Fox News host Chris Wallace questioned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about his desire to fight an endless war in Afghanistan.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, McConnell argued that the Afghanistan war had been a “complete success” and that the U.S. could safely maintain an indefinite military presence in the country with just 2,500 troops.

But Wallace pointed out that President Joe Biden’s Pentagon advisers have said that at least 10,000 more troops would be required if the war continues.

“Does President Biden have a point there?” Wallace wondered. “If in April, he had said, ‘Hey, the Trump deal is off. We’re staying in. In fact, we’re going to beef up the number of troops,’ he contends we’ve been back in a full-scale war with the Taliban and, unfortunately, taking a lot of casualties.”

McConnell insisted that the assessment was “totally not accurate.”

“We haven’t lost as many as 13 people, which we lost Thursday, in any of the last four years,” the Republican leader said. “Our casualties since 2014 have been quite modest. Quite modest.”

“Remember in the whole war, we have regretfully lost a couple thousand of our people,” he added. “That’s very regretful but the Afghans have lost 65,000. They have been fighting. And we’ve been in the background helping them with counterterrorism and the ongoing training of the military.”

McConnell did not explain why the Afghan government and military could not support itself after 20 years of U.S. help.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Mississippi GOP Gov. Tate Reeves is facing an explosion of coronavirus and few empty hospital beds as Hurricane Ida barrels towards the Gulf Coast.

“Mississippi has now surpassed the state of New York, the nation’s original pandemic hotspot, in total COVID-19 deaths per capita. The only state where the pandemic has proven deadlier than the Magnolia State is New Jersey. Mississippi displaced New York with a report of 65 additional deaths on Friday—a day after Gov. Tate Reeves told a Tennessee audience that southerners are ‘a little less scared‘ of COVID-19 due to their religious faith,” the Mississippi Free Press reported Saturday.

The state has now recorded 8,279 fatalities. But Gov. Reeves does not seem that worried.

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID … and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say,” Reeves said at a fundraiser, the Daily Memphian reported.

“When you believe in eternal life — when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things,” he said, adding: “Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions.”

Reeves has refused calls for a statewide mask made in public schools, as he instituted one year ago.

According to a report from the Bradenton Herald, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has been speaking with a California psychiatrist who is a proponent of using Ivermectin, an antiparasite drug used on animals, as an alternative treatment for COVID-19.

DeSantis, whose state is reeling from a massive surge of infections and COVID-related deaths, is already under fire for slow-walking or outright hindering measures to slow the spread of COVID, with a Politico report on Friday saying it could cripple his political future.

According to the Herald report, Dr. Mark McDonald of Los Angeles is “advising” DeSantis, with the report labeling the doctor as being, “….among a fringe group of outspoken medical professionals who have pushed ivermectin as an alternative to widespread vaccination against coronavirus. McDonald called ivermectin an ‘effective, safe, inexpensive treatment’ in a Aug. 5 Twitter post, and he shared an article by the Jerusalem Post citing a recent study of the drug in Israel.”

The Herald reports that McDonald was invited by DeSantis to a closed-door discussion on masks in schools back in July, noting, “In his comments, he argued that ‘masking children is child abuse,’ according to video of the meeting later released by the governor’s office.”

The report notes, “McDonald accused the Food and Drug Administration of sidelining ivermectin because it already has spent billions of dollars to ‘mass vaccinate the population.'”

In an interview, he stated, “If the goal of these people is to advance public health and make the public well, why have none of them spoke a single word about prevention and making one healthy to prevent an infection or hospitalization or death/ I think there is a lot of dishonesty here and cancellation of people who support truth.”

According to Dr. John Sinnott, the chairman of internal medicine at University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine, any doctor pushing ivermectin to treat COVID is “evil.”

“Any physician who espouses this should be reported to their state medical association,” Sinnott stated.