U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell was in Leitchfield Tuesday afternoon where he met privately with several local leaders,including state Rep. Samara Heavrin, R-Leitchfield, and Mid-Park President/CEO Greg Bernard, on a variety of issues before holding a press conference, live streamed by K105, at Leitchfield City Hall.
After a short introduction by Grayson County Judge-Executive Kevin Henderson, McConnel made a brief statement to the gathered press regarding the United States’ messy withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I just had a business roundtable with the judge and others organized and we covered a lot of the topics here in our country; the status of vaccinations; the problems with getting people back to work; raging inflation, but I’d like to address the most significant international issue we’re all confronting at the moment,” McConnell said.
“The precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan is an utter disgrace and a stain on our national honor. Let’s go back 20 years to why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. There was no optimism that we were there to turn Afghanistan into a western style, Jeffersonian democracy,” McConnell stated. “We went there because it was in our best interest to prevent Al Qaeda, which attacked us on September 11, 2011, to have a safe haven with which to operate and attack us again.
“This effort, even though we’ve been there quite a while, has not been a continuous conflict. There have been a couple of periods of significant conflict. But look at the last year, for example, not a single American service person lost their lives in Afghanistan last year.
“But even if you thought it was time to fully withdraw, the calamity that we’re witnessing on our television screens is outrageous. I don’t think this administration could organize a two-car funeral. And in this particular instance, they are endangering the lives of Afghans who were our interpreters and collaborators and who were on our side during the conflict, and Americans.
“So, what the president is left with, I gather, is to try and get enough military personnel in there to defend the airport and try to get people out. And I wish him well, at his point, but this was a colossal, colossal blunder of gargantuan proportions and as I said earlier, a stain on the reputation of the United States.”
McConnell on contentious school board meeting regarding mask mandate
Following his statement on Afghanistan, the GOP senator was asked his thoughts on what he would tell the people who gathered at Thursday’s Grayson County School Board meeting to protest a mask mandate for school children, teachers and staff.
“I think the only solution to the pandemic is vaccines (sic). As some of you may recall, I was a polio victim when I was a youngster,” the Minority Leader said. “I’ve studied the history of that disease. It took 70 years to come up with two polio vaccines that worked. And believe it or not, that disease is almost totally eradicated in the entire world.
“With operation Warp Speed, which is part of the CARES ACT, which was essentially written in my office last year as the Majority Leader, we found not one, not two, but three highly effective vaccines in less than a year (developed by Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioNTech). Really a modern medical miracle by any estimation. And so the solution to this, without even dealing with the mask issue, is to get vaccinated.
“I believe one thing is absolutely true, there’s a lot of rumors about what is true and what isn’t, but let me tell you what’s true — Almost 97 percent of the people in hospitals across American are unvaccinated. Are unvaccinated.
“So I would counsel the folks here in Grayson County and across Kentucky and for that matter, across the country, the way to get on top of this and to end it (the COVID-19 pandemic) is to get vaccinated.”
Currently, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11,525 (43.6 percent of the population) Grayson County residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Of Grayson County’s population over the age of 18, 11,008 (54.2 percent) have received at least one dose of a vaccine while 9,522 (46.9 percent) county residents are fully vaccinated.
By Ken Howlett, News Director
Contact Ken at ken@k105.com
