Republicans ramped up calls on Friday for President Joe Biden to resign or be impeached over the deadly attacks that killed 13 American troops at the airport in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
Even though many of them had demanded an end to the longest-running U.S.-led war, GOP lawmakers wasted no time blaming the Democratic president for the deadly suicide bombing blast that also killed at least 100 Afghan civilians.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) Friday joined a chorus of Republican critics second-guessing Biden’s decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan after the bloody terror attack.
“I really don’t believe that this president can stay in this position,” Zeldin, who is running for governor, said on WABC radio. “I believe that he should resign.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) had already demanded Biden step down along with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
“Joe Biden has blood on his hands,” Stefanik said in a blunt statement.
The right-wing GOP firebrands are effectively ditching the traditional unity that both parties project after deadly attacks on American troops overseas.
Ironically, the conservative Republicans cheered former President Trump’s decision to unconditionally withdraw from Afghanistan in a deal with the Taliban.
Yet once Biden decided to actually implement an end America’s longest war, they have switched to criticizing the withdrawal.
The partisan attacks on Biden only grew louder when the Taliban swept to power and the U.S. was forced to use the Kabul airport as a base for one of history’s largest evacuations of American citizens and Afghan allies.
Some have called on Biden to extend the Aug. 31 deadline to end the airlift, even though the president pointed to the ongoing dangers of terror attacks as a reason to wrap it up as quickly as possible to get American service members out of harm’s way.
Not all Republicans are shamelessly criticizing the commander in chief during the heat of battle.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a moderate critic of Trump, dismissed what he called partisan grandstanding from some of his GOP colleagues, noting that ending a 20-year conflict is not as simple as some would like to think.
“We need grown-up politics for once, not next day news politics,” Kinzinger said.
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