absolutely nothing wrong. you stand by that? i do. i never mistreated anyone on my watch in 42 years. that was nbc s morgan radford reporting. in the state, o reilly s lawyer claims the new york times story ignored evidence taken under oath, adding the reporting was based on unsubstantiated allegations, anonymous sources and incomplete or stolen documents. president trump claims he contacted almost all of the gold star families of military personnel this year. but reports say an e-mail from the pentagon tells a different story. later this morning, joy reid talks to frederica wilson about the condolence call that has become so controversial. i m ginny and i quit smoking
so she made a lot of this public. did she not? yes, but i will say that the conversation around how calls were handled which started when the president talked about i call everyone and president obama didn t call everyone and, again, these calls should have stayed private and became public, and in the same way that when, you know, president trump offered $25,000 to one of the fallen soldier s fathers, and then the money never arrives, he goes to the press, so he s made what were private moments very public, which has invited the recipients to also bring that to the press. this has become a media storm where it wasn t one before. that in itself is a sad, sad state of affairs. one that he brought on himself. yes, robert. just very quickly, if i was the white house press secretary or senior adviser in the white house, this is what i would have done. i would have said, mr. president, the widow and the family has the right to do whatever they want with that call. that s their call.
sarah sanders insisted the president wasn t criticizing predecessors, but stating a fact. but hours later, president trump once again pointed the finger directly at president obama, implying he didn t call current white house chief of staff john kelly in 2010, when kelly s son was killed in afghanistan. i mean, you can ask general kelly, did he get a call from obama? you could ask other people. reporter: kelly has repeatedly made it clear to reporters he does not want to talk about his son s death. and he would not go on the record today. but the white house tells us he never got a call from president obama. obama aides do not dispute that. but they do say kelly did attend a white house breakfast for gold star families, where he sat at the first lady s table. and cecilia vega with us live tonight from the white house. and cecilia, you point out it s been nearly two weeks since that deadly incident in niger. we hadn t heard from the president until yesterday on this and now you
without ever saying his name. mccain warns the u.s. against turning towards quote half baked spurious nationalism, and calls america s repeat on the world stage unpatriotic. this comes as president trump is under fire for falsely claiming that his predecessor predecessors didn t call gold star families. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is closer than ever before. all this as a new cnn poll shows president trump s approval rating holding steady. more americans say he is leading the country in the wrong direction. the president s approval rating on recent hurricanes dropped 20
president presidents most of them didn t make calls. earlier you said president obama never called the families of fallen soldiers. 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. 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. not to be cynical but i can almost hear the people googling rnd somewhere around the president of trying to find examples of past presidents who didn t call and then put it out and scream fake news. he said it because he wanted to distract what was going on and tried to backtrack on it. what s the net effect of this? he said it because, to david gregory s point, he felt he was being criticized. he is. it s been two weeks and he hasn t mentioned these fallen service members, the ambush and