Vice President Kamala Harris has never spoken with the 13 families whose loved ones were killed by a suicide terrorist during the Biden-Harris administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. That didn’t stop her from trying to attack President Donald Trump for honoring the servicemembers’ sacrifices when he attended a memorial event at Arlington National Cemetery last week.
Trump joined the families of the 13 killed servicemembers last week, to memorialize the third anniversary of a deadly suicide bombing outside of Abbey Gate in Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. Although the former president was invited by the servicemembers’ families, Harris called Trump’s attendance a political ploy that made him unfit to ever “stand behind the seal of the President.”
The Gold Star families’ defenders tell the Washington Reporter that Harris will regret turning Trump’s presence into a media firestorm. “Kamala picked a fight with the wrong families,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), told the Reporter.
Ironically, Harris attacked Trump for “having the dignity to do what she has never done: pay tribute to these families for their heroism,” a source close to the families told the Reporter.
Both Harris and President Joe Biden have never publicly said the names of the 13 slain Americans out loud. Harris has never met with their families, despite NBC News falsely claiming she did so on air, and the last time Biden saw any of the families was during the dignified transfer of their dead loved ones. During the ceremony, Biden repeatedly stared at his watch.
Biden and Harris have ignored multiple public and private exhortations by Issa to meet with the families. Issa was the first lawmaker to invite members of the Biden administration to meet with the families. Last week, Gov. Spencer Cox (R., Utah) issued another invitation to Biden, who spent the day on a beach vacation while Trump mourned with the families.
“I don’t get the politics with a freakin’ wreath laying ceremony,” Darin Hoover, one of the Gold Star fathers, told the Reporter.
“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said on the anniversary. Her remarks, which did not mention the Gold Star families, came hours before Trump flooded the internet with a series of videos from the Gold Star families taking Harris specifically to task.
“Your administration killed my son, deliberately and in exchange for political theatrics, so you could have the final day of the evacuation coincide with September 11th,” Steve Nikoui said in one of the videos posted by Trump. Earlier this year, Nikoui was arrested following his disruption during Biden’s final State of the Union address. Lawmakers, led by Issa, successfully demanded that his charges be dropped.
Harris’s condemnations of Trump’s Arlington visit came after a series of hurdles were put up even before he arrived at the invitation of the Gold Star families, multiple people involved with the planning told the Reporter. According to the Daily Caller, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) had to intervene to ensure everything went smoothly. Johnson weighed in on the matter following an intervention from Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Beyond Johnson, Issa also intervened, making it clear to the officials involved that “he would work to get to [them to] a yes,” his office told the Reporter. But the ceremony was not always destined to go smoothly.
At times, Arlington attempted to prevent Trump from laying a final wreath to honor all 13 servicemembers who were killed; at other times, Arlington attempted to restrict access to the gravesites. “Does anybody believe that Arlington turning down the Gold Star families was a unilateral decision from Arlington?” one participant asked. “Nobody believes that.”
One participant in the event’s planning told the Reporter that Arlington’s objections to the event were “comically preposterous,” and demonstrated a “callous cruelty” towards the families, especially once their desire to host Trump became evident. An Army spokesperson told the Reporter that “participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”
Next week, members of all 13 Gold Star families will be together for the first time since their loved ones came home. They will receive the Congressional Gold Medal from Johnson, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.), and Rep. Lisa McClain (R., Mich.). The news of their upcoming award was first reported by the Reporter.