House GOP wants Afghanistan hearing to be Biden body blow

• House Republicans have increasingly turned to flashy, attention-grabbing hearings to undermine Biden.

Driving the news: Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command during the withdrawal, and Gen. Mark Milley, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

• Republicans on the panel will try to get the retired generals on the record in order to tie the chaos of the withdrawal back to Biden and his White House officials, a GOP committee aide said.
• The withdrawal is one of Biden's biggest vulnerabilities, the aide said, predicting the hearing will be intense.

Zoom in: The Kabul airport attack, in which 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. service members were killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing, is likely to be referenced frequently.

• It's a sore spot that was on full display earlier this month when the father of one of the Marines killed in the attack shouted about it during Biden's State of the Union, leading to his arrest.

The other side: "None of the interviews or materials State has produced to the Committee makes these suggestions, and to blame the President for an ISIS terrorist attack demonstrates the extremism of this Republican Party," a spokesperson for Democrats on the committee told Axios.

• "It reaffirms that they aren't interested in facts, but instead focused on playing politics. If they were interested in transparency, or felt the investigation supports these outlandish claims, the GOP would make all the transcripts public."