Appearing Monday on Newsmax’s Wake Up America, Cheyenne McCollum, the sister of U.S. Marine Rylee McCollum who was killed recently in an ISIS-led terror attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, said “everything felt fake” about President Joe Biden’s in-person apology for her brother’s death.
(Watch from 1:00)
A transcript is as follows:
ROB FINNERTY: Your father and your sister chose not to meet President Biden at the dignified transfer, but you did alongside Rylee’s widow, who is pregnant. Tell us about that.
CHEYENNE MCCOLLUM: I wouldn’t say I necessarily stayed to meet him. I stayed to support Rylee’s wife because I didn’t want her to sit alone and she wanted the chance to look him in the eye, so I sat beside her to do that as well. I stayed and when he came up to us, about 15 seconds in I had to walk away. It was so insincere. He didn’t look us in the eye, he gave her a pat on the knee and said, “I know what you’re going through, I lost my son.” He didn’t lose his son serving.
FINNERTY: What else did he say in that interaction and how long did it last?
MCCOLLUM: Maybe three minutes. He just said, “there’s nothing I can say” and would go back to talking about his son. I don’t even think he knows Rylee’s name to be honest. I think he should know every single name of every solider we lost, but he didn’t know or say anything personal.
FINNERTY: Did you feel like he was being stage managed as he was being taken from family to family?
MCCOLLUM: Yeah, everything felt fake if I’m being honest.