After President Biden asserted that no soldiers had died while in office while ignoring the service members who had lost their lives, Republican support for his candidacy stalled.
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents used dials to respond in real time to President Biden’s assertion during the presidential debate that no soldiers died while he was in charge during a Fox News Digital focus group.
“When he was president, they were still killing people in Afghanistan,” Biden said, in regards to former President Donald Trump. “And he didn’t do anything about that.”
“When he was president, we were finding ourselves in a position where you had a notion that we were this safe country,” Biden said. “The truth is, I’m the only president this century, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.” That was a lie.
When he brought up the prior president’s military casualties in Afghanistan, the Democrats in the focus group responded favorably.
The dial line fell as Republicans and Independents reacted adversely.
The thirteen military personnel who lost their lives in August 2021 while his administration was pulling out of Afghanistan were not mentioned in Biden’s remarks.
The attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul claimed the lives of thirteen US service members, including one corpsman from the Navy, one Army special operations soldier, and eleven Marines.
U.S. Central Command acknowledged in January 2024 that a drone strike on an outpost in northeast Jordan close to the Syrian border resulted in the deaths of three U.S. military members and the injuries of at least twenty-five more.
While carrying out a weapons transfer from Iran to Houthi rebels off the coast of Somalia, two U.S. Navy SEALs, identified as Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher J. Chambers, 37, and Navy Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Nathan Gage Ingram, 27, perished.
Other US service members have also lost their lives, and their loved ones swiftly called Biden out for his lies.
Eight American airmen perished in a CV-22 Osprey disaster in November 2023 near Yakushima Island, Japan, while five troops perished in a helicopter crash in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in November 2023 during a normal refueling mission.
