On Memorial Day, tens of thousands of Americans got a reminder of a moment Democrats hope they will forget.
It came in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, a deadly catastrophe of chaos devastated by a terrorist attack that left 13 American servicemen and women dead.
And while Biden managed to find time to greet the bodies on their return to Dover Air Force Base in his home state of Delaware, his demeanor made it clear to grieving survivors that he had other things on his mind.
On Monday, Eric Matheny, a conservative attorney, commentator and podcast host, shared a video that showed the president checking his watch as the remains of the military members slain in the Aug. 26, 2021, Kabul airport bombing arrived in Dover three days later. By Tuesday morning, it had been viewed more than 28,000 times.
Remember when Joe Biden had better things to do? pic.twitter.com/LcNAcF9gLE
— Eric Matheny (@ericmmatheny) May 29, 2023
The fact that the president was distracted even once during the solemn moment was bad enough. But, as the New York Post reported at the time, family members of the fallen said he repeated the action each time one of the 13 coffins was removed from the Air Force C-17 that had carried them home.
As one conservative Twitter account put it, with an image of Biden checking his watch at another point during the Dover visit: “Never forget.”
Never Forget. pic.twitter.com/5onAHoWrZd
— Andrew @ Don’t Walk, RUN! (@DontWalkRUN) May 29, 2023
In a predictably boot-licking effort to cover for Biden, the left-leaning “fact-check” site Snopes reported that Biden was not on camera for the entire C-SPAN broadcast of the coffins being transferred, so it wasn’t possible to confirm whether he, in fact, checked his watch 13 times. But Snopes did acknowledge that he did it at least twice.
USA Today, which at first claimed in its “fact check” that Biden only checked his watch after the dignified transfer ceremony, later revised that to say the president “did check his watch at least three times” during the ceremony.
Relatives of the dead were adamant while speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the commander in chief looked away each time one of the bodies of the service personnel who died under his command should have been the center of attention.
“They would release the salute and he looked down at his watch on every last one,” Gold Star father Darin Hoover told Hannity on Aug. 30. “All 13, he looked down at his watch.”
Hoover’s son, Taylor, was a Marine sergeant killed in the bombing.
Gold Star father Mark Schmitz, whose son, Jared, was a Marine lieutenant who was also killed in the attack, agreed.
“I actually leaned into my son’s mother’s ear and I said … ‘if he checks his watch one more time,'” Schmitz told Hannity.
“And that was only probably four times in,” he said. “I couldn’t look at him anymore after that, just considering, especially, the time and why we were there. I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Disrespectful” is a strong word to use when it comes to a president’s behavior in the presence of those who died wearing the uniform of the American military, but it’s difficult to think of a better one.
What Joe Biden did here not only was a show of disrespect to the men and women who died and to their families, but it also was a blatant act of disrespect to the military he commands and the country he’s supposed to be leading.
These were men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to their nation — and Biden was evidently too busy to give them the attention they’d earned with the price of their lives.
There’s no doubt the presidency is a busy job, with the clock ticking from the moment of inauguration to the handover of power four years later.
But a president who finds time for a photo op appearance when the remains of dead service personnel are returned to American soil should find time to devote his full concentration to the moment.
The fact that Biden didn’t, or couldn’t, or apparently couldn’t understand why he should, speaks volumes about the man in the Oval Office.
It’s a moment Americans should never forget — not on Memorial Day or any other day. But especially, considering Biden is the Democratic front-runner for 2024, not on Election Day.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
