WASHINGTON
— President Trump’s condolence call to the widow of a slain soldier
exploded into a vicious row that swamped the White House on Wednesday,
with the soldier’s grieving mother accusing the president of
disrespecting her family and a defiant Mr. Trump complaining that his
words had been cynically twisted for political purposes.
The
back-and-forth made a furious spectacle of what is, at the best of
times, one of the most emotionally wrenching contacts between the
commander in chief and a bereaved citizen. It overshadowed any talk of
Mr. Trump’s legislative priorities and instead recalled his history of feuding with military families or even, as in the case of Senator John McCain, a war hero.
Twelve days after four Americans were killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger, the president called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson,
who was among the slain, and said that her husband “knew what he signed
up for,” referring to the soldier only as “your guy,” according to
Sergeant Johnson’s mother and a Democratic congresswoman, who both
listened to the call.
Mr.
Trump angrily disputed that account, insisting that he “had a very nice
conversation with the woman, with the wife, who sounded like a lovely
woman.” The White House accused the congresswoman, Frederica S. Wilson
of Florida, of politicizing a sacred ritual after Mr. Trump initially
said she “fabricated” it.
It
was, to a great extent, a self-inflicted wound. Mr. Trump opened the
issue on Monday when he deflected a question about why he had not spoken
publicly about the deaths of the four soldiers by falsely accusing his
predecessor, President Barack Obama, of not contacting the families of
fallen troops.
Continue reading the main story
On
Tuesday, Mr. Trump dragged his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, into the
dispute. He told reporters that Mr. Obama had not called Mr. Kelly, a
former Marine Corps general, when his son Second Lt. Robert Kelly was
killed in action in 2010 in Afghanistan. Mr. Kelly, who has long been
reluctant to talk about the loss of his son, did not comment on the
issue.
But
the White House presented Mr. Kelly as a character witness on
Wednesday, noting that he was present for Mr. Trump’s call on Tuesday
afternoon to Sergeant Johnson’s wife, Myeshia Johnson, and viewed it as a
respectful expression of presidential sympathies.
“He
thought that the president did the best job he could under those
circumstances to offer condolences on behalf of the country,” said Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. She said that Mr.
Kelly is “disgusted by the way this has been politicized, and that the
focus has become on the process and not the fact that American lives
were lost.”
It
was Mr. Trump, however, who first put a spotlight on politics and
process by comparing his practices with those of Mr. Obama and other
presidents. Mr. Obama did, in fact, call or meet with the families of
multiple fallen soldiers, though he sent letters to many others. Mr.
Trump said he planned to call as many families of fallen soldiers as was
“appropriate.”
His
call to Ms. Johnson came as she and her two young children were in a
limousine at Miami International Airport awaiting a plane carrying the
remains of Sergeant Johnson. Mr. Trump spoke for three to five minutes,
Ms. Wilson said.
“When
she got off the phone, she said, ‘He didn’t even know his name. He kept
calling him, ‘Your guy,’” Ms. Wilson said of Ms. Johnson. “He was
calling the fallen soldier, ‘Your guy.’ And he never said his name
because he did not know his name. So he kept saying, ‘Your guy. Your
guy. Your guy.’ And that was devastating to her.”
Mr. Trump flatly dismissed Ms. Wilson’s account and suggested he would produce evidence to discredit it.
“Democrat
Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier
who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” he wrote in an early-morning Twitter post.
He repeated his denial hours later, before a White House meeting with
senators. “I didn’t say what that congresswoman said,” the president
said. “Didn’t say it at all, she knows it.”
Ms. Wilson quickly fired back on Twitter.
“I still stand by my account of the call b/t @realDonaldTrump and
Myeshia Johnson. That is her name, Mr. Trump. Not ‘the woman’ or ‘the
wife,’” she wrote in a post.
Sergeant
Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, backed the congresswoman’s
version. “Yes, he did state that comment,” Ms. Jones-Johnson said, via
message on Facebook, of Mr. Trump’s remark that her son “knew what he
signed up for.”
By
midafternoon, the White House was no longer disputing Ms. Wilson’s
account of Mr. Trump’s choice of words. Ms. Sanders said the White House
did not tape the call. But she said Ms. Wilson had willfully
mischaracterized the spirit of the conversation.
“This
is a president who loves our country very much, who has the greatest
level of respect for men and women in uniform, and wanted to call and
offer condolences to the family,” Ms. Sanders said. “To try to create
something from that, that the congresswoman is doing, is frankly
appalling and disgusting.”
The
dispute over Mr. Trump’s condolence call topped several contentious
issues that marked yet another rancorous day at the White House.
The
president kept up his feud with the National Football League over
players who take a knee in protest during the playing of the national
anthem. And he revived his unproven charges that the former F.B.I.
director, James B. Comey, had lied, leaked information and protected
Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s opponent in last year’s presidential
election.
But
the way Mr. Trump has handled grieving military families loomed over
all, and thrust the sensitive issue of how presidents deal with the
casualties of war to center stage. His reference to Mr. Obama’s lack of
calls also drew furious responses from the former president’s aides and
expressions of discomfort from former military commanders.
The
feud with Sergeant Johnson’s family was reminiscent of a public fight
Mr. Trump began with the parents of a Muslim American soldier, Humayun
Khan, who was killed in 2004 in Iraq. The soldier’s parents, Khizr and
Ghazala Khan, appeared at the Democratic National Convention in 2016,
where Mr. Khan criticized Mr. Trump.
Mr.
Trump’s charged relationship with Gold Star families — those who have
lost relatives in war — took another turn with the White House’s
disclosure on Wednesday that it had sent a check for $25,000 to the
family of Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, who was shot to death by an Afghan
police officer, along with two other American soldiers, in June.
Mr. Trump had promised the check to Sergeant Baldridge’s father, Chris, in a phone call a few weeks after his son’s death, according to The Washington Post. But the president did not send the money until the newspaper inquired about it on Wednesday.
“For
somebody to tell me they were going to give me something and then not
come through, it feels like kicking me when I’m down,” Mr. Baldridge
said Wednesday.
Some experts sympathized with the challenge Mr. Trump faced in placing condolence calls.
“It’s
always been difficult for presidents,” said Peter D. Feaver, an expert
in civilian-military relations at Duke University, “but in some ways,
it’s become more difficult as the number of casualties dwindled, so each
one can be individualized to a much greater extent.”
Other
calls Mr. Trump has made to families have been well received. The
president called Eddie Lee, the father of First Lt. Weston C. Lee, who
was killed in April by a roadside bomb in Iraq, and told him, “I bet he
never gave you a minute’s trouble as a child.”
“It’s true,” Mr. Lee said, chuckling, “he didn’t.”
“The
president was just so nice and caring, you could hear it in his voice,
you could tell what a caring family man he is,” said Mr. Lee, who
volunteered, “I voted for Trump and I’d vote for him again.”
But
the president’s call to Sergeant Johnson’s widow illustrated the
pitfalls to his improvisational approach, according to other experts.
Kori Schake, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford
University who specializes in civilian-military relations, said the
account of Mr. Trump’s call suggested he did not follow the
“time-honored rituals” of such calls.
“My
guess is that he thought he was showing respect for the toughness and
patriotism of people who sacrifice for something bigger than themselves,
and just did it clumsily,” Ms. Schake said.
Correction: October 18, 2017
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to Sgt. La David T. Johnson. He was serving in Africa with an Army Special Forces unit; he was not a Green Beret.
An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to Sgt. La David T. Johnson. He was serving in Africa with an Army Special Forces unit; he was not a Green Beret.
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