Trump Delivers Remarks to Abbey Gate Gold Star Families and Signs a Proclamation, Aug. 25, 2025
August 25, 2025 · The White House · 0:14:19
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
President Donald Trump hosted the Gold Star families of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul in the Oval Office on August 25, 2025, on the fourth anniversary of the attack, carried on the White House channel. “I’m really honored to be with you again, and we’ll be with each other for a long time, and your loved ones are looking down, and they’re very proud,” he told the families. “There are some great souls that are looking down on you right now. And they’re very proud of their parents and brothers and sisters — but moms and dads especially.”
The President thanked Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary Pete Hegseth, who attended, and showed the families the redecorated Oval Office before signing the anniversary proclamation. “I’m going to sign the proclamation now. We will have a very special proclamation done and completed,” he said. “We rate them. I don’t put them under the auto pen… We don’t do that.” In the questions that followed, he also discussed the day’s meeting with South Korea’s President Lee — “I think we have a deal done… they’re going to make the deal that they agreed to make” — and spoke at length on tariffs and trade.
Why it matters
The Abbey Gate anniversary proclamation, signed in the Oval Office with the families present, is the administration’s formal fourth-anniversary commemoration of the 2021 Kabul airport attack — a recurring commitment the President first made to these families, kept on the record here with the VA Secretary and the Vice President in the room.
Scoreboard watch
This event is a scoreboard reference point: the Abbey Gate fourth-anniversary proclamation signed August 25, 2025, and the President’s same-day statement that the South Korea trade deal was done on the terms agreed, each as stated by the President.
Sources: The White House, “President Trump Delivers Remarks, Aug. 25, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the President at the event.
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