After President Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, some members of Congress have floated the idea around that he should resign or be impeached. Sen. Lindsey Graham, as Madeline reported earlier this week, has called for Biden to be impeached. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is less than keen on the idea, though. Instead, he thinks the way to change things is at "the ballot box."
McConnell's comments were made during an event held on Wednesday afternoon in Pikeville, Kentucky.
"Well, look, the president is not going to be removed from office. There's a Democratic House, a narrowly Democratic Senate. That's not going to happen," he said. "There isn't going to be an impeachment," he added for good measure.
When it comes to "the ballot box" remarks, the senate minority leader had pointed out the "report card you get is every two years" and shared "I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box."
Impeachment is almost certainly not going to happen when both the House and Senate are under Democratic control.
"I do think we're likely to see a typical kind of midterm reaction to a new administration," McConnell also said, pointing out how "typically there is some buyer's remorse."
Biden has indeed taken a deep hit in the polls including from independents as well as members of his own party. As Reagan covered earlier, a poll shockingly indicates a majority of respondents want the president to respond.
When the senate minority leader says it's "narrowly" under Democratic control, he means it. The Senate is 50-50, but Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote. Democratic control of the House is also narrow though, with their majority being in the single digits.
Leader McConnell also appeared on Guy's radio show on Wednesday to discuss Afghanistan. McConnell said he does not expect the president to resign, since Biden "wanted this to happen" with regards to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since "we are where we are," the minority leader suggested increasing the defense budget, going on offense against terrorists, and repairing alliances with allies.
The relevant transcript is below:
BENSON: Senator McConnell, as we see the promise that has been broken to American citizens, to permanent residents, to allies like interpreters, tens of thousands of them who are now stranded and at the mercy in many cases of the Taliban, the president has given speeches, his team backing him up saying this could not have been done any better. The execution was as good as could have been hoped or expected. The Americans who are left or stayed as Ned Price said, in some ways, it was sort of their fault, because they were warned for a period of months to get out, although the president was making other assurances publicly at the time. And I know that there’s a lot of people who are very, very angry about the way this happened, about, you know, the violation of this covenant that we made with so many people. The president said on TV nationally, we are not going to leave if there are American citizens still left there, and then we left with American citizens still left. Is there going to be any accountability for this? I saw that you were asked a question about impeachment. You said that’s not going to happen. Some of your colleagues in the Senate have called on the president to resign; I wonder what you make of that. Should anyone from this administration resign as a result of what’s happened?
MCCONNELL: Well, the president wanted this to happen. You know, I don’t know why people would resign in an administration who simply were following the orders of the president of the United States, The only thing he left out was (ph) calling this an extraordinary success; it was an extraordinary success for the Taliban.
BENSON: Right.
MCCONNELL: That’s who had an extraordinary success. It was a disgraceful and disastrous departure. Look in terms of consequences, we are where we are. First of all, we need to increase the defense budget. The administration defense request was clearly inadequate, even before this withdrawal. We all know weakness invites challenge, so we need to go on the offense against terrorists before the Taliban victory emboldens Jihadists worldwide. So we need to be very, very watchful here. So this administration having made this disastrous mistake better be prepared for the rise in terrorist threats that are coming and need to confront them in a stronger way than we’ve seen so far. And also look it, this was a NATO mission; a lot of Americans don’t realize the Germans, the French, the English, they were all in there with us, they’ve criticized this decision as well. We need to start repairing our relationship with our allies as well.