Wednesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics,” network contributor Mary Katharine Ham said as a recent widow she was “bothered” by those claiming the widow of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, Carryn Owens, was “only a political prop” at President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

Ham said “I don’t know Mrs. Owens but I was bothered by the suggestion that she was only a political prop or she was only exploited. And it seemed to take away the agency from this obviously very tough woman. I know many families of the fallen. I know she and her family know the price of freedom more than I ever will. I was also widowed in 2015. He was not military, but I have two young children. She was there of her own volition.”

“She made a decision and she very well may have been there because she knew she would stand up and her husband, a hero, would get a hero’s standing ovation, that the entire nation would know his name, that the president would be honoring him and the entire Congress and years from now she can show that to her children, as it should be,” she continued. “And so I don’t want to take that away from her when we discuss this. Yes, it’s a Washington event, but let ourselves have that moment, let yourself have that moment, because it was really human, whether or not there were politicians involved. It was beautiful.”

(h/t Mediaite)

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