GUADALUPE, Ariz. — Arizona is home to roughly half a million military veterans, making them a key demographic in determining whether President Donald Trump or Joe Biden becomes president. Biden won the state by just 10,457 votes in the 2020 election.
So the Biden-Harris campaign launched a coalition of veterans and military families this week at the American Legion headquarters in Guadalupe, a historically Hispanic town south of Phoenix, adding another demographic to the Democratic Party’s campaigns as they go after each other.
The Biden campaign dispatched former congressman and acting Army Secretary Patrick Murphy to make the pitch.
“Veterans want a leader of character. They want someone who will do the right thing for their family and their country,” Murphy told an audience of veterans in Arizona on Monday, before speaking about a sensitive issue the Biden team must address: the failed 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.
Biden’s debate gaffes last month drew attention, but his gaffes on Afghanistan went unnoticed.
While Biden insisted that the withdrawal was the right thing to do, he made the shockingly false claim that he was “the only president this century, or this decade, that we have not had a soldier killed anywhere in the world.”
This assertion is completely at odds with the facts of 13 soldiers killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate as the regime was withdrawing from the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Still, Murphy spoke of the war’s troubled end and offered condolences to those who died and their families.
“Any time you leave a country after a war it’s going to be messy. We lost 13 Americans … I pray for them and their families,” Murphy said, praising the efforts of Biden and former President Barack Obama in “getting rid of” Osama bin Laden and ramping up the Afghanistan war effort in the 2010s.
He did not mention that then-Vice President Biden advised his superiors to call off the raid that killed the al-Qaida terrorist mastermind.
Shortly after, Murphy placed the blame for the foreign policy debacle on President Trump.
“It was Donald Trump who met with the Taliban on Thanksgiving before he left office in 2019, struck a peace deal with the Taliban and said, ‘We’ll be out by May.’ Joe Biden took office in January, but he had to go back to square one. [Trump] “What they say and what they do are different,” the Democrat said.
After criticizing the previous administration, Murphy concluded that “bringing our troops home was the right decision.”
The president’s tough debate night continues to make headlines as he meets with Democrats who support and criticize his continued reelection bid.
But local school board member Signa Oliver said at an event Monday that removing Biden as a candidate would erode the support of people who voted for him in the primary.
“If the Washington elites are telling us, ‘we don’t care what you do,’ how is that any different to what Trump did on January 6th? They’re ignoring our vote. Our vote matters and we are watching and we are listening,” said Oliver, himself a U.S. Army veteran.
Even if the president still runs, there are still big fights ahead in the Grand Canyon State. Cook Political Report The company on Tuesday changed Arizona’s rating from “close” to “Republican advantage” after moving several other states into the more Republican column in its Electoral College assessments.
First lady Jill Biden also campaigned in Florida this week at an event for military veterans, arguing that her husband should continue to serve as commander in chief.
Biden has struggled to win over military veterans in this election, while Trump has strong support from those groups. CNN 2020 Exit polls It turns out that 54% of veterans chose Trump, while 45% voted for Biden.
