Gold Star families want Biden administration to apologize

During an interview on Breitbart News SaturdayRep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) said Gold Star families who lost loved ones during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan want to hear the administration acknowledge that they “did some things wrong.”

Waltz spoke about how, after former President Donald Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery honored the 13 fallen U.S. service members during the Biden administration’s failed withdrawal, the media and Vice President Kamala Harris attacked Trump and claimed there was an altercation between Trump campaign officials and a cemetery official.

The Florida congressman added that Harris had “not made a single phone call” or “visited” the families, and was now “giving her opinion.”

“He was there at the request of the families. By the way, the families invited her and Biden, and they still haven’t shown up. And by the way, as a veteran, I’ve visited my Green Berets that I lost there, where those headstones are, for the last 20 years. We still take pictures. We still post them online. I want America to see the sacrifices that were made for them. It was a beautiful moment, there was no altercation. It’s a made-up hoax, and it’s really disgusting because these families had a special moment with a former president of the United States who took the time to show up and hear their grievances,” Waltz said.

Host Matthew Boyle said the “hardest thing to hear” from Gold Star families was that Harris didn’t have “enough empathy” to pick up the phone and call them.

“Here’s what I think resonates with them,” Waltz said. “All they want to hear is, ‘We know we did some things wrong. We should have done better. We’re learning from this so that this doesn’t happen to future soldiers.’ But every time Biden, and now her, says, ‘No, no, no. This was an outstanding success,’ it’s another stab in the heart of these families because you have a major political party led by these two saying, ‘No, this is the right way to do it. This is the way we’re going to do it again in the future.’”

“The best way to honor their loss is to say, ‘We learned our lessons and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure this never happens again.’ But they don’t hear that – they don’t hear anything. But that’s what they want to hear: ‘We learned our lessons. This won’t happen to future children and future Marines.’ Yet they don’t even have the courage to do anything now, because this has just been another blow to these poor families,” Waltz said.

Families of the fallen soldiers issued statements explaining that they had agreed to photos and videos being taken at Arlington National Cemetery, and criticized Harris for issuing a statement calling Trump’s visit to the cemetery a “political stunt.”

Waltz added that in the upcoming presidential debate between Trump and Harris, the vice president could emphasize that the Biden administration has implemented Trump’s Doha deal to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“She could go and say, ‘No, no. What Biden did was actually execute your deal, Donald Trump. That was your – you’re responsible for this, for this Doha deal.’ First of all, President Trump’s advisers came to him and said, ‘The Taliban failed to live up to six of the seven conditions of the deal. They failed to live up to their end.’ And what did President Trump do? He left 2,500 special operators, NATO still had its troops there, we still had our contractors there, and we still had Bagram Air Base. Right? So, yes, President Trump made a deal. The Taliban failed to live up to it. And, as far as he’s concerned, when he left office in 2020, the deal was off. Second, Biden has had no problem tearing up all sorts of Trump policies, like the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the billions and tens of thousands of jobs that were involved. The Paris Climate Accord, all the border policies, over 60 executive orders that he’s torn up and replaced. I mean, you could go on and on. The Iran deal, which they’ve revived, which they’ve tried to revive. So he can tear up all those Trump policies, but he’s stuck with that one?” Waltz added.