Trump's response to the death of US special forces in Niger shows how low he's willing to sink

In 2012 Trump declared that Benghazi was bigger than Watergate. 'Don’t let Obama get away with allowing Americans to die,' he tweeted on the eve of that year’s presidential vote. 'Kick him out of office tomorrow'

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton participate in a return ceremony of victims of the Benghazi attack of 2012 (Reuters)

On a London stage the other night, Hillary Clinton acknowledged that her use of a private email server while Secretary of State was “a very dumb mistake”. But then she added that what it spawned was “an even dumber scandal.”

Her despair is surely more acute now that Jared Kushner has been rumbled doing exactly the same, as adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump.

Oh well. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to excuse missteps of the old regime just because the new one is repeating them. It seems a mildly schoolyard exercise. But on the other hand, let’s. Because the double-standard is just too egregious to ignore. Republicans did backflips to claim Clinton should be behind bars for what she did. As for Kushner, the silence is deafening.

Republicans summoned similar indignation five years ago when four US nationals, including an ambassador, lost their lives during a terrorist sacking of a consular complex in the Libyan city of Benghazi. Clinton and former President Obama were variously accused of failing to provide sufficient protection to the Americans, telling US troops who might have flown to help to stand down and then lying to families of the fallen afterwards about the circumstances of the attack.

The political stoning of Clinton and Obama was eagerly joined by Trump, who even in November 2012 declared that Benghazi was a bigger scandal than Watergate. “Don’t let Obama get away with allowing Americans to die,” he tweeted on the eve of that year’s presidential vote. “Kick him out of office tomorrow.” The voters ignored him. Four years later a congressional inquiry into the deaths in Benghazi found no evidence of wrongdoing by the administration.

So what about firing Trump? On 4 October another four Americans died in Africa. They were all Green Berets stationed in Niger as part of a deployment of 800 US troops to combat Isis-affiliated terror cells in the region. The men were killed after their group of a dozen US soldiers was ambushed while conducting a joint patrol with about 40 Nigerian soldiers.

What did Trump say to the nation about them? For a long time nothing at all. When the flag-draped coffins of the Benghazi victims arrived back on US soil, both Obama and Clinton were there to lead the receiving ceremony and speak to grieving families. When the first of the coffins from Niger landed at Dover Air Force Base on Monday of last week, Trump was at one of his prized golf clubs swinging his irons with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

In fact, we heard nothing at all from Trump until this Monday when he was asked about his silence during a press conference, on unrelated matters, in the White House garden. Specifically, what had he been doing in private to comfort the families of these slain men?

His response was surpassing in its howling horrendousness. Trump, who as a candidate and as Commander-in-Chief has cast himself as the champion of the American military that, he says, Obama never was, stammered about having written letters to the parents of the victims that would be put in the post that evening. Well, or maybe the next morning. Already, you were thinking to yourself: no he hasn’t but now he’s been caught he’ll run inside and write them now.

That left open why he hadn’t actually telephoned anyone – almost two weeks after the ambush. So he pivoted to what he does best: deflecting criticism of himself by suggesting that others have behaved even more badly than he has. In this case, past presidents: Bush, Clinton and that entirely feckless predecessor of his, Barack Obama. “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls. A lot of them didn’t make calls,” Trump said.

Boy, oh boy. Things are getting sticky out here so let’s tell a huge whopper. I mean why not? (We know why not but he doesn’t.) He backed off a bit, when a reporter there asked him to substantiate his bald claim that Obama didn’t call families of the fallen. “I don’t know if he did. No,” Trump attempted. “I was told that he didn’t often, and a lot of presidents don’t. They write letters ... I do a combination of both.” He blathered on: ”President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told. Other presidents did not call, they’d write letters. And some presidents didn’t do anything.”

But by then former top aides to Obama had already erupted in a screaming chorus of denunciation and disgust. “Stop the damn lying – you are the President,“ Eric Holder, Obama’s former attorney general, said on Twitter. Pete Souza, who was official White House photographer before leaving early this year, posted pictures on Instagram of Obama receiving parents of the fallen in person. He said in one caption he had watched Obama meet “with hundreds of wounded soldiers, and family members of those killed in action”.

Alyssa Mastromonaco, Obama’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, was more irate still. “That’s a f***ing lie,” she posted. She went on [sic]: “to say president obama (or past presidents) didn’t call the family members of soldiers KIA – he’s a deranged animal”.

When contacted by The Independent, she sounded only a little less angry. “It’s hard for anyone who was or is a public servant to understand how President Trump would say what he did,” she said on Tuesday. “Perhaps his fundamental distrust for public servants is why ... but every president and every person who works for that president understands their duty as Commander-in-Chief and feels the same abiding dedication, gratitude and admiration for our troops.”

Benghazi and Niger are different places and the Americans slain in each of them were on entirely different missions. And yet. What has the President to say about the Niger mission? It has never received formal Congressional approval. Has the Pentagon been provided with the necessary resources to provide cover when patrols come under attack and give medical care to victims when things go wrong? (It was the French military, based nearly 300 miles away, that eventually arrived to ferry out the casualties in Niger and offer belated support). Why were most Americans unaware even that their country had boots on the ground in the country?

And what about the double standard? Four years was how long it took Congress to investigate Benghazi and conclude no one had done anything substantially wrong. Twelve days was how long it took Trump to utter the nation of Niger in public. And put stamps on letters of condolence.