No place for politics
I t’s time to stop this.
President Donald Trump seems to have the need to always present himself as the best at everything. This led to a terrible error in judgment when, on Monday, he suggested he does a better job consoling the families of soldiers who die serving the nation — by calling and writing to them — than did some of his predecessors, particularly President Obama.
How distasteful. Presidents have chosen different methods to express the nation’s gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice. Suggesting comparisons to measure the worthiness of these efforts is beyond inappropriate. It risks making Gold Star families political pawns in our already overly divisive politics.
Sure enough, reporters began contacting the families of fallen service members to find if they had received calls and letters from the president — some hadn’t — and to compare the condolences expressed with those delivered during Obama’s presidency.
This is one place politics and one-upmanship should not intrude.
Matters got worse with reports of Trump’s call to the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, 12 days after four U.S. soldiers were killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. Johnson’s body was the last recovered, 48 hours after the attack.
U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, a big Trump critic, was with the family at the time. She called Trump’s comments unsuitable and insensitive, claiming he told the widow the slain soldier “knew what he signed up for” and only referred to him as “your guy.” A family member verified the account and agreed the tone was inappropriate.
The president should have been the bigger person and not responded, saying he would prefer to keep the call private. But that’s not Trump.
“Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife,” he wrote in a tweet.
The nation, aghast, is left watching a he-said, shesaid fight over the nature of the condolences delivered by a president to the widow of a slain soldier.
What is appropriate is a thorough investigation of the circumstances that led to the killings of four soldiers in Niger.
What is inappropriate is turning these moments of grief into political and public spectacles.