Trump’s Gold Star family dispute
What happened
Escalating the controversy over his treatment of the families of fallen U.S. service members, President Trump this week hit back at the grieving widow of a soldier killed in Niger after she confirmed reports that his condolence call had left her angry and in tears. Myeshia Johnson’s husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, was one of four Special Forces troops who died in an ambush by Islamist militants on Oct. 4. Johnson told ABC that the president struck a callous tone during their conversation— telling her, “He knew what he signed up for”—and that he repeatedly forgot her husband’s name. “That’s what hurt me the most,” she said. “If my husband is out here fighting for our country...why can’t you remember his name?” Trump tweeted that the conversation was “very respectful,” and that he used Johnson’s name “from [the] beginning, without hesitation!”
The dispute began last week, when the president responded to a reporter’s question about his failure to mention the deaths of the soldiers in Niger by falsely claiming that Barack Obama and other presidents often did not contact Gold Star families. Amid growing criticism, Trump called Johnson, who was in a car at the time with Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), a longtime family friend. When Wilson then publicly criticized Trump for upsetting Johnson, he derided her as “wacky” and called her account a “total lie.” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired general who lost his own son in Afghanistan, criticized Wilson for listening to the call on speakerphone, but didn’t dispute her account of what Trump said. (See Controversy.)
What the editorials said
This president is so unsuited to his job that he “can’t even get a condolence call right,” said the Los Angeles Times. When his call dismayed Johnson’s wife, aunt, and other family members, he insisted that he had “proof” that Rep. Wilson “totally fabricated” what he’d said—but several people who heard the call said Trump really did make a heartless comment and forgot the dead hero’s name, calling him “your guy” instead. “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.”