Respect for military, honor for fallen starts with President Trump

Few American traditions are as honorable as the reverence our citizens have historically shown for our fallen warriors — the men and women who die while defending our nation. In San Diego, home to a large military community and the Fort Rosecrans and Miramar federal military cemeteries, this respect is deeply held and reassuring. San Diegans naturally understand and appreciate the sacrifices faced and made by those in service to our nation.

Given this backdrop, it’s been excruciating to see President Donald Trump politicize the question of how the commander in chief deals with families of the fallen. Asked Monday about his choosing not to comment on the deaths of four Special Forces soldiers Oct. 4 in Niger, Trump responded by asserting he had done a better job of comforting grieving families than President Barack Obama and his other predecessors. Trump said that since taking office, he had called virtually every family of military members who have died in defense of their country and suggested that White House chief of staff John Kelly did not get a call from Obama in 2010 when his son, 1st Lt. Robert M. Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan.

The president’s remarks led to a contretemps that has built all week. Incensed Obama administration officials cited all the last president had done to pay respects to the families of the dead. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Florida, blasted Trump for insensitive comments he had allegedly made to the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was among those killed in Niger. Trump denied the allegation. But the mother of the slain soldier, who along with Wilson listened to Trump’s call on a speakerphone, also said that the president told Myeshia Johnson that her husband “must have known what he signed up for.”

This, in turn, led Kelly, a retired four-star general, on Thursday to blast Wilson, to confirm that Obama had not called him after his son’s death — but not fault Obama for that decision — and to defend Trump’s handling of condolences. This came a day after an Associated Press investigation showed that the president had not called all the families of the fallen as he claimed, and two days after a Politifact report found no evidence to support the idea other presidents did less than Trump in offering support.

What a painful and unnecessary distraction. What an easily avoided mess. What a debacle. Trump has attacked NFL players as unpatriotic and disrespectful for weeks for kneeling during the pregame national anthem to protest police brutality and racism. What is patriotic or respectful about making a partisan battlefield out of how presidents honor our war dead? How does this help America? How does it help members of the military?

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has long been critical of Trump. Yet like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco, we have not given up hope that he will grasp how counterproductive his belittling and belligerence is. There is a recent example of a president who started out wobbly — Bill Clinton — then grew more surefooted with his governance each passing year.

But the problem with the 45th president goes well beyond governance. Trump’s rhetoric creates pain and division. He blithely picks at societal scabs and rubs them raw. He’s shown no willingness or ability to change. And now our fallen warriors are his focus.

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