Republicans Call for Blinken’s Resignation

REP. JOE WILSON: Your bizarre abandoning of Bagram airfield led directly to 13 Marines murdered in Kabul. You should resign.

REP. TIM BURCHETT: Their blood is on your hands in this administration, sir. I call on you to resign.

REP. LEE ZELDIN: I believe that you, sir, should resign. That would be leadership.

REPORTER: What do you want to hear back from the Biden administration?

REP. BRIAN MAST: Two words: “I resign.”

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. There you just heard a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill calling for the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to resign. And guess what? He is not going to. I would be very comfortable putting a bet that he will not resign, although you never know. But I think it’s very, very unlikely.

This is all about holding the Democrats accountable, holding the Biden administration accountable for the chaotic and — to call it “poorly planned” is a gross understatement — withdrawal plan from Afghanistan. But all Blinken has to do — and I remember this. Remember all the talk, all the members of Congress with Benghazi?

I said at the time — as soon as Obama won reelection, Clay — the idea of accountability for the debacle of Benghazi in which four Americans lost their lives, any really accountability was gone. And here, if you want accountability, you have to go out and take power from these people in the midterm election ’cause they’re not gonna hold themselves accountable.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Thirteen Americans died in the midst of a chaotic withdrawal plan — American service members — hit by a suicide bombing. No one has lost their job over that to this day except, what was it, a lieutenant colonel who spoke out against the ineptitude of the senior leadership, Clay? That’s what accountability under a Democrat administration looks like: Speak the truth and you get fired. Otherwise, you’re part of the team. You keep your job, maybe you get a nice book deal.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Blinken is getting the rough stuff up on Capitol Hill from Republicans, rightly so, especially because I think no one really believes that Joe Biden was a commander-in-chief who was closely managing what was happening with withdrawal from the Afghanistan.

That it was likely some of his subordinates who were doing it and — I would guess — trying to keep a lot of it, Clay, away from Biden so that he wasn’t gonna mess things up even more. Remember, Barack Obama said, “Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to (blank) things up.”

CLAY: And that was 10 years ago.

BUCK: That was when he was sharp as a tack compared to now.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But we have the Blinken testimony on the Hill. I think it’s interesting, too, he was doing it remote. I think he’s remote again today. So he can get to the Hamptons, Clay, but not to Capitol Hill. Very interesting.

CLAY: I thought Bill Hemmer made a good point. He’s like, “Wait a minute. There are basically millions of people going to college financial games and NFL games, and we can’t have a guy go to Capitol Hill and testify in person?” And, by the way, I testified in person in March of 2021. Maybe find a way to do that would be just a suggestion.

BUCK: I’ll tell you this. I’ve spoken to some of the people that I respect in the national security and counterterrorism analysis side of things, which basically means no one who goes on CNN, ’cause I know, they’re all buffoons. But other places in the media I’ve checked in, and they agree with me that it is almost certain at this point — I mean, it’s highly, highly likely — that the Biden administration took a whole victory lap about stopping a massive terror attack against our soldiers and civilians again in Kabul. They actually blew up an entirely innocent aid worker, nine members of his family — children in the car. Senator Rand Paul, who was willing to ask the tough questions, posed — or really say the tough words, said this to Blinken today.

SEN. PAUL: The guy the Biden administration droned, was he an aid worker or an ISISK operative?

BLINKEN: Uh… (sputtering) Th-th-the, uhhh, administration is of course reviewing that, uhhh, that strike. Uhhh, and, uh, I’m sure that, uh, you know, a full assessment will be — will be forthcoming.

SEN. PAUL: You don’t know if it was an aid where do you work or an ISISK operative?

BLINKEN: Uhh, I can’t speak to that, and I can’t speak to that in this setting in the event.

SEN. PAUL: So you don’t know or won’t tell us?

BLINKEN: Uh, I don’t… I don’t know because w-w-we’re reviewing it.

SEN. PAUL: Well, see, you’d think you’d kind of know before you off somebody with a Predator drone, whether he’s an aid worker or he’s an ISISK.

CLAY: Wow.

BUCK: That’s a pretty big deal, Clay, it’s a pretty big deal ’cause it wasn’t just like a strike among many. This was the Biden team showing their command!

CLAY: How much in control they were and how much they were able to protect Americans. And if you haven’t paid attention to this story, we talked about it yesterday, came out on Friday. Credit to the New York Times for writing it. The Washington Post has also written a version of this.

The evidence certainly suggests, as you just heard Rand Paul ask, that the guy we essentially vaporized with a drone was hoping to come to America and was basically a charity worker in Afghanistan. And not only did we kill him, as Buck said, we killed seven kids in his family, young kids in his family. I think it’s 10 people overall, Buck.

Again, I would encourage you guys to go read about that article. It’s about Biden trying to show his competence and how much in control and standing up to terrorists he’s willing to do. And instead, it sounds like we just vaporized a totally innocent man and his family.

BUCK: Clay, it never added up.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Oh, they just so happened to have surveillance on the one guy who was the suicide bombing car, the SVBIED. That’s how good or intel on the ground in Afghanistan is? We didn’t know the whole country was gonna collapse and the Taliban was gonna roll up 300,000 (on paper) Afghan national security forces.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We had no idea about that. But we can find the one guy who’s building a suicide car bomb to kill our people when we’re under a tight deadline and chaos is reins? Give me a break! I was in the CIA. No way. No way, man. It just never added up.

CLAY: They never would give us a name, either. They said, “Oh, trust us,” basically. “We took this guy out.” People were like, “Okay. Who was it? What was the significance?” and they never gave a name, and now all that data is coming out. And did you hear how nervous Blinken was in that answer?

BUCK: There were two strikes! They didn’t give the names the guys they hit in eastern Nangarhar Province that they said were facilitators. This was the imminent suicide bombing strike —

CLAY: Yes. “Imminent danger.”

BUCK: — and they blew up an innocent guy and his family.