Late last month, former president Donald Trump hosted the Gold Star families of the thirteen US military members who were slain in the 2021 Kabul Airport suicide bombing.
“Trump was way more than I expected,” Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Sergeant Nicole Gee, told me. “The contrast is stark with the president we met at Dover.” Trump “knew so much about the event, the kids, Bagram and who made decisions… He was a normal human and made eye contact, answered every question, even the uncomfortable ones.”
Following their meeting with Trump, the former president surprised them all by spending several more hours with them, as he signed pictures of their children — and even a pair of bedazzled high heels. Paula Knauss Selph wept as she watched Trump write the very words on her son Ryan’s picture that she often says and believes about her son, “You are My Hero.”
Trump then joined the families for dinner and took out his signature iPad and served as the evening’s DJ, playing patriotic classics like “God Bless the USA.”
These Gold Star families have been fighting with the Biden administration to get items as simple as their children’s SIM cards, which makes all the more notable Trump’s pledge to them that he would “help us get the answers that we are fighting so hard to find out, and particularly releasing all the footage that has been buried, and/or suppressed, and/or destroyed by this current administration” all the more notable.
Prior to the families’ Trump visit, they testified at a bipartisan House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about what they want to see — with justice and accountability emerging as two of the main themes. Darin Hoover, Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover’s father, told me he left feeling heartened.
“Between Congress and Trump, it turned into a really good week,” he said. “Lots of emotion and good times.” Throughout the hearing, the committee’s chair, Michael McCaul, emphasized that the White House would be watching. As if to prove him right, General Mark Milley submitted a letter that McCaul read at the onset.
“We owe them accountability,” Milley wrote. For many, those words rang hollow. Representative Darrell Issa, who first brought the Gold Star families together with a visit to Washington before hosting them in the hearing, said that “Milley wouldn’t know the meaning of the word if he Googled it.”
Hoover, too, was unimpressed. During his testimony, he called for Milley, Lieutenant Colonel Brad Whited and Major Geoff Ball to resign. “I want General Milley’s stars, I want Colonel Whited’s birds, I want Major Ball’s oak clusters in my hand, now. You can no longer lead. None of you have the respect of your men and women any more.” In an upcoming, closed-door hearing, committee members will be interviewing Whited about the decisions he did and did not make.
Another tangible demand made by Steve Nikoui, Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui’s father, and seconded by McCaul, is that Biden should honor their kids with a Rose Garden ceremony. On multiple occasions, parents like Hunter Lopez’s mother Alicia read out the full list of thirteen Americans murdered by a suicide bomber who “was released by the Taliban from a prison at Bagram Air Base, which the Biden administration abandoned,” McCaul noted. Biden himself has never said the names aloud in public.
But some of Biden’s fellow Democrats did win some plaudits. Shamblin complimented the lone Democrat who was at the hearing, Pennsylvania’s Madeleine Dean. Shamblin told me that Dean “was very hope-inspiring and honestly, just being heard was great.” However, the “total blackout from our current administration has been totally disrespectful and tone deaf.”
While Dean showed up at the hearing, others in this group of Gold Star families haven’t gotten the time of day from their representatives. Rex told me that her congressman, Pete Aguilar, has continually avoided her, despite pledging to meet in both DC and in their district. After missing her in DC earlier this year, he told her “he would meet with me in my own district, [and] after two months has not reached back out to me.” Aguilar was also “invited to attend the dedication ceremony on the renaming of the overcrossing to LCPL Dylan Merola in which he did not attend but sent an office staffer in his place who also did not introduce himself to me while we had seven or eight district Congress members attend who did come up to meet me and some had plaques in honor of Dylan to present to me.” Aguilar is the third-highest ranking House Democrat.
Following the hearing, the Gold Star families were honored at the Moral Compass Federation and Operation Allies Refuge’s remembrance dinner. One of the speakers was CNN’s Jake Tapper, who recently had a contentious interview with Taylor Hoover’s mother, Kelly Barnett, when she asked him, “Where have you all been? We need you, Jake! We need you. We need CNN.”
“Several of us walked out when Jake Tapper gave his keynote speech,” Mark Schmitz, father of Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, said. “I don’t trust the man. I think he’s out for nothing but his career advancement… any network that continues to aid Biden and his cover-up by playing the blame game is not a media outlet that I’m going to give any attention to.”
