WASHINGTON — For U.S. presidents, meeting the families of military personnel killed in war is as harrowing as the presidency. President Donald Trump's suggestion Monday that his predecessors had failed in that responsibility prompted a visceral reaction from those who witnessed the gruesome clashes.
“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Trump. Using profanity, she called Trump's statement in the Rose Garden a lie.
Trump said at a news conference that he had written letters to the families of the four soldiers killed in the Oct. 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, noting that he had taken additional steps to properly honor the dead. “Most of them didn’t call,” he said of his predecessors. He said Obama may have called “sometimes” but “other presidents haven't called.”
Presidents have been known to reach out to the families of the dead and wounded, often in their presence, but also through letters and telephone calls. The path to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as the Air Force base in Dover, Delaware, where the remains of fallen soldiers are often brought, is familiar to Obama, George W. Bush and others.
Bush, even in the midst of two wars, “wrote to all the families of the victims,” said Freddie Ford, the ex-president’s press secretary. Ford said Bush also called or met with “hundreds, if not thousands” of family members of war dead.
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Official Obama photographer Pete Souza tweeted that he photographed Obama “meeting hundreds of wounded soldiers and family members of those killed in action.” Others recalled his frequent visits to Gold Star families and trips to Walter Reed, Dover and other places with the families of the dead and wounded.
Retired General Martin E. Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the contacts, tweeting: “The 43rd & 44th President and First Ladies cared deeply and worked tirelessly for the service members, the fallen and their families. Not politics. A sacred trust.”
Trump raised the issue when asked why he did not talk about the four soldiers killed in Niger. They died when militants believed to be linked to the Islamic State group ambushed them while they were on patrol in unarmored trucks with Nigerian troops.
“I have actually written letters individually to the soldiers we are talking about, and they are going to leave either today or tomorrow,” he said, meaning he wrote to the families of the fallen soldiers. He did not explain why the letters had still not been sent, more than a week after the attack.
“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't call,” Trump said.
Later, responding to this statement, he said of Obama: “I'm told he doesn't do that often, and a lot of presidents don't do that. They write letters.” He continued: “President Obama, I think maybe sometimes he did it and 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 later said Trump was “not criticizing his predecessors, but stating a fact.” She argued that presidents don't always call the families of those killed in action: “Sometimes they call, sometimes they send a letter, sometimes they have the opportunity to meet with family members in person.”
She said anyone who claims the former president called every family is “wrong.”
Bush's commitment to write to all the families of fallen service members and to telephone or meet with many others was achieved despite the enormity of the task. In the Iraq War alone, the number of U.S. combat deaths was the highest during his presidency, exceeding 800 each year from 2004 to 2007. During Bush's final year in office, that number dropped to 313 as the insurgency died down. Bush once said that he believed the most appropriate way to show respect was to meet with family members privately.
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Obama announced an end to combat operations in Iraq in August 2010, and the last US troops withdrew in December 2011. When Obama wound down that war, he sent tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, and the death toll rose. Of a total of 155 Americans killed in Afghanistan in 2008, which was Bush's last full year in office, that number jumped to 311 in 2009 and peaked the following year at 498. Overall, more than 1,700 people died in Afghanistan during the Obama administration.
Among other rituals honoring military families, Obama had a Gold Star Christmas tree at the White House, decorated with hundreds of photographs and notes from people who lost loved ones in the war. Gold Star families would come here during the holidays and bring decorations.
Trump visited Dover early in his presidency, traveling in February with his daughter Ivanka to return the remains of U.S. Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, William “Ryan” Owens.
Trump's relationship with the Gold Star families has not always been smooth, starting with his disparagement of the parents of slain American soldier Humayun Khan, who was Muslim. Trump was outraged when the soldier's father, Khizr Khan, was given a platform to criticize him at the Democratic National Convention.
Owens' grieving father said he didn't want to talk to Trump in Dover. But the sailor's widow, Carrin, attended Trump's State of the Union address and cried as he thanked her.
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Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Jesse J. Holland contributed to this report.
