We begin today’s roundup with the continued attacks on Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson. First up, Amy Davidson Sorkin at The New Yorker:
There were two moments during her interview on “Good Morning America” when the expression of the face of Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, was transformed by a sudden smile. One came when George Stephanopoulos asked if it was true that she and La David—who was twenty-five when he died, three weeks ago, in Niger—had met when they were just six years old. “Yes, sir,” Johnson said. The other was when he mentioned that she was expecting her third child, a daughter, in January. Her oldest child is six now. Those are circumstances that could overwhelm anyone. But Johnson, throughout the six-and-a-half-minute interview, was steady, calm, and focussed on two goals: asking for answers about how her husband had died, and standing up to President Donald Trump, who, she said, when he called her, “couldn’t remember my husband’s name.” [...]
“He told me he had my husband’s report in front of him, and that’s when he actually said ‘La David,’ ” Johnson said. “I heard him stumbling on, trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt the most, because, if my husband is out there fighting for our country, why can’t you remember his name?”
The New York Times calls on John Kelly to apologize for his baseless claims about Representative Frederica Wilson:
Maybe he simply misremembered what happened that day; we all make mistakes. But a video of the event subsequently showed that Ms. Wilson had made none of the string of boasts that Mr. Kelly put in her mouth.
Did Mr. Kelly quickly acknowledge his errors? No. Instead, in the days since, he and the White House have added to his mistakes by refusing to correct them. All evidence to the contrary, they have continued to insist on Mr. Kelly’s false version, compounding the grief of the Johnson family, who laid Sergeant Johnson to rest on Saturday.
On Thursday, Mr. Kelly said that he was speaking up to defend “this maybe last thing that’s held sacred in our society” — the sacrifice of an American soldier’s life on the battlefield. This nation is in crying need of a demonstration of virtue in public life, and Mr. Kelly seemed until now like a man for the job. But he is not honoring Sergeant Johnson’s sacrifice by insisting on falsehoods and stretching out this sordid spectacle.
Roger Cohen takes on the topic of President Trump’s deferments:
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, picked up on those foot issues in a C-Span interview the other day. McCain, who is fighting brain cancer, said of the conflict: “We drafted the lowest income level of America, and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur.”
That would be Trump, the coward who gets his testosterone kick from nuclear brinkmanship. [...] When a draft-evading bone-spur bozo takes on a man of character who put his life on the line for his country and knows what the United States means to the world, the result can only be ugly. Trump will look very small. He will look smaller than his fingers, as small as his spite. No puffed-up chest, no jutting upraised chin will be able to conceal the zero at his heart.
Turning to tax reform, Paul Waldman highlights the administration lie that the Americans will see “on average” $4,000 more in their pockets:
How would you like it if I gave you $4,000? Sounds good, right? Now how about if I told you I want to give you $4,000, but instead of giving it to you I'm actually going to give a whole lot of money (way more than $4,000, let me tell you) to a bunch of corporations that are already making near-record profits? And then when you ask, "Hey, where's my $4,000?", I'll say, "Oh, you'll get it. Someday."
That's the bait-and-switch Republicans are trying to pull right now. They've decided that if they just repeat the number "$4,000" over and over, they can get the public to sign on to a corporate tax cut that will — and you might want to brace yourself for some bad news — not actually give you $4,000.
And on a final note, here’s Jonathan Chait’s take on the president personally interviewing candidates for US attorney and meddling in other areas where he should not be using his influence:
Republicans have blithely dismissed Trump’s decision to continue such behavior with U.S. attorneys. “He’s the president of the United States who picks these people, so he’s going to get blamed (by Democrats) no matter what he does. So I think it’s a good thing that he’s willing to interview these people,” Senator Orrin Hatch tells CNN. “It’s kind of an extension of The Apprentice, I guess,” adds a chipper Senator Lindsey Graham.
Well, yes, it is like an extension of The Apprentice. But The Apprentice depicted Trump as the all-knowing and all-powerful head of an organization designed to serve his own needs. It did not depict the give-and-take of a republican form of government premised on the consent of the people. Maybe Republicans ought to consider the possibility that a president who acts this way is bad, and they should stop him.