Trump fails the sympathy test
Hitting a new low, the president politicizes condolence calls to the families of dead service members.
Over the past nine months, the nation has seen evidence accrue that the man it elected president entered office ill-prepared for the job, and whose core personality — vain, venal and vengeful — made him ill-suited for work that requires tact, humility and compassion. What the nation learned this week is that the man it elected president is so unsuited for the job, he can’t even get a condolence call right.
Two weeks ago, a team led by Green Berets was ambushed in Niger by extremists believed to be linked to the Islamic State, and four of the American servicemen were killed. President Trump did not reach out quickly to the families of the fallen, and a question about why he had not spoken publicly about the deaths drew an all-too-familiar response from the president: lies, braggadocio and an attack on his predecessor.
“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls” to the families of soldiers who died in the nation’s service, Trump told reporters, claiming that he had called every family of the soldiers who’d died on his watch. But Trump was embellishing his record on that front (the Associated Press found four families who had not received calls), and his politicization of the deaths of the four soldiers in the Green Beret unit displayed — again — what a small heart beats in the chest of our president.
Trump said he had written letters to the families but hadn’t mailed them yet, sounding more like a child trying to excuse his own failings than the leader of a country. Then on Tuesday, Trump finally called the families and reportedly told the pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson that her husband knew what he was getting into — then acknowledged that this wouldn’t make her grief any less painful. Trump denied he acted so boorishly, tweeting that Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida), who revealed the comments and has been backed up by the sergeant’s mother, “totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” Sadder is that the American people can’t believe any claim by their president. Until Trump presents his “proof,” the benefit of the doubt here goes to Wilson.
But the broader pattern here is what is so disheartening. Beyond Trump’s inability to articulate compassionate thoughts without screwing them up, or to stick with the humane positions he occasionally espouses (see, for example, his back and forth on “Dreamers”), it’s disturbing that this president is so willing to turn even the deaths of servicemen into a political game — in this instance, a jab in his incessant efforts to oneup Obama. Is nothing sacred?
As a candidate, Trump insulted the sacrifice of former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump also disparaged the parents of fallen Army Capt. Humayun Khan after Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, delivered an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention accusing Trump of smearing Muslims for political gain. There is something fundamentally flawed about a person who would engage in a war of words with the families of dead soldiers to score political points.
It becomes even more obnoxious given Trump’s blustery attacks on professional football players who, in Trump’s telling, show disrespect for the nation and its military when they protest police violence and social inequality during the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner.” The president grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the athletes’ protests. But then he displays an even more obnoxious disregard for the all-too-real sacrifices made by military men and women and their families. What is more disrespectful to the military than mocking a Vietnam War hero, castigating the parents of a dead soldier or not understanding the importance of even a small act of graciousness, a telephone call to a grieving widow? And reportedly not remembering Johnson’s name as he spoke with his widow? What is wrong with him?
There has to be a reckoning here. A president is not just a president, but also commander in chief of the U.S. military. The four soldiers who were killed in Niger were doing, by extension, the president’s bidding. But they also were acting on behalf of their country. Their families deserve more from their president. So does the nation.