Gold Star Family members of several of the 13 U.S. servicemembers killed during the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan were highly critical of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, with one saying, “They just want to pretend it never happened.”
Gold Star Family members of Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, and Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez joined Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (OH) and Reps. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) and Ryan Zinke (R-MT) on a press call that Breitbart News attended on Monday — the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul International Airport that claimed these young servicemembers’ lives.
Gee’s aunt, Cheryl Juels, said that there have “never even been condolences” offered from the Biden-Harris administration over the loss of her niece’s life.
“They just want to pretend it didn’t happen. They want to take credit for ending the war, but they don’t want to take any responsibility for the way it all went down,” she added.
Juels added that the reports her family received were “flawed.”
“It’s been a cover-up from the beginning. Every report we get is flawed. It doesn’t contain everything that happened,” she said. “It’s just cherry-picked — what they want to put in it — and they just want to close the whole thing and wrap it up, say, ‘Everything was a success,’ and it wasn’t.”
After calling for a “truthful investigation” and “changes” to ensure a similar catastrophe does not occur, she declared that America’s servicemembers “deserve to know that there’s a commander-in-chief like President [Donald] Trump, who’s gonna respect them and protect them.”
Gold Star Mom Alicia Lopez, the mother of Hunter Lopez, highlighted Harris and Biden’s “lack of responsibility.”
“And for them to think that it’s okay and to treat it as another page in a book that they’re just flipping over for the next chapter, it saddens me and frightens me all at the same time,” she said. “I do have a son that’s currently serving, and I pray that I don’t get another knock on my door because of the lack of responsibility this administration has for our military.”
She added that she wants to see someone elected who has America’s servicemen and servicewomen’s “best interest at heart and will support our military, and we can get rid of this administration that does not care about them at all.”
Gold Star Father Mark Schmitz zoned in on “the lies and the corruption and the cover-ups that have happened since” the Abbey Gate bombing that claimed the life of his son, Jared, and the catastrophic withdrawal. He spoke directly to Democrat politicians and slammed Democrat members of Congress for giving “softball questions” to the likes of Secretary of State Antony Blinken during committee hearings about the withdrawal.
“My message is directly to all Democrat politicians. I have watched these committee hearings with Blinken, with [Ret. Gen. Mark] Milley, with [Ret. General Kenneth] McKenzie, and I’m growing so sick and tired of the softball questions that get lobbed up there,” he said. “This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue. This is an American issue. This is a lack of leadership, and this is the result, and America needs to recognize that when choosing a leader.”
“But, in support of that leader are our congressmen and our senators, and I have watched over and over again as they continually made excuse after excuse, trying to throw Trump under the bus, trying to blame him for everything,” Schmitz added. “Trump’s not perfect — we all know that — nobody is. But, when it comes to this issue of Afghanistan, it seems to be a party line issue across the board over and over again, and that has got to stop.”
