Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Wednesday waved off GOP calls for President Biden’s impeachment over his administration’s handling of the Afghanistan military withdrawal — saying its an issue voters will have to decide on at the ballot box.
“The president is not going to be removed from office,” McConnell told Republicans at an event in Kentucky. “Its a Democratic house, a narrowly Democratic Senate, that’s not going to happen.”
His comments came after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday said that Congress should try to remove Biden from office over America’s chaotic exit, which has left up to 200 Americans and scores of Afghan allies stranded in the Taliban-controlled country.
“Yeah, I think [Biden’s] been derelict in his duties as commander-in-chief,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“I don’t think he got bad advice and took it. I think he ignored sound advice.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday declared there would be “a day of reckoning” for Biden over the ISIS-K suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 US service members and dozens of Afghan civilians last week.
He said that following the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal of US troops, “we can take up anything to hold [Biden] accountable for the actions that have been taken, the lies that have been given, the misdecisions that have put Americans in harm’s way.”
A handful of House Republicans have called on Biden to resign over the situation. A Rasmussen Reports poll of 1,000 likely US voters released Wednesday found that 52 percent of respondents believe Biden should resign over his handling of the military exit.
McCarthy has also recently been under pressure from rank-and-file Republicans who want to call for Biden’s impeachment, Politico reported Tuesday.
According to the report, GOP congressional offices are being “bombarded with calls from base voters for a future Biden impeachment or another more forceful response against the administration.”
Any Republican-led impeachment, however, is a non-starter with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress.
McConnell on Wednesday said he believes the tides could turn in the midterm elections next year.
“I do think we are likely to see a typical kind of midterm reaction to a new administration,” he said.
He noted that Biden’s approval rating had taken a nosedive into the 40s amid the Afghanistan withdrawal, adding, “I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box.”
“There isn’t going to be an impeachment,” McConnell said, “but I think [Democrats] have a good chance of a very bad election next year.”
