THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It should be expected that you will say things like, "He knew what he signed up for". When you are the president much more is expected of you, not the least being someone to show you how to do it right. Not that Donald Dinkydick would have listened.

People trying to express sympathy to the families of fallen troops say the wrong thing all the time. When Marine First Lt. Travis Manion was killed by sniper fire during the Iraq troop surge in 2007, one well-wisher told his family that it was “such a waste.” Another called it a shame for him “to die in vain like that.”

But usually, such comments do not come from the president. Asked amid an outcry over President Trump’s telling a soldier’s widow that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” families of slain troops described on Wednesday a range of encounters with him and his six immediate predecessors, from sympathy and sincerity — including from Mr. Trump — to awkward distances.

Mr. Trump has denied making the comment, which was described by both the mother of the soldier and Representative Frederica S. Wilson, Democrat of Florida, who was present for the call. Mr. Trump spoke to Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, killed in an ambush in Niger this month, as she was being taken to receive her husband’s body, according to his mother.

Several military families whose loved ones were killed this year did describe phone calls from Mr. Trump that they said gave them solace. Another spoke of a promised call from him that never came. Together, the episodes underscore one of the most difficult duties of a president — comforting family members of Americans killed carrying out the orders of a commander in chief.

“I picture myself in that limo — the last thing you’d want to hear is something like that,” said Nadia McCaffrey, whose only child, Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, was killed in an ambush in Iraq in 2004. She was furious with President George W. Bush after her son was killed, she said, and refused to take calls from the White House.

Families of slain service members who have had exchanges with past presidents decried the timing of Mr. Trump’s phone call, which they said came at what was most likely one of Mrs. Johnson’s most vulnerable moments. And while a number of relatives said they were subject to verbal punches dressed up as sympathy, none came from the presidents who sent their sons and daughters to war.

Given Trump's heartfelt lack of sympathy for any creature not himself, one would think his phone calls would be tightly scripted to avoid these problems. Then again they do make excellent distractions from the normal havoc he is wreaking in DC.