‘Some Days I Don’t Want to Live’ Soldier’s Grieving Mother Wrote to Trump, Who Never Bothered to Contact Her Family

Trump Never Contacted Parents or Widow of 22 Year Old Despite Being Told They Would Receive a Letter

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, “I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died.” But just hours later he was proven wrong. 

Trump’s remarks came after he admitted on Monday he had neither called not sent letters to the families of the four service members who were killed in action in Niger two weeks ago. 

“After her Army son died in an armored vehicle rollover in Syria in May, Sheila Murphy says, she got no call or letter from President Donald Trump, even as she waited months for his condolences, wrote to him to say ‘some days I don’t want to live,’ and still heard nothing,” the Associated Press reports. 

Army Spc. Etienne J. Murphy, 22, of Snellville in metropolitan Atlanta, died May 26 after an armored vehicle he was in rolled over in Syria. No letter or phone call came from Trump to the parents or his widow.

“Because it was non-combat, I feel like maybe he thought it was an accident, it doesn’t matter,” said Sheila Murphy, his mother. “But my son was in Syria.”

She said the Army casualty assistance officer assigned to her family told her a letter would be coming from the White House. Nearly five months later, she said, no letter has arrived. She said she finally wrote a letter to Trump about six weeks ago, to tell him she and her husband still suffer from deep grief, but there’s been no reply.

“It wasn’t a mean letter,” she said. “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.”

The Associated Press adds that it “found relatives of two soldiers who died overseas during Trump’s presidency who said they never received a call or a letter from him, as well as relatives of a third who did not get a call. And proof is plentiful that Barack Obama and George W. Bush — saddled with far more combat casualties than the roughly two dozen so far under Trump, took painstaking steps to write, call or meet bereaved military families.”

Trump late Tuesday afternoon did call Myeshia Johnson, the widow of one of the four service members killed in Niger. He told her “he knew what he signed up for,” according to a Democratic Congresswoman who was in the car. He also, Rep. Frederica Wilson said, forgot the name of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson. Trump denies that account.

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