more Slate truth "Grief and Grievance. What a botched condolence call reveals about President Trump.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/10/what_the_botched_phone_call_to_a_soldier_s_widow_says_about_trump.html

by Jamelle Bouie

October was supposed to be a month of progress for President Trump, when he and Congress could focus on crafting a budget and clearing a path for tax reform. Instead, it’s been another month of turmoil, from his eruption at the NFL over player protests of police brutality to this week’s clash with a military widow and her representative in Congress.


These fights often feel like a series of needless provocations—clumsy forays into the “culture wars” that harden opposition to Trump’s presidency even as they mobilize his most fervent supporters. But each one reveals a part of Trump’s psyche. If his fight with the NFL underscored his willingness to use racial grievance to rally his supporters, then his comments to the widow of a fallen soldier show precisely who Trump will not respect, under almost any circumstances.

This latest incident began, like most Trump controversies, with an obvious lie. “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls,” said the president at a Monday news conference in the White House Rose Garden, where he was asked about the death of four Green Berets in Niger. “A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate.”

Trump’s lie was immediately challenged by former Obama administration officials, who cited his compassion for fallen soldiers and emphasized the fact that Trump hadn’t actually called the families of the fallen Green Berets. On Tuesday, he did just that, calling Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, one of the slain soldiers. But his attempt to offer condolences went awry. Both Johnson’s mother and Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida congresswoman who is close to the family, were present for the president’s phone call. And both said he was insensitive to Johnson’s widow, telling her that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” and referring to him as “your guy.” Whatever Trump might have meant, the tone was a conspicuous departure from the beginning of the year, when he addressed the widow of a slain Navy SEAL, calling him “a warrior and a hero” during an address to Congress.

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