Florida’s Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott is questioning the competency of the President of the United States and Republican U.S. Representative Byron Donalds, also of Florida, is flat-out calling for his resignation.
Their lack of confidence in President Joe Biden seems to be reflected by the American people, according to several recent polls by nationally recognized pollsters.
Last week, as the news of the collapse of Afghanistan began breaking, Donalds called for the President’s resignation on Twitter. He said in a statement, “President Joe Biden has completely failed at this vital role as the leader of the free world. The Taliban sat back and waited to take advantage of this Administration’s weak and fickle leadership, not just at home but abroad. In the past 24 hours, the security of American diplomatic personnel and the stability of the Afghan region have unilaterally been handed over to the Taliban savages. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, America is leading from the shadows of Camp David and Wilmington, Delaware, and our nation, troops, and the world are witnessing the consequences.”
Scott, in an opinion piece for Fox, said Biden’s Afghanistan disaster calls into question the president’s fitness to lead and his failed leadership on the world stage has damaged America’s reputation.
He called for a “bipartisan and bicameral investigation” into the U.S.’s “rapid and chaotic exit from Afghanistan that has left thousands of American citizens – and tens of thousands more Afghans who risked their lives for us for years – at the mercy of the Taliban.”
He said, “the way Biden chose to do it, his failed withdrawal, leaves the United States reeling from its most stunning, unforced, and humiliating defeat in decades.”
“We must discern whether this is incompetence on the part of his administration, or something far more serious,” Scott said. “The American people deserve answers and, frankly, to know whether this president is truly fit to still lead the United States.”
He repeated a comment he made earlier in the week saying, “the vice president, and cabinet must consider the 25th Amendment” which lays out the process of removing a sitting president from office.
Scott said, “I do not say this lightly. The Office of President of the United States is the most powerful in the world and it demands total accountability. If President Biden can no longer competently lead, the president, his cabinet, and the American people know what must be done.”
The majority of the American public are also worried based on recent polling by CBS and Rasmussen.
In a CBS poll taken late last week, only 49 percent of those polled think the president is competent, only 48 percent think he’s focused and only 47 percent think he’s effective. All of these percentages are down seven to eight points since just April.
On the topic of Afghanistan, 44 percent of all polled believe the removal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan is going very badly. Even though 63 percent of those polled supported the troops leaving, 53 percent disapprove of Biden’s way of handling the withdrawal from Afghanistan and 67 percent think he has no clear plan for evacuating U.S. Civilians.
CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked the president about the CBS News poll. Biden responded he hadn’t seen the poll. Later, a colleague of O’Keefe tweeted the poll, asking White House staff to show it to the president.
A couple of new Rasmussen Reports polls had similar findings.
One Rasmussen poll found 59 percent of those polled believe the Biden administration is not doing enough to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan.
The Rasmussen Reports’ daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 44 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of President Biden’s job performance, fifty-five percent disapprove. Only 26 percent strongly approve of the job Biden is doing and 47 percent strongly disapprove.