I really don’t think he meant anything bad by it.
We usually celebrate anniversaries, and he just wasn’t thinking carefully when he said it. That’s my take on it. He was just trying to say that we should honor the occasion, that we shouldn’t forget or ignore it, as so many politicians and the MSM now do.
I don’t think he meant anything bad by it. Just an unfortunate choice of words.
He meant to write “lives,” not “deaths.” Simple error, imo.