Who Do You Believe Here: Trump or a War Widow?

President Trump is lying.


What may have begun as an earnest mistake from President Trump has snowballed into a shameful scandal of his own doing. When the president told Myeshia Johnson, widow to fallen soldier La David Johnson, that her husband "knew what he signed up for" in a condolence call, the remark could've been chalked up to a bit of tactlessness.

But in the days since, Trump has railed against a congresswoman's account, saying it was "fabricated"—even after Johnson's mother backed it up—and lied about how Rep. Frederica Wilson knew about what was said. (She did not listen in on a private call, it was on speakerphone.) The Trump administration has smeared Wilson from the White House podium, and when Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, was exposed for having fabricated details of a speech Wilson gave, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders implied the press had no right to question the word of a general.

Because it is the Trump administration, where apologies and admissions of error are physically impossible, the controversy will drag on. It will also inevitably escalate. Today, Myeshia Johnson joined Good Morning America to offer her version of events. She emphatically refuted the president's account, backed Rep. Wilson's, and generally told a story of an administration that bungled the aftermath of four soldiers' deaths in Niger far beyond Trump's misstep in a condolence call.

It is clear now that Trump not only told Johnson her husband "knew what he signed up for," but he then lied about it afterwards and attacked a sitting congresswoman as "whacky" without justification. He also enlisted his press secretary to misrepresent it, and even positioned his chief of staff—whose own son was killed in combat in Afghanistan—as a shield from the truth.

Meanwhile, the president has essentially doubled down on calling people liars, including the widow of a soldier killed in action less than a month ago:

All those who pilloried the NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem, (inaccurately) calling it a sign of disrespect towards the troops, must be proud to support the president in this moment.

But Johnson's words here also offer a window into the deeper questions of this incident. Trump offered no public comment on the October 4 deaths of four military servicemen in Niger until he was pressed on the incident by the media last week. He seemed to panic at a press conference and started making wild claims about how his predecessors didn't make condolence calls, but he makes the most beautiful condolence calls, like nothing you've ever seen. (Previous presidents made condolence calls.) But Johnson indicated the silence and the lack of answers did not just pervade in public. She has still received very few herself.

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What exactly happened here? Why did it take 48 hours for the military to recover her husband's body? And why can't they tell her anything more about how her husband was killed? Why did his group go into what was ultimately an ambush in armor-less pickup trucks with no air support? Why was their only backup from French forces who were not authorized to engage?

Time will tell if this presidential disaster has deeper roots. Surely we can trust the Republicans in Congress, who were so concerned with the events in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's supposed role in them, to find out. In the meantime, Myeshia Johnson isn't the only voice joining the chorus against the president over his record on the value of military service.

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