Email Exchange Proves Trump Was Lying About Contacting Gold Star Families

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President Donald Trump said on Oct. 17 that he had contacted “virtually everybody” that had lost a loved one in the military since he was inaugurated. Now, make sure you’re sitting down for this, but it turns out that Trump was lying.

And now, we have an email exchange that proves it. Roll Call obtained an email exchange between the White House and the office of the Defense secretary. The email, sent mere hours after Trump’s pronouncement on Fox News Radio, asked for the list of all information on surviving family members of all service members killed after Trump took office.

From Roll Call:

Since then, the Associated Press contacted 20 families and found that half had not heard from Trump. It is not clear how many of the families that have heard from the president received the calls this week, since the controversy over his contacts with military families erupted. It is not clear when the White House first asked for data on Gold Star families, but it is clear that the answers had not been provided before Tuesday.

So Trump lied, but the interesting thing about the email is that it shows White House officials scrambling to back up some bullshit that Trump obviously made up on the spot. The Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had to use really noncommittal language, saying that the president had “made contact” with the families, which does not mean that Trump called them. They’re desperately trying to get all the information about these families who Trump can’t be bothered to contact to fix a problem that Trump caused.