Gold Star families blast Biden for checking watch during ceremony for fallen
Family members of the US Marines killed in last week’s suicide terror attack at the Kabul airport are slamming President Biden for his behavior at the dignified transfer ceremony over the weekend — with one Gold Star father accusing the commander-in-chief of doing “the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen” by repeatedly looking at his watch during the ceremony.
Darin Hoover, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Biden checked his watch every single time a flag-draped coffin was removed from the hold of the Air Force C-17 Globemaster plane during Sunday’s ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in the president’s home state of Delaware.
“They would release the salute and he looked down at his watch on every last one,” Hoover said. “All 13, he looked down at his watch.”
Mark Schmitz — whose 20-year-old son, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, died in the attack — corroborated Hoover’s story.
“I actually leaned into my son’s mother’s ear and I said, ‘I swear to God, if he checks his watch one more time …’,” Schmitz recalled, “and that was only probably four times in. I couldn’t look at him anymore after that, just considering, especially, the time and why we were there. I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Schmitz also told the Washington Post of an outburst that occurred toward the end of the ceremony when one woman allegedly shouted at Biden, “I hope you burn in hell! That was my brother!”
Schmitz added that his family’s own meeting with Biden prior to the ceremony “didn’t go well.”
“He talked a bit more about his own son [Beau Biden] than he did my son,” Schmitz said, “and that didn’t sit well with me.”
“When he just kept talking about his son so much, it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Schmitz told the Washington Post. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.”
During the meeting, Schmitz reportedly took out a photo of his son to show to the president.
“I said, ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12,’” he said. “‘And take some time to learn their stories.’”
Biden reportedly offered a blunt response: “I do know their stories.”
Hoover said he and his family declined to meet with Biden.
“We said, ‘Absolutely not.’ We didn’t want to deal with him,” he said. “We didn’t want — we didn’t want him anywhere near us. We as a family decided that was the way it was going to be.”
The Aug. 26 attack outside the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport killed 13 US service members — 11 Marines, a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier — and 169 Afghans. It was one of the final catastrophes visited upon the effort to evacuate Americans and their allies from Afghanistan — which concluded Monday with hundreds of Americans being left behind, along with thousands of Afghans who aided US-led forces during their two-decade military operation in that country.
In the days since the attack, many family members of the fallen have criticized Biden. Steve Nikoui told the Daily Beast that the president had “turned his back” on Nikoui’s son Kareem, another Marine who died at the airport.
On the same day, Schmitz told St. Louis radio station KMOX to “be afraid of our leadership, or lack thereof. Pray every day for the soldiers that are putting their lives at risk and doing what they love, which is protecting all of us. I think they’re the only ones that we can honestly say have our backs.”
The family of 20-year-old Marine Rylee McCollum has expressed the most anger toward the president, with his mother, Kathy, calling Biden “a dementia-ridden piece of crap who doesn’t even know he’s in the White House” in a radio interview.
Meanwhile, McCollum’s sister Roice claimed her brother’s pregnant widow, Jiennah, felt the president showed “total disregard to the loss of our Marine — our brother, son, husband, and father” when Biden spoke to her at Dover.
“You can’t f— up as bad as he did and say you’re sorry,” Roice told the Washington Post. “This did not need to happen, and every life is on his hands, the thousands of Afghans who will suffer and be tortured is a direct result of his incompetence.” Roice McCollum added that Biden checked his watch while speaking with her brother’s widow and described the president’s comments as scripted and shallow.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki did not deny that Biden was checking the time when she was asked by Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, “Was the president looking at his watch and does he have a message to those people who felt that they were offended?”
Psaki instead pivoted, saying Biden wanted to convey to the families that “he knows firsthand what it’s like to lose a child and the fact that … there’s no words that are going to fill that hole that is left by that.”
The press secretary added that the president “was deeply impacted by these family members he met just two days ago.”
“He talks about them frequently in meetings and the incredible service and sacrifice of their sons and daughters,” Psaki said. “That is not going to change their suffering, but I wanted to convey that still.”
