‘Isn’t going to be impeachment’: McConnell downplays plan to remove Biden if GOP wins House

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has poured cold water over Republican plans to impeach Joe Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 US troops dead.

A small but growing chorus of GOP representatives in Congress has called for the president to be impeached if they win back control of the House in 2022.

But Mr McConnell said bluntly it wasn’t going to happen when asked at an event on Wednesday.

“Well, look the president is not going to be removed from office... I think the way these behaviours get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box,” he said, according to The Wall Street Journal reporter Lindsey Wise.

“There isn’t going to be an impeachment.”

Mr McConnell’s dismissal of the idea comes in stark contrast to his Senate colleague Lindsay Graham, who has said Mr Biden should be removed over after ignoring "sound advice" on Afghanistan.

“I think it’s a dereliction of duty to leave hundreds of Americans behind enemy lines, turn them into hostages, to abandon thousands of Afghans who fought honourably along our side, to create conditions for another 9/11 that are now through the roof,” Mr Graham told CBS’ Face The Nation.

“I don’t think he got bad advice and took it. I think he ignored sound advice. And this is Joe Biden being Joe Biden. He’s been this way for 40 years, but now he’s the Commander-in-Chief,” he added. “I think the best you could describe is dereliction of duty at the highest level.”

House Republicans and minority leader Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, are reportedly being “bombarded” with calls from voters to impeach Biden over how the US left the battlefield in Afghanistan.

“It’s a grassroots pressure — we’re feeling it,” congressman Barry Moore told Politico. “I think even some of the Democrats are feeling it.”

Mr Moore is a member of the House’s influential Freedom Caucus, which the outlet says has discussed last week whether to call for Mr Biden’s impeachment.

While an anonymous source was quoted as saying that some members were ready to call for impeachment, others were hesitant due to vice president Kamala Harris being next in the line of succession.

The suicide bombing at Kabul airport, however, prompted the Freedom Caucus this week to officially call for Mr Biden’s impeachment.

Colorado representative Lauren Boebert suggested a plan to remove the president, vice president, and the House speaker in one fell swoop to wipe out that line of succession.

“Impeach Biden, impeach Kamala Harris, and throw in the secretary of state if you can get him back from vacation. Take a vote to vacate the chair to get Nancy Pelosi the heck out of here,” she said at a press conference.

“If there are any Republicans who have any doubt, know that you will be facing your own primaries and no amount of your precious money will be able to save you from the uprising of the American people who demand we do something now.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, said on the War Room podcast of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon that her team was already drawing up articles of impeachment.

If Republicans regain control of the House in 2022, which by some estimates has been increasing in possibility, the biggest hurdle may be in the Republicans in the Senate like Mr McConnell.