Trump Offered Family Of Killed Soldier $25,000 And Didn’t Follow Through: Report

UPDATE: Thursday , Oct. 19, 2017 at 9:24 a.m. EDT:

The White House confirms it sent the check out as the Washington Post was reporting the story. The check was sent out Wednesday, the same day the story came out, according to CNN.

Original Story:

President Donald Trump created a controversy around his protocol of calling the grieving families of fallen soldiers this week and One family said that Trump offered $25,000 from his personal account and never followed through.

Trump in an impromptu press conference Monday suggested that he was one of the few presidents that called the families of soldiers killed in action. He intimated that previous presidents, Barack Obama specifically, didn’t reach out to families as much as he did. Trump had taken flak for taking too long to make a public statement about the four U.S. soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger on October 4.

“[I’ve] called every family of somebody that’s died, and it’s the hardest call to make,” said Trump Monday. “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls … a lot of them didn’t make calls.”

Follow up reporting by a number of outlets show that he hasn’t called every family and that when he did, it didn't always go well.

Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, 22, was killed in action June 10 in a suspected insider attack in Afghanistan. His father, Chris Baldridge, of Zebulon, North Carolina, told the Washington Post Wednesday that Trump offered his family a $25,000 check when his wife told the president that they were having trouble getting their son’s survivor benefit package.

“He said, ‘I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,’ and I was just floored,” Chris Baldridge told the Post. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other president has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.’”

Chris Baldridge said that he did get a letter from the White House, but no check.

“I opened it up and read it, and I was hoping to see a check in there, to be honest,” the father told the Post. “I know it was kind of far-fetched thinking. But I was like, ‘Damn, no check.’ Just a letter saying ‘I’m sorry.’”

Trump got into a Twitter battle Wednesday with Democratic Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida over his comments to the family of Sgt. La David Johnson. The congresswoman said the comments were disrespectful. Trump said that the man “must have known what he signed up for.”

Johnson’s mother also called the president’s comments disrespectful.

“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” said the soldier’s mother Cowanda Jones-Johnson to the Post.

Trump denied that he said those words.

The Washington Post contacted 13 families of the 20 soldiers killed and said about half of them did not hear from the president. Some were pleased to have gotten the call and said that they were touched by his comments.

The Associated Press spoke to the families of three soldiers who were killed and haven’t heard from the president by phone or by mail.

Sheila Murphy, whose son Army Spc. Etienne J. Murphy was killed in Syria on May 26, ended up writing the president when she didn’t hear from him.

“It wasn’t a mean letter,” she told the AP. “I was telling him I know he’s a grandfather. I told him I’m trying to be here for my grandkids, but some days I don’t want to live.”