Biden reportedly has a history of disrespecting Gold Star families

President Biden is struggling to live up to his "empathizer in chief" label given by some media at the start of his presidency after facing a wave of backlash for his treatment of Gold Star families following last week’s terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left 13 U.S. service members dead and 22 wounded.

The president on Sunday met in Dover, Delaware, with the family members of the 13 killed, but several of them have spoken out against him in the days since, accusing him of repeatedly bringing up his late son Beau and saying he routinely checked his watch during the dignified transfer of the deceased's remains.

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The controversy echoes Biden's reported past treatment of Gold Star families. Mike Iubelt, the father of the fallen Army Pfc. Tyler Iubelt, told the Washington Examiner in October 2019 that he had a "horrible experience" meeting the now-president in 2016 after his son's death in Afghanistan a few days earlier. Iubelt said he left their conversation "feeling worse" than before. 

"He told my daughter-in-law ... that she was too pretty for this to happen to her," Mike Iubelt recalled. "It's probably a good thing that he was surrounded by Secret Service, probably for both of us, because I'd probably be locked up in jail right now."

Iubelt's account was similar to how Gold Star families described their recent meetings with Biden. 

Cheyenne McCollum, one of the sisters of Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, said she met with Biden alongside McCollum’s pregnant widow and that the president would not look at the family in the eye and spent the three-minute conversation talking about Beau, who served in Iraq with the U.S. Army and died in 2015 from brain cancer.

"I was able to stand about 15 seconds of his fake, scripted apology and I had to walk away," Cheyenne told "Fox & Friends."

Roice McCollum, another sister, refused to meet with the president but said he showed a "total disregard to the loss of our Marine."

"You can't f--- up as bad as he did and say you're sorry," Roice told The Washington Post."This did not need to happen, and every life is on his hands."

Shana Chappell, the mother of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, wrote a scathing Facebook post saying Biden hijacked their conversation by talking about Beau and claiming he rolled his eyes when she challenged him.

"You tried to interrupt me and give me your own sob story and I had to tell you, ‘This isn’t about you so don’t make it about you!’" Chappell wrote. "You then said you just wanted me to know that you know how I feel and I let you know that you don’t know how I feel and you do not have the right to tell me you know how I feel! You then rolled your f--- eyes in your head like you were annoyed with me and I let you know that the only reason I was talking to you was out of respect for my son. …"

As Biden turned to walk away, the grieving mother said she let him know "my son's blood was on your hands and you threw your hand up behind you as you walked away from me like you were saying ‘ok whatever!’"

Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, said Biden bristled and bluntly responded to his request that he learn the individual stories of the 13 fallen. 

"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."

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Biden was also criticized after he was photographed appearing to check his watch during the dignified transfer of remains of the fallen soldiers to American soil.

Darin Hoover, father of Utah Marine Darin Taylor Hoover Jr., said the president looked down at his watch not once but several times as the caskets were being offloaded.

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"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, all 13, he looked down at his watch," Hoover said on Fox News' "Hannity."

"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," he said. "It can't happen ever again."