Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held a stirring memorial Monday in Escondido, California, for the 13 men and women in uniform who died two years ago in the terrorist attack on the evacuation at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
It aired live on Fox News; it was ignored by CNN and MSNBC. Over and over, bereaved Gold Star parents spoke passionately about how frustrated they were with President Joe Biden’s response to the deaths of their loved ones. One father of a fallen Marine even called on Biden to resign.
Darin Hoover, father of fallen Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, Jr., tells Biden over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal:
"Do what our son did — be a grown ass man. Admit to your mistakes … resign immediately." pic.twitter.com/cgTi7TDlwe
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 7, 2023
A Gold Star mother noted that President Biden had personally lied to her about seeing his son, Beau, come home from Iraq in a flag-draped coffin; in reality, Beau Biden had, however tragically, died of brain cancer, surrounded by family.
Not only did the mainstream media ignore these remarks, but they also ignored related interviews on other platforms that implicated President Biden in the disaster, and documented his insensitivity to those wounded in the Kabul attack, as well as the Gold Star families.
Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a Marine who survived the explosion in Kabul that killed 13 Americans, says that when Joe and Jill Biden came to his hospital room, the president reached out to shake his hand even though his arm was gone, immediately started talking about his son, and… pic.twitter.com/5axewScAPk
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 8, 2023
Contrast the media’s behavior this week — when confronted by the real, live testimony of Gold Star families — with the frenzied coverage of the Atlantic‘s claim in 2020 that President Donald Trump had called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” The story relied on anonymous sources and was flatly denied by those who had traveled with Trump on the occasion in question — even by people who later opposed Trump.
Yet the media treated it as Gospel truth, and Joe Biden referred to it fo the rest of the campaign.
When anonymous, thinly-sourced allegations that Trump had said something disrespectful about veterans, it literally led newspapers and magazine covers.
Gold Star families, on the record, in public testimony, saying the Joe Biden lied to their faces can't get a cable segment? https://t.co/M94Qp1uaoA
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) August 8, 2023
Or remember the story of Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who publicly excoriated Trump from the podium of the Democratic National Convention. He was treated like a celebrity, and Trump was vilified for responding to his criticism.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
But the media, aside from Fox News and conservative outlets, are nowhere to be found in reporting what Gold Star families are saying about Biden.
For the media, Gold Star families are only there to be exploited. If they criticize Democrats, they can be written off and ignored.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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