Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Wednesday withdrew the GOP’s request for the removal of President Biden for handling Afghanistan’s military withdrawal from his administration, saying voters they will have to decide at the polls.
“The president will not be removed from office,” McConnell told Republicans at an event in Kentucky. “It’s a democratic house, a narrowly democratic Senate. That won’t happen.”
His comments came after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Sunday that Congress should try to remove Biden from office for the chaotic American exit, which has left up to 200 Americans and dozens of Afghan allies stranded in Taliban-controlled country.
“It simply came to our notice then [Biden’s] he has been abandoned in his duties as commander-in-chief, “Graham told CBS’s” Face the Nation. ”
“I don’t think he received any bad advice and took it. I think he ignored the good advice. “
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) said on Friday that there would be “a day of reckoning” for Biden over the ISIS-K suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 members of the U.S. service and dozens of Afghan civilians last week.
He said that after the August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, “we can take anything to keep [Biden] responsible for the actions that have been taken, the lies that have been given, the wrong decisions that have endangered the Americans. “
A handful of House Republicans have called on Biden to resign over the situation. A Rasmussen Reports poll of 1,000 potential U.S. voters released Wednesday found that 52 percent of respondents believe Biden should resign over his management of the military exit.
McCarthy has also recently been under pressure from grassroots Republicans who want to demand the removal of Biden, Politico reported Tuesday.
According to the report, GOP Congress offices are being “bombarded with calls from grassroots voters for a future removal of Biden or another more forceful response against the administration.”
However, any Republican-led ouster is not a principle with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress.
McConnell said Wednesday he believed the tides could change in next year’s midterm elections.
“I think we’re likely to see a typical kind of medium-term reaction to a new administration,” he said.
He noted that Biden’s approval rating had entered the 1940s in the midst of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, adding: “I think the way these behaviors are adjusted in this country is at the polls.”
“There won’t be a dismissal,” McConnell said, “but I think [Democrats] I have a good chance of having a very bad election next year ”.