Politics
WATCH: Biden Straight-Up LIES To Gold Star Family As They Mourn Daughter’s Loss
President Joe Biden inserted himself into a family’s moment of tragedy as they mourned for the recent death of their daughter, one of three military service members killed in an Iranian-backed drone strike in Jordan over the weekend.
Speaking with the mother and father of Spc. Kennedy Sanders, 24, Biden once again falsely claimed that he could relate to their pain because he “lost” his son Beau “in Iraq.” The president’s deceased son died of brain cancer five years after returning from overseas deployment.
After revealing that the Army would be posthumously promoting Sanders to Sergeant, Biden stole the spotlight as her mother wept.
“Oh, well I tell you what, it means a lot to me. My son spent a year in Iraq, that’s how I lost him,” Biden said.
WATCH:
The latest incident was not the first time President Biden has publicly forgotten the details of Beau’s death: the president made a similar claim at least three times last fall, mental stumbles which call into question Biden’s age and acumen at a critical time for his reelection campaign. Efforts by Biden’s staff to keep traveling reporters at a distance suggest the White House communications team is bracing for similar incidents to continue into 2024.
The inflated story of Beau’s death continues to be repeated by Biden as he visits with other soldiers who wear the scars of battle. In August, Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a survivor of a suicide bombing that took the lives of 13 American soldiers during the frenzied withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, sat for an interview where he spoke about President Biden’s visit. The president, surrounded by photographers and his entourage, immediately reached out to shake Vargas-Andrews’s hand.
“I look at him, and I’m like, ‘I don’t have an arm.’ And my left arm is in this big-ass cast with this giant orange f***ing foam block around it, completely immobile. All I can do is move my head… and he says “Oh” and kind of stands up and goes over to reach for my fingers because about an inch of my fingers are showing and just like grabs my fingers. Doesn’t greet me or anything, that’s what happened, just grabbed my fingers,” said the veteran.
From there, Sgt. Vargas-Andrews said, the president and First Lady Jill Biden “almost immediately started talking about how their son served in the military.”
Standing at his side, the vet’s mom was furious, telling the president, “I don’t give a f***. I don’t care what you do. You better take care of him for the rest of his f***ing life.” It was at that moment that the encounter got even stranger.
“He leans over to me, and he’s like this close to my face, and he’s like, ‘What do you want?’ I said what? He said ‘What do you want?’ And I’m just like confused. I just got blown up, just f***ing saw my friends die next to me. I just want to be myself. And he’s like ‘Huh?’ And my mom is furious, she goes ‘He just wants to be him.’ And he goes ‘Oh, OK’. And they just continue to talk about everything but what just happened. And then they just ushered him out of the room, he didn’t know what to say, they ushered him out of the room, and that was that.”
Families of military victims have pushed the administration to introduce legislation granting increased funding to family members who serve as caregivers to soldiers in need. Biden may have finally gotten the message: his FY24 budget allocates $2.4 billion for the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers, which includes stipend payments and support services to help empower family caregivers of eligible veterans.
