said, 'I'll be part of Mexico as long as you give us freedom and liberty.'"
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Kilmeade said once the Mexican government started restricting Texians' rights, they brought a fight to the Mexican army, which eventually led to the Alamo and later San Jacinto.
"They fought for the idea of freedom in Texas," he said.
However, Kilmeade also compared that spirit to what he said was the opposite school of thought popular in the present day.
"Now, this generation and these politicians are playing to, are saying, 'We owe you something for being an American' -- whether it's dollars, free education, free Social Security," he said.
He criticized Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., for their presidential campaign platforms, claiming they presented ideas counter to what the American frontier spirit embodied.
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"That's not what we're made of," he said.
"America should be proud of their past. We're not perfect, but we try to be and we correct ourselves along the way."
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