Sen. JD Vance of Ohio condemned Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday over the Biden administration's handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying the Democratic presidential nominee "can go to hell."
Vance's comment at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, was his harshest language yet toward Harris on the campaign trail. It came in response to a reporter’s question about an"incident" Monday when former President Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery with family members of service members who were killed during the 2021 attack at Abbey Gate at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the final days of the withdrawal.
“Three years ago, 13 brave, innocent Americans died, and they died because Kamala Harris refused to do her job, and there hasn’t been a single investigation or a single firing,” Vance said. “Sometimes mistakes happen — that’s just the nature of government, the nature of military service. But to have those 13 Americans lose their lives and not fire a single person is disgraceful. Kamala Harris is disgraceful.”
Vance said that if they’re going to discuss a story related to Abbey Gate, “it’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can, she can go to hell.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Vance's remarks. The Harris campaign declined to comment.
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Asked about his comments by NBC News, Vance said he was frustrated.
"Sometimes I get frustrated, and sometimes I get pissed off. And I think Kamala Harris' failure of leadership at Abbey Gate is something to get frustrated and angry about," Vance said.
He also accused the Harris campaign of "trying to make a massive political issue" of the incident at Arlington National Cemetery, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
"The fact that Kamala Harris wants to make that an issue when she refuses to show up, refuses to even call the families whose children are dead because of her leadership, I think that's something that justifies a little bit of frustration, and I certainly showed that today," Vance said.
In a statement Monday, Harris marked the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate by saying her "heart breaks" for the pain and loss experienced by the victims' families.
"I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families and I will always honor their service and sacrifice," she said, adding, "President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America’s longest war."
The U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, roughly 20 years after it invaded under President George W. Bush.
The Biden administration and Congress have conducted multiple investigations into the U.S. withdrawal and the attack that occurred at Abbey Gate as service members were helping people evacuate from the country.
In a report last year, the White House, for example, largely blamed the Trump administration for the chaotic pullout.
The former U.S. commander who oversaw the withdrawal testified at a congressional hearing this year that he alone bears responsibility for the deaths of the 13 American service members at Kabul’s airport.
Some relatives of the service members have voiced frustration with the Biden administration for not providing all of the answers they want.
At the hearing this year, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that officials were still seeking more information.
Milley said it would take a “considerable length of time” to get those answers, especially because, he said, much of the record is classified.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, called on White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a letter last week to testify about the withdrawal before the GOP-led panel.
“He owes the Gold Star families, veterans, and the American public answers on the disastrous withdrawal,” McCaul wrote Wednesday in a post on X that referred to Sullivan as “one of the chief architects” of the administration’s Afghanistan policy.
Vance, a Marine veteran, has directed much of his criticism on military matters at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, whom he accused of misrepresenting his military record.
Walz referred in 2018 to his handling of weapons “in war," even though he was never deployed to a combat zone. The Harris campaign this month said he "misspoke."
Walz’s 24 years in the military included serving overseas and supporting forward units. He formally retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2005.
