Carryn Owens was in the House chamber
last night when President Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress. Her
husband, Chief Petty Officer William (Ryan) Owens, was killed during a military
raid in Yemen just a few weeks ago. It was reported in the press (I did not
watch the speech) that the applause CPO Owens and his widow received was the
loudest of the evening. The President himself noted that Owens must hear the
cheering in heaven.
While it is pedestrian gross to use the
death of a member of our military for political gain, it is a special kind of
gross to trot out a widow for such a public spectacle when you (the President)
cared so little about the details surrounding the raid, you reportedly approved
it between courses of dinner with your political advisors in tow and did not
even bother to stop by the Situation Room at the White House during the
operation to check on its status. It is also a special kind of gross for
members of the Republican party who made the tragic death of Ambassador Chris
Stevens and three others in Benghazi a cause célèbre for years to ignore the
sketchy circumstances surrounding Owens’s death and the apparent lack of rigor
that went into signing off on the mission.
It might be too much to ask for that the
sacrifices of our military be apolitical, but for the man who approved a
mission under questionable circumstances to use a dead man’s widow as a prop to
make himself look good is a level of cynicism rarely reached in politics. That
the media pointed to it as a high point for Trump and not another sub-basement
of his venality, is another story altogether.
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