Veteran Recalls Heated Exchange with Biden After Failed Afghanistan Pullout: 'I Don't Have an Arm'
A Marine injured in the deadly Kabul airport murder-suicide bombing during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan recounted a “weird” hospital visit from President Joe Biden.
Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews was among those wounded in the Aug. 26, 2021, bombing that killed 13 American servicemembers as the United States withdrew from Afghanistan while evacuating thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban.
He testified in March before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the attack, saying it could have been prevented.
After he was transported stateside for treatment, Biden visited the wounded survivor in the hospital.
WARNING: The following video contains language some may find offensive.
“Two minutes later, he walks in with him Jill Biden and their little entourage of people — a photographer — and uh, right away, like remember him coming up to me [and] trying to shake my hand, like … trying to shake my right hand,” Vargas-Andrews, who lost his right arm in the attack, told Shawn Ryan.
“And I looked at him and I’m like, ‘I don’t have an arm and my left arm is in this big-ass cast.’”
Without responding verbally, Biden briefly grabbed the fingers of the Marine’s left hand.
“I was like, okay, that’s weird,” Vargas-Andrews said.
Biden then began talking about his son Beau, who served in Iraq and later died of cancer.
“My mom said, she was like, ‘I don’t give a f*** what you guys say, I don’t care what you guys f***ing do.’ She’s like, ‘you better take care of him for the rest of his f***ing life,’” Vargas-Andrews recalled.
Biden’s response to Vargas-Andrews’ mother’s comment left the wounded Marine “confused.”
“She said that, and I’m sitting there, and he comes over to me and he leans over me — and I have a picture of this to prove it; I’ll show you this picture that I have, and it’s a pretty funny picture — he leans over me, and he’s like, this close to my face, and he’s like, ‘What do you want?’”
“I said, ‘What?’
“He said, ‘What do you want?’
“I’m just, like, confused and I just got blown up, and just f***ing saw my friends die next to me — like, I just want to be myself.”
The botched evacuation led to calls for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley to resign.
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