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Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Tuesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” those governors refusing to allow the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states “deserve some respect. A lot more than what the president gave them with the preening address he gave yesterday.”

“He's the one who decided against the begging, the advice, the recommendations of all his top advisers, to do nothing at the beginning of the Syrian civil war,” Krauthammer said. “He could have established, easily, a safe zone the way that we did for over a decade, in Kurdistan in Iraq. It wouldn't have cost boots on the ground. And he decided, because he didn't want to sully his reputation as the man who ends wars and doesn't start them, he denied them.”

Krauthammer said after the terror attacks in Paris, Republican pushback is “fully understandable.”

“Given the new circumstances, you allow the women and the children and the men over 50, as you did in the past. But you're extra careful, extra scrutiny for the men of fighting age. The ones who do this stuff, and for each of them you require a positive vetting not just the absence of a negative one.”