President Biden has yet to respond to an offer to meet with Gold Star families who lost their loved ones during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a Republican member of Congress.
Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) proposed a sitdown between the president and relatives of the 13 service members killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, Kabul airport suicide terror attack.
“I can confirm that between his four (or is it five?) summer vacations, Biden hasn’t found even a few minutes to meet with these Gold Star families,” Issa spokesman Jonathan Wilcox told The Post Thursday, confirming an initial report by Fox News.
The ISIS-K attack at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate took place as US forces scrambled to evacuate hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghans as the Taliban regained control of the country.
Many of the Gold Star family members attended a forum hosted by Issa last week and tore into the White House response to the chaos.
One mother — Cheryl Rex — recalled Biden likening the death of Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola to that of his late son Beau.
“His words to me were, ‘My wife, Jill, and I know how you feel. We lost our son as well and brought him home in a flag-draped coffin,’” she recalled. “My heart started beating faster and I started shaking, knowing that their son died from cancer and they were able to be by his side.”
Biden previously claimed that he believes Beau’s fatal brain cancer derived from exposure to toxic burn pits during his deployment to the Middle East. Beau Biden died in 2015, six years after he returned from Iraq.
Another Gold Star mother, Kelly Barnett, claimed that the Biden administration hasn’t been truthful about the conditions of her son’s death.
“We were told lies, given incomplete reports, incorrect reports, total disrespect,” Barnett said last week. “I was told to my face he died on impact. That’s not true. The only reason that I know this is because witnesses told me the truth. I was lied to and basically told to shut up.”
Issa sent a letter to Biden on Aug. 10 laying out the proposed meeting with the families after convening his forum with them.
On Aug. 29, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to convene a roundtable discussion about the airport bombing with some of the Gold Star family members, according to Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
The White House did not immediately respond to a question from The Post about whether Biden would accept the offer from Issa.
Amid the chaos, Biden passionately defended his decision to withdraw and end America’s two-decade-long involvement in Afghanistan.
“I stand squarely behind my decision,” he said at the time. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces.”
Biden also pinned blame on his predecessor, Donald Trump, for setting up the conditions of the withdrawal.
Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government.
Biden greeted the grim milestone with radio silence, opting to visit Milwaukee instead to tout his “Bidenomics” agenda.