During President Trump’s Wednesday interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, the commander-in-chief boasted of his devotion to the grieving families of fallen soldiers: “I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died.” A day later, there’s been so much back and forth following Trump’s reported crass phone call, in which he stated to a grieving military widow, “He knew what he was getting into.” And despite corroboration from the mother of the late Sgt. La David Johnson and a Democratic congresswoman who witnessed the call, Trump still insists everyone else is lying.
Sadly, the Associated Press has now heard from the families of four fallen soldiers, who all say that Trump did not come through with customary condolences as he claimed to scrupulously do:
[The] AP found relatives of four soldiers who died overseas during Trump’s presidency who said they never received calls from him. Relatives of two also confirmed they did not get letters. And proof is plentiful that Barack Obama and George W. Bush — saddled with far more combat casualties than the roughly two dozen so far under Trump — took painstaking steps to write, call or meet bereaved military families.
Even worse, Army mother Sheila Murphy (who lost her son in Syria this spring) told the AP that Trump never contacted her via phone or letter, all while she hoped that he would do so. Murphy added that she’d even written to tell him of her grief: “[S]ome days I don’t want to live.”
All of these revelations, of course, have only arrived as a followup to Trump’s unfounded assertion that he was better at doing something — in this case, consoling families of fallen soldiers — than Obama. Had he not delivered an impromptu claim that’s proving to be easily debunked, perhaps the Internet could entirely focus on another controversy. Like those silly body-double rumors that now plague Melania.
(Via Associated Press)