President Biden again brought up the death of his son Beau while trying to comfort a grieving military family this week, this time the parents of one of three soldiers killed in a drone strike in Jordan last weekend .
The 81-year-old commander in chief shoehorned in his family tragedy in a call to Shawn Sanders and Oneida Oliver-Sanders that was recorded by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
During Tuesday’s conversation, Biden said Army Pfc. Kennedy Sanders, 24, would be posthumously promoted to sergeant.
“Oh wow, that’s the best news I’ve heard today, thank you so much,” Oliver-Sanders said as she and her husband began to cry. “You don’t know how much that means to us.”
“Oh, well, I’ll tell you what, it means a lot to me,” Biden responded before adding: “My son spent a year in Iraq; “That’s how I lost it.”
Army Spc. Kennedy Sanders poses for a selfie with his mother, Oneida Oliver-Sanders. AP
Beau Biden died of brain cancer in May 2015 at the age of 46, nearly six full years after returning from a seven-month deployment to Iraq. The president has previously explained that he believes exposure to toxic fumes from “burn pits” caused Beau’s fatal illness.
However, Biden has been criticized for comparing his son’s non-combat death at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to stories of service members who died in foreign fields.
Last August, Cheryl Rex, the mother of Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, who died in the August 26, 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport, recalled her interaction with the president.
President Biden with his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in May 2015. AFP via Getty Images
“His words to me were: ‘My wife Jill and I know how you feel. We also lost our son and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin,’” Rex recounted at a forum convened by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
“My heart started beating faster and I started to shake, knowing that their son died of cancer and that they were able to be by his side.”
During his time in the White House, Biden has baffled observers with repeated claims that Beau “lost his life in Iraq” and that Iraq was “where my son died.”
WATCH: Shawn Sanders and Oneida Oliver-Sanders were in their living room Tuesday morning, less than 48 hours after learning that their 24-year-old daughter, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, was killed in a weekend drone attack on US service members in Jordan. So President Joe… pic.twitter.com/gCzus6kgBC
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution (@ajc) January 30, 2024
However, the president had an apparent moment of clarity in May when he told Gold Star families at Arlington National Cemetery that “our losses are not the same.”
“[Beau] He did not perish on the battlefield. It was cancer that took him from us a year after he had been deployed as a major in the US Army National Guard in Iraq,” Biden acknowledged, although he still misstated the timeline of Beau’s later life.
Specialist Kennedy Sanders, Spc. Breonna Moffett, 23, and Sgt. William Rivers, 46, was killed in the drone strike by an Iranian proxy group on Tower 22, a US outpost along Jordan’s border with Syria.
Three American soldiers were killed in a drone strike in Jordan over the weekend. Through REUTERS, President Biden has already indicated that he has decided how to respond to the drone attack. fake images
Biden is scheduled to attend the dignified transfer of the remains of the three soldiers at Dover Air Force Base in his home state of Delaware on Friday.
A U.S. response to the deadly attack is expected any day now, and Biden told reporters Tuesday at the White House that he had already decided how to retaliate.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn