President Trump’s chief of staff helped on Thursday to shift a controversy between Trump and the widow of a fallen soldier to the Democratic congresswoman who alleged Trump had upset the Gold Star wife, capping off a week of questions about Trump’s outreach to military families.
John Kelly, himself a retired general and Gold Star father, attacked the media and Democrats in a rare public appearance at the White House on Thursday for what he described as their exploitation of a family’s pain to score political points against the president. In doing so, he forced reflection among all sides of the debate about how they had approached a topic he described as “sacred” and potentially spared Trump from several additional days of scrutiny related to his treatment of military families.
“We can view John Kelly’s statement today as an attempt to put the issue to rest without explicitly contradicting Trump’s own comments, and — if that doesn’t work — at least to advantageously reframe the controversy as a dispute between the president and a Democratic member of Congress rather than one that pits Trump against the families of fallen members of the military,” said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College. “Kelly might succeed, but the problem will return if more Gold Star family members come forward to tell reporters that the president behaved offensively or obnoxiously toward them.”
The focus on Trump’s outreach to military families began on Monday, when he claimed former President Obama and his other predecessors did not often call the family members of fallen soldiers. Although Obama administration officials quickly and forcefully disputed Trump’s claim, Kelly backed it up Thursday when he said most presidents have elected to send letters to Gold Star families in lieu of phone calls.
Trump’s claim invited media inquiries into the number and nature of condolence calls he had made and became a partisan flashpoint after a Democratic lawmaker accused the president of upsetting the wife of a recently-deceased Army sergeant.
Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., said Tuesday evening that Trump had telephoned Myeshia Johnson, wife of slain Sgt. La David Johnson, and told her her husband “must have known what he signed up for” when he joined the military. La David Johnson was among the four U.S. soldiers killed in an attack in Niger on Oct. 4. The Pentagon is still investigating the circumstances surrounding the apparent ambush.
Trump vehemently denied Wilson’s characterization of the phone call, and the White House later claimed the president had called the families of every fallen military service member whose case had progressed through an internal review process.
After Trump quipped to a reporter on Tuesday that he should ask Kelly whether Obama called his family after the death of his son, Robert Kelly, in Afghanistan in 2010, critics accused the president of politicizing his chief of staff’s loss in order to attack Obama. Kelly’s silence for the next two days fed speculation that Trump had invoked Robert Kelly’s death against the wishes of his closest aide.
But Kelly’s emergence on Thursday to confirm and defend Trump’s statements may have erased concerns that the president had gone too far. The chief of staff received bipartisan praise for his handling of the emotional subject.
“I think General Kelly is the president’s best spokesman, not to take anything away from [press secretary] Sarah Sanders, who does a good job,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist. “He speaks with authority and with authenticity.”
Kelly clarified during his remarks on Thursday that while Obama did not call his family after his son was killed while serving with the Marines in the Helmand province in Afghanistan, he had never interpreted that as an insult.
“I can tell you that President Obama, who was my commander-in-chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family. That was not a criticism. That was just to simply say, I don’t believe President Obama called,” Kelly told reporters at the White House. “That’s not a negative thing. I don’t believe President Bush called in all cases. I don’t believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high — that presidents call. But I believe they all write.”
The retired general had harsh words for Wilson, however. Kelly noted he felt compelled to walk through Arlington Cemetery among the graves of fallen soldiers after the Florida Democrat embarked on a media tour this week to promote her description of Trump’s phone call to Myeshia Johnson, which she overheard while riding in a limousine with La David Johnson’s family.
“I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and broken-hearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the president of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion — that [La David Johnson is] a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There’s no reason to enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken,” Kelly said.
“It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me,” Kelly added.
Wilson, after Trump initially denied upsetting the widow, called the president a “sick man” and gave several television interviews in which she accused him of lying.
Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, said such overwrought criticism of Trump’s many controversies can ultimately help him among his supporters.
“Whether he initiates it or they come at him, the more his opponents come for his jugular, it reminds his voters why they voted for him,” O’Connell said.
As his party struggles to cobble together support for a budget, a tax reform package and a healthcare plan, Trump has spent weeks mired in controversies over cultural issues. He and his press secretary took aim at an ESPN host who called Trump a “white supremacist,” for example, and later waged war on the NFL for allowing players to protest racial inequality by kneeling during the national anthem. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly called on players to stand during the national anthem this week in a press conference many interpreted as a sign Trump’s pressure on the league had produced results.
Hopkins said the ESPN, NFL and Gold Star controversies have common threads, but that the first two came about after “calculation” from Trump while the latter “arose out of momentary instinct.”
“President Trump intentionally inserted himself into the controversy over football protests via Twitter without prior solicitation. It is likely that he sees his criticisms of the NFL and its players over the national anthem protests as a politically advantageous act because he has concluded, perhaps correctly, that most Americans — and, especially, most of his supporters — would take his side of the debate,” Hopkins said.
“The Gold Star issue, in contrast, originally rose out of an impromptu reporter’s question at a press conference, asking the president why he hadn’t commented on the military deaths in Niger. Here, it seems as if President Trump’s immediate instincts took over, which tend to lead him to defend himself by lashing out at political opponents like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, often making incorrect or unsubstantiated accusations in the process,” Hopkins added. “But the White House may not feel as if this particular issue plays to their advantage the way that the NFL debate does.”
