Gold Star Widow: Trump Didn't Call Me
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper countered President Donald Trump’s claim that he has called “every family” of fallen U.S. military members on Wednesday night by interviewing a Gold Star widow who claims she received no such call.
Whitney Hunter, whose husband Jonathon Michael Hunter died in a car bomb attack in Afghanistan in August, told Cooper: “I didn’t receive a phone call. I was told that I would, but I didn’t.”
“I was meeting with my casualty officer at the time. He bolted out and came back in and said, ‘It was the White House [calling].’ They were letting him know to tell me the president would be reaching out to share his condolences with me,” said Hunter. “Of course, I waited but I never got the phone call.”
Hunter told Cooper that she did not receive a “personalized letter” from Trump either.
The widow said that it would have been an “honor to receive a phone call from the president, to have him set aside a few minutes to express his gratitude toward Jonathon’s sacrifice for our nation.” However, she said, “it wouldn’t have made a difference at the time, either way.”
Hunter said that she did meet Vice President Mike Pence and “he’s such an amazing man.”
“He spent 10 to 20 minutes with us. He was a very genuine, nice, courteous...I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to meet him,” Hunter said.
Trump is under fire this week for claiming on Monday that he has personally reached out to all the families of military men and women killed while in service. He also insinuated that other presidents, namely President Barack Obama, did not do this.
On Tuesday, Trump politicized the death of his White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly’s son, who died in Afghanistan in 2010, telling a Fox News Radio host: “You could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?”
Trump is also embroiled in a battle of he said, she said, with the family of U.S. soldier La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger earlier in October.
Florida congresswoman Frederica Wilson claimed that during a phone call with Johnson’s widow Trump said the soldier “knew what he signed up for.” Trump strenuously denied he used those words on Twitter and again to the White House press on Wednesday.
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