With the political press in a volley of anonymous leaks and counterleaks about how Barack Obama did or did not console John Kelly after his son’s death, it’s important to reflect on how we got here—and what it shows about President Trump’s methods of controlling the media and the news cycle.

First, a brief timeline. On October 4, four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger, a country where the United States is not formally at war, and where American troops were supposedly in an advisory and training role. For 12 days, Trump said nothing about the deaths, even as he opined about plenty of other things. The White House was not forthcoming with information, either.

On Monday, Trump threw an impromptu press conference, and was asked about the deaths. “Why haven’t we heard anything from you so far about the soldiers that were killed in Niger? And what do you have to say about that?” a reporter asked.

Reading that question charitably, the reporter wanted to know both why the voluble Trump had been so quiet and also what had happened to the soldiers and why they were on patrol in Niger. But Trump took it only to have the first meaning, and as an affront. He reacted somewhat defensively, comparing himself—as he is wont to do—to previous presidents:

I’ve written them personal letters. They’ve been sent, or they’re going out tonight, but they were written during the weekend. I will, at some point during the period of time, call the parents and the families—because I have done that, traditionally. I felt very, very badly about that. I always feel badly. It’s the toughest—the toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens, soldiers are killed. It’s a very difficult thing. Now, it gets to a point where, you know, you make four or five of them in one day—it’s a very, very tough day. For me, that’s by far the toughest. So, the traditional way—if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it. They have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Aides to both Obama and George W. Bush reacted angrily, saying both men had taken many steps to console the families of slain service members. A few moments later, reporter Peter Alexander of NBC asked how Trump could claim Obama never called families, and Trump backed off, a little:

I don’t know if he did. No, no, no, I was told that he didn’t often. And a lot of presidents don’t; they write letters. I do a combination of both. Sometimes—it’s a very difficult thing to do, but I do a combination of both. 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—all I can do is ask my generals. Other presidents did not call. They’d write letters. And some presidents didn’t do anything. But I like the combination of—I like, when I can, the combination of a call and also a letter.

Trump’s claim that some presidents “didn’t do anything” appears to be bogus, but there’s also no indication that Obama called the family of every soldier, sailor, marine, or airman who died during his presidency (nor, for that matter, that Trump has done so). In anti-Trump precincts, there was immediate fury—first, that he had claimed that some presidents didn’t reach out to families at all, and second, that he’d turned the question of slain soldiers into a matter of oneupmanship with other presidents. Four Americans were dead, the president had golfed rather that attend the return of their coffins, and now here he was making it a political matter.