Guernsey Press

Donald Trump provokes anger with claim predecessors shunned military families

“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted.

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President Donald Trump’s suggestion that his predecessors failed to meet families of military personnel killed in war has brought a visceral reaction from those who witnessed the grieving encounters.

“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Mr Trump.

With an expletive, she called Mr Trump’s statement in the Rose Garden a lie.

Mr Trump said in a news conference he had written letters to the families of four soldiers killed in an October 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, crediting himself with taking extra steps in honouring the dead properly.

“Most of them didn’t make calls,” he said of his predecessors.

He said it was possible that Mr Obama “did sometimes” but “other presidents did not call”.

The record is plain that presidents reached out to families of the dead and to the wounded, often with their presence as well as by letter and phone.

The path to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as to the Dover, Delaware, Air Force Base where the remains of fallen soldiers are often brought, is a familiar one to Mr Obama, George W. Bush and others.

Mr Bush, even at the height of two wars, “wrote all the families of the fallen”, said Freddy Ford, spokesman for the ex-president.

Mr Ford said Mr Bush also called or met “hundreds, if not thousands” of family members of the war dead.

Mr Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza, tweeted that he photographed Mr Obama “meeting with hundreds of wounded soldiers, and family members of those killed in action”.

Retired General Martin E. Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed these contacts, tweeting: “POTUS 43 & 44 and first ladies cared deeply, worked tirelessly for the serving, the fallen, and their families. Not politics. Sacred Trust.”

Mr Trump addressed the matter when asked why he had not spoken about the four soldiers killed in Niger.

President Barack Obama salutes as a soldier is repatriated at Dover Air Force Base
President Barack Obama salutes as a soldier is repatriated at Dover Air Force Base (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

They died when militants thought to be affiliated with the Islamic State group ambushed them while they were patrolling in unarmoured vehicles with Nigerian troops.

“I actually wrote letters individually to the soldiers we’re talking about, and they’re going to be going out either today or tomorrow,” he said, meaning he wrote to the families of the fallen soldiers.

“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls.

Pressed on that statement later, he said of Mr Obama: “I was told that he didn’t often, and a lot of presidents don’t. They write letters.”

He went on: “President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t.

“I don’t know. That’s what I was told. … Some presidents didn’t do anything.”

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later that Mr Trump “wasn’t criticising predecessors, but stating a fact”.

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