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Families of slain Marines blast Biden for checking his watch during the repatriation of their sons’ remains

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Families of slain Marines blast Biden for checking his watch during the repatriation of their sons’ remains

More relatives of military personnel killed in Thursday’s strike in Afghanistan have come forward to criticize President Joe Biden’s “selfish” and “disrespectful” actions when the remains were returned to the United States.

The servicemen’s “dignified transfer” which involves transporting dead military personnel killed in foreign action from an airplane to a vehicle, took place at Dover Air Base on Sunday. At least once throughout the event, Biden was seen checking his watch.

Biden checked his watch every time a flag-draped coffin was removed from the hold of the Air Force C-17 Globemaster plane during Sunday’s ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in the president’s home state of Delaware, according to Darin Hoover, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, and Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz.

“That didn’t happen just once. It happened on every single one that came out of that airplane. It happened on every single one of them. They would release the salute, and he would look down at his watch on every last one,” Hoover said. “As a father, seeing that and the disrespect, and hearing from his former leaders, one of [Taylor’s] master sergeants said that this was avoidable — that they left them over there — they had them over there and let them down, and we can’t have that. It can’t happen ever again.”

Mark Schmitz, whose 20-year-old son, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, was killed in the attack, backed up Hoover’s claims.

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Schmitz said:  “I actually leaned into my son’s mother’s ear and I said, I swear to God if he checks his watch one more time, and that was probably only four times in. I couldn’t look at him anymore after that, just especially considering the time and why we were there. It was, I found to be the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Schmitz said that his meeting with Biden went badly when he expressed his feelings to the president over his son’s death.

“Initially, I wasn’t going to meet with him,” Schmitz said. “But then I felt I owed it to my son to at least have some words with him about how I felt — and it didn’t go well. … He talked a bit more about his own son than he did my son, and that didn’t sit well with me.”

“When he just kept talking about his son so much, it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Schmitz told the Washington Post. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.

Joseph Beau Biden, Biden’s late son, served in the United States Army and died in 2015 from an aggressive type of brain cancer.

The White House did not reply to a request for comment from Insider right away.

Schmitz reportedly brought out a photo of his kid to show the president during the encounter.

“I said, ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12,’” he said. “‘And take some time to learn their stories.’”

According to reports, Biden said bluntly, “I do know their stories.”

These were not the first critiques of Biden leveled by relatives of military personnel slain in the Hamid Karzai International Airport blast. During an interview with the Washington Post, the sister of another Marine harshly attacked the president, saying that her sister-in-law thought the president’s comments were “scripted and shallow.”

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