EXCLUSIVE: Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is charging that overseas conflicts escalated under the Biden administration.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testified before the committee in December after a report on the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, where he was pressed to “take responsibility” for the widespread conflicts that erupted across the globe following the deadly event.

Speaking with Fox News Digital on Monday, Lawler delved into the report that claimed the Biden administration “has left the world in a worse off place than it inherited it” — beginning with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“The report on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is his legacy and that of the Biden administration, because in my estimation, it’s set about a series of events around the globe that have left us in the most precarious place since World War Two, starting with that disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of 13 U.S. service members,” Lawler told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.

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The congressman detailed several tragic events under the Biden administration that followed the Afghanistan withdrawal, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, threats in the Indo-Pacific from China, and the “illicit” oil trade between China and Iran that Lawler says is “funding terrorism.”

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“This administration has left the world in a worse off place than it inherited it. And that, in my view, is the legacy of the Biden-Harris administration and that of Secretary Blinken,” the New York Republican said.

Lawler added that while national security has appeared in the most “precarious” position since WW2, foreign policy will soon look different under the incoming Trump administration.

A sign displaying photos and names of the 13 service members killed in a terrorist attack at Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport is seen during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 9, 2024 in Washington, DC.  (Kent Nishimura)

“I think President Trump obviously had four years in which there was greater peace and prosperity around the globe. And the difference between Biden and Trump is that Biden is unable to stop conflicts. Trump is willing to act,” Lawler told Fox. “When you are strong, when your adversaries acknowledge and understand that you are willing to act and strike. They think twice about it.”

Lawler also said that he thinks “President Trump will be a very strong leader when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to bringing these conflicts to an end.”

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., will serve as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee next Congress, where Lawler says there will be “a lot of the focus is going to be on reauthorizing the State Department operations,” such as how the agency programs operate and how its funds are used.

“I think, obviously, with President Trump coming in, the foreign policy of the United States is going to change,” Lawler said of the incoming administration. “It is going to be much stronger, much more unforgiving on our adversaries. And certainly seek to bring these conflicts to an end.”

Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen was injured and transported to a hospital on Sunday after he was bucked off a horse.

Pillen, 68, is expected to be hospitalized for several days.

The first-term governor was riding horses with his family when he was thrown off a new horse and suffered injuries, according to the governor’s office.

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Pillen was rushed to Columbus Community Hospital in Columbus, Nebraska, before he was transported, out of an abundance of caution, to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

“The Governor is alert and is in continuous touch with his team,” Pillen’s office said.

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Gov. Pillen is expected to be hospitalized for several days, though the severity of his injuries was not revealed. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

Pillen’s office did not detail what injuries he suffered or the severity.

The GOP governor was elected in 2022, running in the gubernatorial election that year because former Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican, was term-limited. 

Pillen then appointed Ricketts to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who resigned in 2023 to become president of the University of Florida. Sasse has since stepped down as the university’s president.

Pillen was elected as Nebraska’s governor in 2022. (Getty Images)

Pillen worked as a veterinarian and owned a livestock operation before he was elected as governor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Donald Trump doesn’t drain the swamp, despite his promises. He just puts his own brand on it, like everything else he touches, and sells. And he transports it: Wherever Trump is, the swamp creatures swarm to be near him.

Since he won the election Nov. 5, the habitat for hangers-on has been Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s waterfront Palm Beach playground in Florida, a state famously hospitable to swamps. Sycophants, billionaires, lobbyists and job seekers jostle amid the unswamplike gaudy gilt splendor, wearing golf attire by day and formal wear by night, in hopes of a chance to press their special interests before the Swamp King.

Postelection headlines tell the tale. “Inside the Trump-Fueled Lobbying Frenzy from Mar-a-Lago” read one, followed by, “K Street lobbyists are flocking to Florida, as the nexus of power under Donald Trump shifts from Washington to Palm Beach.” Another: “A Spike in Demand, and Fees, for Lobbyists with Ties to Trump.” And from the BBC: “Power in the Palms: Inside the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.”

Not in memory, possibly not ever, has the nation seen such overt, unapologetic and public displays of kowtowing to, and deal-making with, a U.S. president or president-elect by the nation’s rich and well-connected. Get used to it. Trump’s favorite historical period is the late 19th century Gilded Age; he’s re-creating it for the 21st century.

Yet another recent article on the Trump transition, headlined “Dinner at Mar-a-Lago Is for Power Games,” noted that when Trump enters the patio dining room nightly, the assembled guests give him a standing ovation. At a center table, circled by rope to keep lesser beings at bay, the president-elect doubles as DJ, queuing up songs on his iPad — including David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” when the world’s richest man, EV innovator, rocket entrepreneur and ubiquitous “First Buddy” Elon Musk, arrives to join Trump in the center ring.

Trump “sits right out there with everybody,” a wealthy Pennsylvanian who’s a Mar-a-Lago member ($1 million upfront, $20,000 annually) told the Washington Post. “It’s a more sophisticated swamp, but it’s crazy,” another habitue said. “You go to the club and run into all these creatures.” A third member, however, griped that so many supplicants crowd the place these days that he sometimes can’t get a table.

But on Thursday evening the waters there parted for Trump’s special guest, the world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, aerospace company Blue Origin (a Musk competitor) and the Washington Post — all enterprises that could be helped or hurt by Trump administration actions. Bezos is among the tech CEOs whose companies have donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration festivities, having never done so for past inaugurals. Also at the center-stage table, natch, was Bezos frenemy Musk.

Besides Trump himself — with his cryptocurrency business, majority stake in the social media network Truth Social, real estate properties, books, licensing deals, stock holdings in multiple industries and new MAGA-branded merch by the day — Musk may be the person with the most to gain from the coming administration, and the most real and apparent conflicts of interest in mixing business and government work. Musk has already seen a hefty return on his quarter-billion-dollar investment in getting Trump elected, a jaw-dropping figure but one that represents just 0.05% of his fortune, which Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index puts at nearly a half-trillion dollars, $474 billion.

Musk hasn’t had to wait for Trump to take office to benefit. Flaunting his influence as co-chief of Trump’s not-really-a-department Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy (another billionaire, barely, according to Forbes), Musk last week killed a bipartisan year-end spending package with a fusillade of more than 150 social media attacks on X — beating Trump to the punch. And down with the bill went its provisions to restrict investments in China that could have limited those that Musk is pursuing.

Just days before, on Monday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had written to Trump calling for safeguards against Musk’s conflicts of interest as he exercises Trump’s mandate to recommend ways to slash both federal spending and regulations. For someone like Musk with many billions’ worth of federal contracts to proceed without guardrails, Warren said, was “an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes.”

That phrase could apply to the entire culture that Trump is building around himself for his second term. For years in Washington, influence–peddling almost to the point of bribery has in effect become legalized, thanks largely to a string of Supreme Court decisions making prosecutions more difficult and money-giving easier. Both parties take full advantage of the lax environment, but no one more brazenly than Trump.

Suffice it to say that in the Trump swamp, Warren’s pitch for protections against Musk’s personal aggrandizement wasn’t taken seriously. After all, the boss himself is resisting federal ethics constraints that bound other modern presidents; his team belatedly submitted an ethics code as required by the Presidential Transition Act, but didn’t apply the requirements to Trump, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Team Trump’s dismissive response to Warren came from Trump’s transition spokeswoman, who denigrated the senator as “Pocahontas,” echoing Trump’s schoolyard taunt.

The president-elect’s own take on the potential for Musk’s self-dealing wasn’t any more reassuring when Time raised the issue in its interview after it designated him the magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

One of the interviewers, noting that Musk will be overseeing federal agencies that regulate his companies, which include SpaceX, Tesla, X, Starlink, brain-implant company Neuralink and more, asked, “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” Trump: “I don’t think so.” The questioner followed up, pointing out that Musk has been talking about cuts to NASA and SpaceX is a competitor. “Isn’t that the textbook definition of a conflict of interest?”

Trump deflected: “He puts the country before … his company.”

As Trump likes to say, “We’ll see.”

@jackiekcalmes