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Mark Schmitz, father of Marine Jared Schmitz, and Darin Hoover, father of Darin Taylor Hoover Jr., appeared Monday on Fox News’s Hannity to talk about their interactions with the president.
“Initially, I wasn’t going to meet with him,” Schmitz said. “But then I felt I owed it to my son to at least have some words with him about how I felt — and it didn’t go well … He talked a bit more about his own son than he did my son, and that didn’t sit well with me.”
Biden’s late son Joseph Beau Biden was in the U.S. Army and died in 2015 from an aggressive form of brain cancer.
FAMILY MEMBERS OF SOME US SERVICE MEMBERS KILLED IN KABUL AIRPORT ATTACK SLAM BIDEN
Hoover decided not to speak with Biden, claiming his family decided together that they wanted nothing to do with the president due to perceived disrespect the president showed as the caskets were offloaded. Hoover claimed that Biden checked his watch multiple times throughout the ceremony.
“That didn’t happen just once. It happened on every single one that came out of that airplane. It happened on every single one of them. They would release the salute, and he would look down at his watch on every last one,” Hoover said. “As a father, seeing that and the disrespect, and hearing from his former leaders, one of [Taylor’s] master sergeants said that this was avoidable — that they left them over there — they had them over there and let them down, and we can’t have that. It can’t happen ever again.”
Schmitz testified that Hoover’s allegations of Biden checking his watch multiple times were true, calling it the “most disrespectful thing I have ever seen.”
These were not the first criticisms of Biden from family members of the soldiers killed in the explosion at the Hamid Karzai International Airport. The sister of another soldier sharply criticized the president during an interview with the Washington Post, in which she said her sister-in-law felt the president’s words were “scripted and shallow.”
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The criticisms also launched into the political sphere when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson tweeted videos of Biden checking his watch.
“Apparently our Commander-in-Chief has better things to do than honor the 13 service members who died on his watch?” Jackson tweeted. “I’m DISGUSTED! God bless these heroes and their loved ones. They deserved better.”
The last plane of American troops left Afghanistan in the early hours of Tuesday morning, signaling the end of the 20-year military occupation.
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