The Commander, Chiefly In Need Of A Soul

When it comes to basic empathy for human beings, Donald Trump's circuits are emotionally cauterized.

President Donald Trump told U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson's widow Tuesday that "he knew what he signed up for ... but when it happens, it hurts anyway," when he died serving in northwestern Africa, according to Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens.

"Yes, he said it," Wilson said. "It's so insensitive. He should have not have said that. He shouldn't have said it."

The president called about 4:45 p.m. and spoke to Johnson's pregnant widow, Myeshia Johnson, for about five minutes. She is a mother to Johnson's surviving 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. The conversation happened before Johnson's remains arrived at Miami International Airport on a commercial Delta Airlines flight.

A top advisor later told Local 10 News "The president's conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice are private."

Wilson watched as the widow, who is expecting their third baby in January, leaned over the U.S. flag that was draping Johnson's casket. Her pregnant belly was shaking against the casket as she sobbed uncontrollably. Their daughter stood next to her stoically. Their toddler waited in the arms of a relative.

There was silence.

Local politicians, police officers and firefighters lined up to honor Johnson for his service and for the efforts and discipline that got the former Walmart employee to defy all odds and become a 25-year-old member of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Johnson, who participated in a mentorship program Wilson founded in 1993, died during a mission fighting alongside Green Berets. Islamic militants ambushed them on Oct. 4 with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. The team reportedly didn't have overhead armed air cover and was in unarmored pickup trucks. Reuters reported the lack of planning upset the French.

So Trump's response, two weeks after American soldiers were killed in Niger in an ambush, is "he knew what he signed up for" to a serviceman's pregnant, grieving widow.

Let that absolute lack of empathy sink in, folks.  He has no empathy because he's incapable of it.  He is incapable of empathy because his clinical narcissism is so pathological that he cannot process the basic human function of being able to emotionally relate to anyone other than himself, because that would require him to give a damn about somebody other than Donald Trump.

You might be able to get away with saying that this was a case of nerves, or early term jitters, except that lack of empathy has driven pretty much every decision Trump has made since attaining the office, and he's proven that lack of empathy again and again.

The man is a monster.  Like I said, pathological.