Steube Blasts Efforts to Blame Trump for Afghanistan, '100% in the Lap of Joe Biden'

House Republicans gave no quarter to State Secretary Antony Blinken on Wednesday during the Congressional hearing on the disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. Representative Greg Steube (R-FL) countered the Biden Administration's attempts to blame President-elect Donald Trump for the withdrawal, saying it was "100% in the lap of Joe Biden and his administration" in a recent appearance on Fox Business's Evening Edit.

Host Elizabeth MacDonald noted that Secretary Blinken attempted to argue that the events that unfolded were unexpected and that the United States became stronger on the world stage.

"It is a lie to the American people," Rep. Steube replied, "they knew exactly what was going on. You had intelligence reports of all of the different provinces in Afghanistan falling before [the Taliban] were getting into Kabul. They absolutely knew that this was happening."

Rep. Steube also called attention to the $80 billion in military equipment left behind by American forces for the Taliban to take, which they could have potentially sold to various countries, saying, "Maybe the Russians are using it in Ukraine. Maybe terrorists in Iran are using it. Maybe Hamas and Hezbollah are using our weapons that we left and abandoned in Afghanistan."

Additionally, the Florida Congressman repeated what his colleague Representative Brian Mast (R-FL) called out in the hearing: "Since 2021, billions of American taxpayer dollars have been going to the Taliban, that is who is in control of the government there, and Blinken admitted that money was going over there. There is zero oversight; there are no State Department people stationed in Afghanistan right now. We have no assets on the ground there. You know that money is not going to its intended purpose. It is going to fund terrorism across the world."

MacDonald then played a clip of the hearing in which Representative Mike McCaul (R-TX) pointed out that Blinken and the Biden White House ignored the Taliban's numerous violations of the Doha Agreement, calling them "immaterial" to the evacuation, which was interpreted as the Biden Administration attempting to blame Trump for the withdrawal.

Steube was not buying it, saying, "Years after President Trump left the White House, [the Biden Administration] continued to blame President Trump for their failures in Afghanistan. This is 100% in the lap of Joe Biden and his administration."