When President Trump was asked why he had not publicly made a statement about the four Green Berets ambushed in Niger, he chose this moment as another occasion to belittle former President Obama. “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls,” Trump said during a news conference in the Rose Garden with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at his side.
“A lot of them didn’t make calls,” Trump continued. “I like to call when it’s appropriate.”
What is clearly not appropriate is for a sitting president to accuse his predecessors of an indignity they did not commit. President Obama was consistently aggrieved by the loss of our troops and readily reached out to their relatives and loved ones. Evidence of this sympathetic response can be seen in photos; in one, Obama, in a salute at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, honors a line of coffins.
Unlike Trump’s responses to the loss of lives, which he says will come later, claiming he has written letters, Obama’s responses were prompt.
There was no comment from Obama about the allegation, but Benjamin Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to Obama, tweeted that Trump’s assertion “is an outrageous and disrespectful lie even by Trump standards. Also, Obama never attacked a Gold Star family.”
Rhodes was alluding to Trump’s attack on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of the slain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. During the Democratic National Convention in 2016, the Khans had criticized Trump.
Tuesday, Trump, during an interview on Fox News Radio, defended his claim and suggested the reporters ask his chief of staff John Kelly if Obama called after his son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010 after stepping on a land mine.
“As far as other presidents, I don’t know, you could ask Gen. Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?” Trump said. “I don’t know what Obama’s policy was.”
It would seem that if Trump doesn’t know what the former president’s policy was, then how can he impute that Obama didn’t contact the families?
Kelly, as he has done in the past, refused to comment on the matter and continues to sidestep any discussion about his son or his death.
The chief of staff and his wife, Karen, did attend a 2011 Memorial Day breakfast for Gold Star families and were seated at a table with Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
No matter the incident or circumstance, if Trump can find a way to excoriate Obama or chip away at his legacy, be it factual or otherwise, he will not hesitate. His obsession with Obama seems to be without limits.