He did it again. Joe Biden trotted out his dead son, albeit at least it was in a more accurate context this time. We don’t know if burning pits were the cause of Beau’s brain cancer that eventually took his life, but the president just can’t seem to get that this card is old. He also ruined it forever when he invoked Beau’s death during his disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. Biden invoked Beau when he spoke about helping our veterans.
My administration is providing assistance with job training and housing, and now helping lower-income veterans get VA care debt-free.
Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan faced many dangers.
One was stationed at bases and breathing in toxic smoke from “burn pits" that incinerated wastes of war—medical and hazard material, jet fuel, and more.
When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best trained warriors were never the same.
Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness.
A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.
I know.
One of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden.
We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops.
But I’m committed to finding out everything we can.
The Beau car is dead, Joe. You used the last ounce of political juice with this move when you tried to say that Beau dying of brain cancer was similar to the 13 brave American service members who gave their lives at the Kabul airport when a suicide bomber attacked it. This attack was bound to happen as the security situation around the facility was beyond lax. Biden went to Dover, didn’t really seem interested as he checked his watch multiple times, and seemed curt and dismissive of the families who had just lost their loved ones (via WaPo):
It's true. Joe Biden checked his watch during the dignified transfer of the servicemembers killing in Afghanistan at the airport. You can see him jerk his left hand to pull the watch out from under his sleeve, then look down at it. pic.twitter.com/M3QVzJbTIm
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 29, 2021
Mark Schmitz had told a military officer the night before that he wasn’t much interested in speaking to a president he did not vote for, one whose execution of the Afghan pullout he disdains — and one he now blames for the death of his 20-year-old son Jared.
But overnight, sleeping in a nondescript hotel nearby, Schmitz changed his mind. So on that dreary morning he and his ex-wife were approached by Biden after he’d talked to all the other families. But by his own account, Schmitz glared hard at the president, so Biden spent more time looking at his ex-wife, repeatedly invoking his own son, Beau, who died six years ago.
Schmitz did not want to hear about Beau, he wanted to talk about Jared. Eventually, the parents took out a photo to show to Biden. “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,’?” Schmitz said. “?‘And take some time to learn their stories.’?”
Biden did not seem to like that, Schmitz recalled, and he bristled, offering a blunt response: “I do know their stories.”
And it wasn’t just conservatives who looked at him sideways for invoking Beau after the Kabul bombing. The New York Times even did some damage control:
In his public meetings with world leaders, doctors, military officials and families, Mr. Biden often shares how his experience with his son’s deployment to Iraq or battle with brain cancer affected his family. Invoking Beau’s memory amid the violent collapse of Afghanistan, the result of the most politically volatile decision of his presidency to date, provided a rare moment for critics to pounce on a penchant for eulogizing his son.
“Mr. Biden is not a Gold Star father and should stop playing one on TV,” William McGurn, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Biden has never claimed that his son died in combat, but he has often spoken of his son’s overseas deployment and the toll it took on his family. Mr. Biden’s supporters say that military families are entitled to their grief, but that the president is also entitled to his.
“The families who are grieving, they are free to feel however they feel,” Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in a mass shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and who has received periodic calls from Mr. Biden…
It was a lengthy piece explaining why he invokes Beau a lot. He misses his son. We can all get that, but all goodwill and appropriateness were shredded when he tried to insinuate that the losses were of similar standing. Joe is not a Gold Star parent. That is a fact—and at that moment, he tried to blend in shoddily that Beau was killed under similar circumstances which is a lie. We all know Beau’s story by now, Joe. Stop using him to score political points, especially now. You’re an albatross around your party's neck. Nothing is going to happen this year.
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