Trump almost immediately replied
You know, if Trump actually intended his phone call to Myeshia Johnson to be consoling, as opposed to intending it as the performance of an irksome duty, then he would not now be brawling with her. He just wouldn’t. The intention to console or attempt to console or send a heartfelt message of intending to console would make subsequent brawling simply out of the question. Her grief would blot out his ego concerns, and that would be that.
So from his behavior now we can conclude that he never meant any genuine sympathy or kindness by the call, and that he was simply ticking off another presidential task that he doesn’t relish.
Chris Cillizza makes a similar point.
As difficult as it is emotionally, it is just as simple politically speaking. You call — or write — expressing deepest sympathies and condolences. You offer any assistance you can. The end.On Monday, in an interview with “Good Morning America,” Johnson, the widow of slain Sgt. La David Johnson, spoke for the first time in public about her phone call with Trump. She confirmed Wilson’s account that Trump had told her that her husband “knew what he was getting into” and added: “It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn’t remember my husband’s name.”To which Trump almost immediately replied via Twitter: “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!”
It’s staggering to consider what Trump is doing here.
After spending the weekend attacking Wilson for allegedly lying about the nature of the call between himself and Johnson — even though White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed last week the basics of Wilson’s account of the words Trump used — the President is now suggesting that the widow of a soldier killed in action is lying.
And why? Because his attention is all on himself, and not at all on Johnson.
Here’s the thing: It is absolutely possible that, at root, this is all one big misunderstanding. Trump, awkward and unfamiliar with the empathy required to make this sort of call, came across as callous and uncaring to Johnson and Wilson in an entirely unintentional way. They were offended.
At that point, Trump could have made much — maybe all — of this go away by simply calling Myeshia Johnson back and saying something along these lines: “I’m so sorry our previous call made you upset. I struggle with every death of an American soldier and I simply am not great all the time at conveying how much your loss means to me and the country.”
Could have, but never would have in a million years. It’s not in him.
Maybe we should all be sending him letters of condolence. “We’re so sorry – it must be a nightmare having no empathy for any other human beings at all. It must be so stifling and empty to be stuck with only your own ego for your whole life. We can’t imagine anything worse, ourselves.”
“Her grief would blot out his ego concerns…”
The sun going nova would not blot out his ego concerns.
Not “awkward”. Not “unfamiliar with empathy.” No. That’s exactly the wrong thing to say, Cillizza.
Sociopathic. Pathologically narcissistic. Soulless and INCAPABLE OF HUMAN EMPATHY.
Where have we heard “awkward” before? Oh, I know. About every single man who ever harassed a woman.
Also better than what he’s doing now: Stop talking about it. You screwed up. Or she misheard. Or she’s lying. Whatever happened, you are acting disgracefully.
It’s the “without hesitation” that really sells it. It’s that extra touch that tells you he can’t possibly be lying — he even remembers little details like the smooth, fluent way he said that name. Others might forget it, or find it hard to pronounce (not being a “normal” name and all), but this man remembers how it tripped lightly off his tongue.
Ahem. Not to anyone who, prior the 2016 presidential election, devoted at least equal time to consideration of Donald Trump’s character, as to Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Yes, I was just trying to imagine Clinton making that call. I have a very good imagination (sort of a plus for a writer) and I couldn’t imagine her being so callous. Nor her husband, and former pres, Bill Clinton. Certainly not Obama, either Bush, or Reagan. In fact, I can’t imagine R. M. Nixon making a call that inappropriate, and he had a lot of problems himself, and a rather large ego (which looks tiny compared to Trump).
Even if Trump were wholly in the right here; even if Wilson were being mischievous (she wasn’t); even if the soldiers family in their grief misinterpreted or misremembered his words – there is nothing to be gained on any plane, moral, ethical or legal, to him acting this way. Other Presidents have known when to make a sympathetic or non-committal closing remark in such circumstances and move on.
Trump? No. He has to prove himself right using nothing but the force of his will as expressed through fucking Twitter.
Taking slings and arrows is what presidents DO. These folks all put Obama through the wringer on the daily, and they can’t remember it…or didn’t think he was legitimate, so that made it okay. But now they can’t take the scrutiny. Poor babies.
Also, furthermore, Cillizza delenda est.
“Semper Me”
What I find particularly telling is Trump’s tweeted claim that Wilson listened into the call in “SECRET”. What’s pissing him off – as usual – is the fact that he got caught. That’s why he’s attacking Wilson, he’s convinced himself that she was in the wrong for listening to the call. He has a pathological need to turn people he doesn’t like into villains, usually by the laziest possible route (fake news, wacky, crooked).
The fact that there were surely many people listening in SECRET at Trump’s end of the line presumably doesn’t count. Personally, I’d have thought that unannounced strangers intruding on a woman’s grief would be rather worse than an invited person listening to a call deliberately put on speaker, but then I wouldn’t have taken the call in the first place.
Besides, why is he objecting to a SECRET person being present? Surely he’s saying he’d have said something differently if he knew someone was listening? Isn’t that even worse?
The ‘he knew the job was dangerous’ line is actually quite similar to what Wilson said about FBI agents facing the risk of death in the course of their duties. Its a canned sentiment that he may have been coached to say. But he’s so empty of actual emotion that he couldn’t pull off a simple platitude without showing his real face. Wilson’s focus was on people other than herself. It makes all the difference.