President Joe Biden mistakenly claimed to have lost his son in Iraq while speaking with the parents of Spc. Kennedy Sanders, a soldier killed in an Iranian-backed drone strike.
This is not the first time Biden has made this error, raising concerns about his age and mental acuity.
The incident with Sanders’ parents and another involving a soldier who survived a suicide bombing in Afghanistan have drawn attention to Biden’s interactions with military families.
Joe Biden tells the parents of one of the soldiers who died in Syria over the weekend that he lost his son Beau in Iraq.
His son died of brain cancer five years after returning from Iraq.
pic.twitter.com/iQQ9owIptq— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 1, 2024
“Oh, well I tell you what, it means a lot to me. My son spent a year in Iraq, that’s how I lost him,” Biden said.
Biden “almost immediately started talking about how their son served in the military,” Sgt. Vargas-Andrews recalled.
“I don’t give a f—. I don’t care what you do. You better take care of him for the rest of his f—— life,” the veteran’s mother said.
“He leans over to me, and he’s like this close to my face, and he’s like, ‘What do you want?’ I said what? He said ‘What do you want?’ And I’m just like confused. I just got blown up, just f—— saw my friends die next to me. I just want to be myself. And he’s like ‘Huh?’ And my mom is furious, she goes ‘He just wants to be him.’ And he goes ‘Oh, OK’. And they just continue to talk about everything but what just happened. And then they just ushered him out of the room, he didn’t know what to say, they ushered him out of the room, and that was that,” Vargas-Andrews said of Biden.
The administration’s FY24 budget includes increased funding for family caregivers of veterans, possibly influenced by pressure from military victim families.
