WASHINGTON – For US presidents, meeting the families of military personnel killed in war is as heartbreaking as the presidency. President Donald Trump’s suggestion Monday that his predecessors failed in that duty brought a visceral reaction from those who witnessed those painful encounters.
“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Trump. With a sneer, he called Trump’s statement in the Rose Garden a lie.
Trump said at a press conference that he had written letters to the families of four soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, crediting him with taking extra steps to honor the dead. “Most of them didn’t make calls,” he said of his predecessors. He said it’s possible that Obama “did it sometimes” but “other presidents didn’t call it.”
The record is clear that presidents have reached out to the families of the dead and wounded, often with their presence and also by letter and phone. The road to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as to Dover, Delaware, Air Force Base where the remains of fallen soldiers are often taken, is familiar to Obama, George W. Bush and others.
Bush, even at the height of two wars, “wrote all the families of the fallen,” said Freddy Ford, a spokesman for the former president. Ford said Bush also called or met with “hundreds, if not thousands” of family members of the war dead.
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Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza, tweeted that he photographed Obama “meeting with hundreds of wounded soldiers, and the family members of those killed in action.” Others recalled his frequent visits with Gold Star families, and traveling to Walter Reed, Dover and other places with families of the dead and with the wounded.
Retired General Martin E. Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed these contacts, tweeting: “POTUS 43 & 44 and first ladies care deeply, worked tirelessly for the service, the fallen and their families . Not politics. Sacred Trust”.
Trump addressed the issue when asked why he had not spoken about the four soldiers killed in Niger. He died when militants believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State group ambushed him while patrolling in unarmored trucks with Nigerian troops.
“I’ve actually written letters individually to the soldiers we’re talking about, and they’re going out today or tomorrow,” he said, meaning he wrote to the families of the fallen soldiers. It does not explain why the letters have not yet been sent, more than a week after the attack.
“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them haven’t made calls,” Trump said.
Pressed on that statement later, he said of Obama: “I was told that he doesn’t often, and a lot of presidents don’t. They write letters.” He continued: “President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been told. … Some presidents haven’t done anything.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said Trump was “not criticizing predecessors, but stating a fact.” She argued that presidents do not always call the families of those killed in battle: “Sometimes they call, sometimes they send a letter, other times they have the opportunity to meet family members in person.”
She said anyone who said a former president had named any family was “wrong.”
Bush’s commitment to writing to all the military families of the dead and reaching out by phone or meeting with many others came despite the enormity of the task. In the Iraq war alone, US combat deaths were highest during his presidency, exceeding 800 each year from 2004 to 2007. The number fell to 313 in Bush’s last year in the office as the insurgency fades away. Bush once said he felt the appropriate way to show his respect was to meet family members privately.
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Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq in August 2010 and the last US troops were withdrawn in December 2011. As Obama waged war, he sent tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, and the death toll has mounted. From a total of 155 Americans killed in Afghanistan in 2008, which was Bush’s last full year in office, the number jumped to 311 in 2009 and climbed the following year to 498. In all, more of 1700 have died in Afghanistan on Obama’s watch.
Among other rituals honoring military families, the Obamas had a “Gold Star” Christmas tree in the White House decorated with hundreds of photos and notes from people who lost loved ones in war. Gold Star families visited during the holidays, bringing ornaments.
Trump visited Dover before his presidency, going in February with his daughter Ivanka for the return of the remains of a US Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, William “Ryan” Owens.
Trump’s relations with Gold Star families have not always been smooth, dating back to his disparagement of the parents of slain American soldier Humayun Khan, who was Muslim. Trump was angry when the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, was given a platform to criticize him at the Democratic National Convention.
Owens’ grieving father said he did not want to speak with Trump at Dover. But the sailor’s widow, Carryn, attended Trump’s address to Congress and wept as he thanked her.
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Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Jesse J. Holland contributed to this report.
