Seething over questions about his lack of outreach to the families of four U.S. soldiers who were killed in Niger, President Donald Trump has spent the past two days obfuscating the issue by slandering past presidents and attacking the media, culminating in an ugly public spat with the mother of Sergeant La David Johnson, who died in action earlier this month. Accused by Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of having told Johnson’s widow that her husband “must have known what he signed up for,” Trump struck back on Twitter Wednesday morning, calling Wilson a liar and implying that he had taped the call. Hours later, Johnson’s mother confirmed Wilson’s account of the conversation, telling The Washington Post that Trump “did disrespect my son.”

Asked about the back-and-forth during a White House briefing Wednesday afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the media a “disgrace” and described Wilson as “disgusting” for raising an issue with the president’s tone. Calling the widow, she said, was an “act of kindness.” But Trump’s reflexive posturing about his superior capacity for empathy seems to have proved his critics’ points. Interrogated on Monday about why he had not publicly commented on the attack in Niger, Trump’s immediate response was to deflect attention by falsely suggesting that Barack Obama had done a worse job of consoling the family members of fallen soldiers. “I don't know if he did,” Trump said of his predecessor. “I was told that he didn't often, and a lot of presidents don't. They write letters. I do, I do a combination of both," Trump said, of writing letters and making phone calls. Elaborating on the topic in an interview with Fox News Radio, the president proposed that reporters reach out to John Kelly to ask whether Obama contacted him after his own son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. “As far as other presidents, I don't know, you could ask General Kelly,” Trump said, dragging his chief of staff’s private grief into the spotlight. “Did he get a call from Obama? I don't know what Obama’s policy was.” (Kelly has not commented on the situation.)

Trump’s remarks were met with shocked incredulity. “This is an outrageous and disrespectful lie even by Trump standards,” Benjamin Rhodes, one of Obama’s former deputy national security advisers, posted on Twitter. But on Tuesday, the criticism boiled over when Wilson said during an interview with CNN that Trump made insensitive comments to Johnson’s widow, parts of which she heard over speaker phone. According to Wilson, the president told Myeshia Johnson, “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.” “She was crying the whole time, and when she hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, ‘He didn’t even remember his name.’ That’s the hurting part,” Wilson said during a follow-up interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.

Trump pushed back on Twitter, arguing that the Florida congresswoman “fabricated” her retelling of his exchange with Johnson’s widow and saying he had “proof” of it. He later doubled down, telling a reporter, “I didn't say what that congresswoman said; didn't say it all. She knows it,” the Post reports. “I had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife who was—sounded like a lovely woman. Did not say what the congresswoman said, and most people aren’t too surprised to hear that.”

Trump’s handlers might have anticipated that this would be a public relations nightmare without any opportunity for victory. Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, subsequently backed Wilson’s version of the story, telling the Post via Facebook Messenger that “President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.” The White House did not dispute either claim, but said in a statement, “The President’s conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice are private.”

While it is hard to imagine his predecessors instigating such a vile dispute, Trump’s feud with Wilson fits a broader pattern. Trump incited a wave of criticism during the 2016 election when he attacked the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in the line of duty. Days after taking office, when an operation he authorized in Yemen went awry, resulting in the death of U.S. Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, Trump blamed the previous administration and his own military generals. “This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do,” he said during an interview with Fox & Friends shortly after the botched raid. Now, with Trump once again shirking his responsibilities as commander in chief, his behavior is raising new questions about his fitness. Grappling with military tragedies, both publicly and privately, is one of the president’s most somber and sacred duties. That Trump would fail so spectacularly to take the job seriously suggests a moral vacuum that no amount of White House spin can paper over.