10/19/2017 / By JD Heyes
They say no good deed goes unpunished, but in the era of President Donald J. Trump, that’s simply no longer true.
As yet another manufactured brouhaha engulfs the president over what one Gold Star family and a Florida Democrat claim he said when he called to console them over their loss, another more heart-warming story involving the president was being politicized by none other than the Washington Post.
Recently Trump made a $25,000 donation to the family of a fallen soldier but has been nothing but criticized about it since.
As Lifezette reported, the WaPo published a story Wednesday about how Chris Baldridge, the father of U.S Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, was contacted by the president shortly after his son, who was 22, was murdered by an Afghan police officer June 10, along with two fellow soldiers.
Reports noted that Trump and the father spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes. The Post said that the grieving father told the commander-in-chief the worst part of his son’s death was that it was caused by someone who was supposed to be an ally.
“I said, ‘Me and my wife would rather our son died in trench warfare,’” the father told the paper. “I feel like he got murdered over there.”
Frankly, he did.
Then, Trump discovered that Dillon Baldridge’s ex-wife was going to get his $100,000 death benefit from the Pentagon (this is most likely due to Baldridge not taking his ex-wife off his will before deploying) and that his father and family actually needed money.
“That’s when Trump did something straight from the heart,” Lifezette reported.
“[Trump] 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 paper. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had recorded it 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.’”
However, the story diverges at this point.
The Post reports that the check never came and, as of Wednesday, had yet to arrive. Efforts by Lifezette to reach Chris Baldridge were not successful.
But when the Post and Lifezette contacted the White House communications department, officials there angrily defended the president and insisted that the check had indeed been sent.
“The check was sent,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters told the website in an email. “It’s disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the president, and using it to advance the media’s biased agenda.” (Related: Great again: Economy booming under Trump as Wall Street, consumer confidence SOAR.)
While Walters did not say how the money was sent or when, by early Wednesday evening the disgustingly dishonest Post and other media outlets were forced to “update” their stories. ABC News, for instance, posted a story early in the evening reporting how Chris Baldridge was indeed sent a check from the president.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, White House officials are ticked off that the Post and other “mainstream” media outlets are contacting the families of fallen soldiers just to find out whether or not Trump has personally contacted every one of them since he became president.
White House officials are also angry that the Post is attempting to delegitimize Trump’s heartfelt donation — one in which he sought no credit — for the purposes of politicizing it and ginning up additional angst.
The Post’s attack on Trump was just the latest proof of Left-wing media bias, one White House official told Lifezette.
Without a doubt.
J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: Baldridge, donation, Fact Check, fake news, Gold Star family, media bias, President Donald Trump, U.S. Army, WaPo, Washington Post, White House
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