2020 Dems join together for video marking Memorial Day

Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates appeared in a video released Monday to honor fallen U.S. service members on Memorial Day. 

The candidates shared their stories in the NowThis video, which was organized by the VoteVets PAC and posted on Twitter. 

We asked Dem presidential candidates to honor the true meaning of today. Here is what they sent. We thank them all, and remember all those we lost in war. Thanks to @NowThisNews for their help with this! pic.twitter.com/WaJs4jhs0y

— VoteVets (@votevets) May 27, 2019

{mosads}“VoteVets and these presidential candidates are asking you to take a few moments today to remember the fallen,” text on the video reads.

Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who are veterans themselves, appeared in the video.

Moulton and Gabbard spoke about veterans with whom they served in the Iraq War. 

Moulton, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, commemorated James Hassell of Alabama, who carried a wounded comrade through gunfire on his back in the 2004 Battle of Najaf and died of heart failure in the U.S. in 2013.

Gabbard paid tribute to Staff Sgt. Frank Tiai of American Samoa, with whom she served during a deployment to Iraq before his death in 2005.

And Buttigieg recounted the story of Sgt. David Johnson De-Ford, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. De-Ford, an Army veteran, joined the National Guard after the 9/11 attacks.

Other 2020 hopefuls including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) also participated in the video. 

Sanders discussed Staff Sgt. Thomas Fogarty, who was killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, only one month after arriving in the country; Warren commemorated specialist E.J. Murphy of Brockton, Mass., who was killed in Syria in May 2017 at the age of 22; and Harris discussed Army Lt. Ken Ballard of Mountain View, Calif., who was killed on Memorial Day weekend of 2004 in Iraq.

Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), two other 2020 presidential candidates, paid tribute to veterans in the video as well.

–Zack Budryk contributed to this report, which was updated at 1:03 p.m.

Read more from The Hill:

Trump shares Arlington National Cemetery video on Memorial Day