Just hours after Donald Trump claimed during a Fox News Radio interview on Tuesday that he had called “virtually” all of the Gold Star military families who had lost a serviceman this year, an internal Defense Department e-mail indicated a different story. The e-mail from the White House asked the Pentagon for the identities and contact information of every family of a deceased service member who had been killed in action since this January, according to Roll Call. The White House was rushing to legitimize Trump’s statement, which his senior White House aides knew was incorrect—because they didn’t even have an up-to-date list of casualties.
Capt. Hallock Mohler, executive secretary to Defense Secretary James Mattis, answered the e-mail, providing the names and contact information, including phone numbers, of the families in a missive with the subject line, “Condolence Letters Since 20 January 2017.” He explained that he was trying to figure out which family members Trump had yet to contact. Of the twenty families the Associated Press asked if they had been contacted by the president, half of them said no.
In the Fox News Radio interview, Trump said that he had called “virtually” every family of a fallen soldier who had been killed since his inauguration in January: “I have called, I believe, everybody—but certainly I’ll use the word virtually everybody.”
A day after the interview, a reporter at a White House press conference asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders if Trump had indeed called all of the Gold Star families on his list. Her reply was less than concrete. “The president’s made contact with all of the families that have been presented to him through the White House Military Office,” Sanders said. “All of the individuals that the president has been presented with through the proper protocol have been contacted through that process.”
Amid growing outrage one particular condolence call, in which Trump reportedly told the grieving, pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” the administration brought out White House chief of staff and four-star Marine general John Kelly to try and tamp down the controversy. The contents of the call in question were revealed by Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a family friend of the couple. The soldier’s widow confirmed that Wilson’s recap of the call was accurate. On Thursday, Kelly delivered a stern lecture from the White House podium, upbraiding not only the press but Wilson, whom he called an “empty barrel,” and accused of grandstanding at a previous event honoring two fallen F.B.I. agents. When video emerged that proved Kelly had, at best, mischaracterized Wilson’s comments—she did not take credit for securing funding for the center named after the agents, and then-F.B.I. director James Comey sang her praises at the event—the White House refused to recalibrate.
“If you want to get into a debate with a four-star marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate,” Sanders said, thereby guaranteeing the story would live to see multiple other news cycles. On cue, Trump tweeted Saturday, “hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!”
