President Donald Trump remembered Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old American aid worker murdered by Islamic terrorist and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — who was killed by U.S. military forces in October 2019 — during his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday in Washington, DC.
Kayla Mueller’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, were in attendance for Trump’s speech via the president’s invitation. Carl Mueller held a photograph in remembrance of his late daughter as Trump spoke of her life.
Transcript below:
We are joined this evening by Carl and Marsha Mueller. After graduating from college, their beautiful daughter Kayla became a humanitarian aid worker. She once wrote, “Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love. I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”
In 2013, while caring for suffering civilians in Syria, Kayla was kidnapped, tortured, and enslaved by ISIS, and kept as a prisoner of Al-Baghdadi himself. After more than 500 horrifying days of captivity, Al-Baghdadi murdered young, beautiful Kayla. She was just 26 years old.
On the night that U.S. Special Forces Operators ended Al‑Baghdadi’s miserable life, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, received a call in the Situation Room. He was told that the brave men of the elite special forces team, that so perfectly carried out the operation, had given their mission a name: Task Force 8-14. It was a reference to a special day, August 14th, Kayla’s birthday. Carl and Marsha, America’s warriors never forgot Kayla, and neither will we.
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