Mast blasts Blinken over 'tens of billions' of US taxpayer dollars sent to Taliban post-Afghanistan withdrawal
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken was grilled by the incoming chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee on "billions" of U.S. dollars sent to Taliban.
The current committee chair, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, issued multiple subpoenas in September for Blinken to testify. Under threat of a contempt of Congress vote, he finally agreed. Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on X: @danimwallace.
Mast asked the U.S.' top diplomat if he had been in Afghanistan since the killing of 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians by a suicide bombing attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport's Abbey Gate, and Blinken responded that he had not. Noting that the United States no longer has control of the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, Mast said, "yet we are still giving the Taliban tens of billions of dollars."
"There's an American citizen out there, literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck. And a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad," Mast said. "And this is something that we all need to think about, and we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years. There's a joke that's made often out there about kids going to college to learn basket weaving, and what a joke that would be. But the United States right now is literally sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. 14.9 million, to be exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet weaving."
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