"He knew what he was getting into"

This is Sgt. LaDavid Johnson.  He and three other US Army soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger almost two weeks ago while assisting in the fight against Boko Haram.  Yesterday, while his widow Myeshia was on her way to Miami International Airport to receive his body, she finally got a call from his commander-in-chief, who told her, "He knew what he was getting into," but it's sad anyway.  The call was on speaker and was heard by her mother-in-law, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, and by her Congresswoman, Frederica Wilson.  The caller denies he uttered these callous words and accuses Rep. Wilson of lying and being a Democrat.  Mrs. Johnson says, "He didn't even remember his name."

It gets better, or worse.  The c-i-c whined that he had been misquoted and would soon prove it with a "tape," like the non-existent tape of the Comey conversation.  He accused Wilson of "politicizing" Sgt. Johnson's death.  One of his flunkeys was dispatched to point out that calling widows is not even in the presidential job description, so they should just be grateful.  In perhaps the most monumental lie of October 17, he insisted that neither Obama nor Bush had ever spoken to the families of dead service people, especially Gen. John Kelly, whose son died in Afghanistan.  Lies like this are easy to disprove, and most of the media spent most of the day disproving it, when they weren't bringing us the latest in Weinstein.

In fairness, it has been busy-time at the White House.  At four this morning, Trump was already (or still) awake and tweeting about the kneeling football player outrage.  John McCain had made a speech attacking "half-baked nationalism" and denouncing the antics of the blood-and-soil boys in Charlottesville, so McCain had to be pre-threatened:  "At some point I will fight back and it won't be pretty."  (No doubt the ex-inmate of the Hanoi Hilton trembled all over when he read that.  Then he went back to fighting aggressive brain cancer.)  The latest version of the Muslim-North Korean-Venezuelan travel ban was overruled by another federal judge in Hawaii, which is an island surrounded by water but also a state.  Unlike Puerto Rico, where the desperate are using water from wells in a Superfund site and living in houses contaminated with mold.  Up on Capitol Hill Jeff "Poison Dwarf" Sessions spent most of the day lying about his earlier lies concerning meetings with Russian operatives during the campaign and pronouncing himself "insulted, suh!" when Al Franken tried to pin him down.  In an earlier era, this was called "perjury."  It was something attorneys general prosecuted rather than committed.  Good times.

I have to take a break.  There's a Gofundme raising money to put Sgt. Johnson's two children, and a third soon to be born, through college.  Give them some.