Sometimes it feels almost quaint to point out that the president just said something completely false. This is not one of those times, because President Trump just delivered one of the more grotesque fabrications in recent memory and it should not be allowed to stand. Going off the cuff at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden with Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, Trump made the absolutely staggering claim that President Obama—and unnamed "others" among his presidential predecessors—did not call the families of American soldiers who fell in combat while they were commander-in-chief.

They merely sent letters, according to President Trump, but President Trump goes above and beyond them and makes phone calls. That's according to President Trump, anyway, who is wrong.

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Trump, falsely, claims President Obama and other former President didn't make calls to bereaved families of service members who died. pic.twitter.com/FqWbxdkdFD — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 16, 2017

Here was the response from President Obama's former deputy chief of staff:

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that's a fucking lie. to say president obama (or past presidents) didn't call the family members of soldiers KIA - he's a deranged animal. — alyssa GrudgePAC mastromonaco (@AlyssaMastro44) October 16, 2017

It's hard to blame Mastromonaco for her anger. It's almost certain that, in her former role so close to the president, she witnessed any number of calls he made to the families of fallen soldiers. She would have been exposed first-hand to the pain and tragedy of making those calls. Trump acknowledged how tough that part of the job is today. It would cut any of us much more deeply to have witnessed that and then hear a subsequent president say it never happened.

The immediate question was whether Trump knew his predecessors called families and was lying anyway, or more likely, that he was just saying things. When a reporter followed up, according to TPM, Trump clearly implied it was the latter:



“I don’t know if he did. No, no. I was told that he didn’t often and a lot of presidents don’t. They write letters,” Trump said. “President Obama I think probably did sometimes and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told. All I can do is ask my generals,” the President continued. “Other presidents did not call. They’d write letters and some presidents didn’t do anything.”

Once again, Trump used the term "my generals," a strongman characterization of his relationship to commanders of the national military. Trump clearly admitted that he was just throwing it out there that President Obama didn't call the families of those killed serving their country. Like at his rallies, he was testing a line to see if it would stick. It didn't because it was challenged, so he backtracked. Not once did the president consider the truth or reality of the situation, because to Donald Trump, the truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. Still, that Trump is aware of how difficult the calls are but still willing to make wild claims about whether his predecessors made them is simply staggering.

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Not once did he specify a single other president to whom he was referring. Who merely wrote letters? Who "didn't do anything"? Which of his fellow commanders-in-chief is he accusing of being cavalier towards the death of military servicemen and women? It doesn't seem to matter. The president is up there at the podium with the presidential seal, in the Rose Garden, and he's saying things.

Trump and McConnell kicked this whole thing off by assuring everyone that they really like each other quite a bit. They're great friends, they have been for a long time, and they're getting things done. This was obvious from the body language:

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Sometimes you just can't even pretend. pic.twitter.com/qc16YP4aBt — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 16, 2017

The main piece of evidence was their record on judicial appointments. It's actually a pretty good case. (It's certainly a better case than they can make on major legislation, of which there has been none. That's after every disastrous version of the final act of the seven-year Republican performance art piece, Repeal and Replace Obamacare, was shot down in Congress amid huge public outcry.) The centerpiece of all this judicial winning is of course the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. This was characterized as the great Republican victory since the president's Most Watched Inauguration Ever in January. Gorsuch was confirmed in April—six months ago.

But it's not just Gorsuch, Trump happily told us. It's people up and down the judicial system, and there would be even more if it weren't for those darn Democrats.

Something that people aren't talking about is how many judges we've had approved, whether it be the court of appeals, circuit judges, whether it be district judges. We have tremendous, right now, under review. The Democrats are holding them up beyond anything—beyond comprehension they're holding them up. I mean frankly, they have terrible, terrible policy. Terrible policy. And perhaps they're not even good politicians, but they are good at obstruction. So I looked at some of these numbers, between the judges—and I want to say that we will set records in terms of the number of judges...I think it's one of the great unsung things of this administration.

It is beyond the scope of any traditional measure of hypocrisy for any member of the Republican Party to complain about obstructionism. The scale is broken from when Mitch McConnell threw his entire caucus on top of it during President Obama's tenure.

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McConnell waged an unprecedented campaign of obstruction for eight years, one he made explicitly clear in 2010, when he said, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." This applied specifically to judicial nominees: For all the presidents before Barack Obama that Politifact examined, the Senate blocked 68 judicial nominees. During Obama's term, the Senate blocked 79—often as Republicans, led by McConnell, abused the filibuster to prevent candidates getting a confirmation vote.

And just as Gorsuch is the centerpiece of the Republican judicial winning, he is also the culmination of their campaign of obstruction. McConnell refused to hold a vote for Obama's nominee to fill the seat left after Antonin Scalia's death in February, Merrick Garland, for most of a year until Trump won the election in November. It was once again unprecedented, despite the made-up excuses—including the so-called "Biden Rule"—McConnell produced to try to justify it. Republicans also shut down the government in a tantrum over their inability to repeal Obamacare while Obama was still president, and played a leading role in creating a Congress that was characterized, at various points, as the least productive in history. They were rewarded with both houses and the White House.

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A bit later, Trump struck on why he and McConnell work so well on judges, which McConnell has called a major priority.

The judge story is an untold story, nobody wants to talk about it. But when you think about it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out. Depending on the age of the judge.

And there's where they really are winning. Neil Gorsuch and his ideological clones up and down the federal system will be interpreting the law for decades. McConnell, in his remarks today, called them conservatives because they interpret the law as it is, rather than as they believe it should be. That's debatable. In practice, this will almost certainly lead to deregulation, insufficient protections for minorities, women, and LGBT people, and the subjugation of employees' interests to those of employers, particularly big business. Some of them are, shall we say, uniquely special. You can't say McConnell doesn't have his particular set of priorities straight: He is delivering the mega-donors some of what they really want from this administration.

When it was all done, it was time for these spritely young BFFs to take on an enemy nearly as big as Obama or Chuck Schumer: the stairs.

The president in particular has fought more than a few battles there. You can watch the whole Rose Garden episode below, if you're a fan of the Marquis de Sade.

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Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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