Biden may have dragged his feet bringing Afghan refugees to US because he fears Fox News attacks: columnist

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell has been hearing from sources who believe that President Joe Biden has been slow to bring Afghan refugees to the United States because he fears being attacked by Fox News.

"The Post and other outlets have reported that Biden feared the 'optics' of flying in refugees from Afghanistan amid an influx of migrants at the U.S. southern border," she writes. "I've heard similar themes in my own interviews. People involved in White House discussions said they were told that fear of nativist backlash was a major factor delaying relocation of Afghan interpreters and other allies to U.S. soil."

Rampell argues that the White House must aggressively resist this kind of demagoguery and make the moral case for bringing Afghan refugees to the United States.

"Here's the thing Biden never learned: No matter what he does, these bad-faith demagogues will accuse him of 'open borders,'" she writes. "So he might as well pursue the policies he thinks are right and not let decisions be dictated by fear of how Fox News might frame them."

Read the whole column here.