We should be honoring their lives and the sacrifices they made and comforting their families with carefully constructed statements that won't upset them.
But here we are.
In the wake of the loss of four Green Berets in Nigeria, the focus has shifted to — you guessed it — Donald Trump, who, despite past disparagement of the family of a fallen soldier and of Sen. John McCain for being a prisoner of war aaand saying he knows more than the generals because he has the best brain or whatever, is super popular among members of the military.
The latest: according to South Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a Democrat who was with the family of Sgt. La David T. Johnson when President Trump called to offer "condolences," Trump said that Johnson, by becoming a totally badass Green Beret who did the opposite of lying about having bone spurs to avoid military service, "must have known what he was getting into," a comment Johnson's mother later corroborated.
Trump, as Trump does, called Wilson a liar. Wilson stood her ground.
Since they are both politicians, common sense suggests that one or both of them is/are lying.
So we paid a visit to our friends at Politifact to determine which of the two has a more… liberal interpretation of the concept of truth.
You know where this is going.
Granted, the sample size for Politifact analyses of Wilson claims is literally a very tiny fraction of their voluminous record on Trump — like less than one percent of the amount of Trump claims they've fact-checked.
They've analyzed a grand total of four of her claims. Meanwhile, they've got some 461 files on Trump.
But even with that in mind, Trump's proportion of honesty-free statements dwarfs that of Wilson.
Wilson's four statements: a Mostly True statement about her successful efforts to close a South Florida airport tower (2013); an anecdote rated True about stopping a proposed garbage processing plant across from the school where she served as principal (2011); this Half True rating of her claim about hats on the House Floor (she does sure love her hats) (2010); and a True-rated statement on her having introduced a proposed ban on "dirty dancing" (2010).
Again, small sample size, but that's a pretty good scorecard for a politician.
As for Trump, a whopping 319 of the statements of his Politifact has analyzed were rated Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. The biggest ratings category for him is False (151).
Of course, avid Trump supporters whose heads haven't exploded by now (sup comments section; you know I don't read you, right?) will try to tell you that Politifact is an instrument of the far-left something something and not just experienced fact-checkers who know what the hell they're doing.
Because that's where we are now.
This article appears in Oct 12-19, 2017.