There are a lot of very valid criticisms to be made regarding Joe Biden’s handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. As Fox & Friends cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy proved this weekend, Fox News is not the place to find any of them.
In a segment discussing the withdrawal this weekend—during which the hosts predictably focused on things like Biden’s falling approval numbers rather than, say, the on-the-ground humanitarian crisis—Campos-Duffy placed the blame on an unlikely target: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
As Campos-Duffy sees it, Biden’s mismanagement of Afghanistan is so atrocious that it’s proof he never should have been elected President in the first place. In fact, according to the Fox host, he never even should have run for President, and Jill Biden should have stopped him. And because she didn’t, she now bears responsibility for his mistakes, up to and including everything currently happening in Afghanistan.
“When you look at what’s hurting America, when you look at this lack of leadership, and you wonder, who are the people responsible for putting someone this incompetent and frankly this, you know, mentally frail in this position?” Campos-Duffy said.
After listing off some of the other political influencers behind Biden’s presidential campaign (Barack Obama, political advisors Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett, the media writ large), Campos-Duffy says that “as a political spouse, I can’t help but look at Jill Biden.”
“No one knew better his state of mind than Jill—doctor Jill Biden,” she said, really emphasizing the word “doctor” as if it were at all relevant in this context. (Her doctorate is in education. While impressive, it doesn’t exactly make her an expert on degenerative health conditions, as Campos-Duffy is suggesting.)
She continued: “And if you ask me, the most patriotic thing Jill Biden could have done was tell her husband―to love her husband―and not let him run in this mental state that he’s in. I think she failed the country as well.”
What an incredible feat of sexism gymnastics that argument is. Should we hold Campos-Duffy responsible for allowing her husband, former Congressman/former Real World cast member/current Fox News contributor Sean Duffy, to go on television and repeatedly push unhinged conspiracy theories? Maybe we should blame Sean Duffy for allowing his wife to publicly compare abortion to slavery. By Campos-Duffy’s reasoning, I think both of them would qualify as having “failed the country.”
It still doesn’t mean there’s any logical reason to include Jill Biden in the conversation regarding military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
(via HuffPost, image: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
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