Leader McConnell on the Guy Benson Show

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) joined Guy Benson last night:

On the Biden Administration’s Disastrous Exit from Afghanistan:

“[I] would start with saying the war hasn’t ended, it’s just become more difficult for us to prosecute. The terrorist threat in Afghanistan is already greater than it was before this rash decision to withdraw. It will continue to grow, and our capacity to counter it has been dramatically diminished. We failed to get all Americans and Afghan partners out, hundreds of Americans and thousands of our Afghan partners are now Taliban hostages. And if that were not enough, we have shredded our credibility as a reliable partner.”

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“[T]his withdrawal made no sense. It’s important to remind everybody, we had 2,500 troops there, only 2,500. We hadn’t lost anybody in a year-and-a-half. … We accomplished the mission. The mission, remember, was to keep the barbarians from controlling the country, the Taliban; they didn’t. And to make it impossible for it to be a staging ground for another attack on the U.S. here at home. The policy was successful — and in terms of financial cost, about one percent of the Pentagon budget.”

On Importance of Vaccines:

“Well, the experience I had earlier in my life is I was a polio victim, and so I’ve studied that disease and I know it took probably 50 years to find two vaccines that worked. It has succeeded; we’ve largely eradicated polio in the whole world. I was thrilled at the success at developing three highly effective vaccines in less than a year, which we did as a result of Operation Warp Speed, which we funded last year.

“So now we have an epidemic going on; 90 percent of the people in the hospitals across America and in my state are unvaccinated. The answer to this dilemma that we face, the answer to this disease is to get vaccinated, and I hope people will begin to realize that that’s the only way this ever ends.”

On the Democrats’ Reckless Tax and Spending Spree:

“[It] is a totally separate bill [that] is a reckless tax and spending measure, massive tax increases…$3.5 to five trillion dollars that will wreak havoc with the most productive parts of our society. [I] think everybody should remember that in February of 2020 we had the best economy we have had in half a century as a result of the 2017 tax bill.

This absolutely undoes everything we did four years ago and that 30-year tax reform bill.”

“It’s a devastating blow to the economy and it’s not just the taxes, it’s how they would spend it; free community college, free this, free that in perpetuity. Look, Bernie Sanders may have lost the nomination but he won the war on what today’s Democratic Party is like, and as you suggested, Guy, it seems like we’re down to a couple of moderate Democrats in the Senate and maybe eight or nine in the House. I pray for them every night because not a single Republican will vote for this package and that means that Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema could either kill the whole bill, write the whole bill or buckle under pressure, and I hope neither of them do.”