Stop the insults, Mr. President. Four Green Berets died. Find out why.

Enough already.

A brave soldier from Miami is killed in a brutal ambush, and it’s almost overshadowed by a nasty back-and-forth between the president, his chief of staff and a Miami congresswoman.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball. The headline here is that an outstanding young man, Sgt. La David Johnson of Miami Gardens, who was totally dedicated to his family and to improving their lot in life through an Army career, died under murky circumstances. We need to know what those circumstances were and why he was left on the battlefield for nearly 48 hours.

Johnson was one of four Army rangers massacred by an ISIS-related group in Niger. It was the worst military loss of life in President Trump’s tenure. Yet he said nothing about it for 12 days, and then only that he planned to call the soldiers’ families — unlike President Obama and other presidents. That would be the first in a long string of untruths and outright liesby the president. But what else is new?

Chief of Staff John Kelly advised the president not to call the families of the fallen soldiers, but Trump insisted. So Kelly told him to say what he’d been told when his son, Marine Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

Say that he was doing what he loved doing and “knew what he was signing up for, but it still hurts when it happens.” That straightforward language was appropriate between career military officers, but devastating to Myeshia Johnson. She’d just learned she couldn’t see her husband one last time and that there would be a closed-casket funeral. She, other family members and Rep. Frederica Wilson were sitting in a car at Miami International Airport awaiting the arrival of her husband’s body. “How insensitive,” said Wilson, who heard the president on speakerphone.

Wilson was not listening “secretly,” as the president tweeted. Nor was she prohibited by statute or “sacred” tradition, as Kelly put it, from making public what Trump told Myeshia Johnson. The widow, already emotionally fragile, was crushed by Trump saying La David “knew what he was signing up for.” Johnson’s aunt, also in the car, confirmed what Trump said and called it “disrespectful.” In a TV interview Monday, Myeisha Johnson said Wilson’s account of the phone call was “100 percent correct. The widow was also upset, Wilson said, that Trump never mentioned her husband by name, only referring to him as “your guy, your guy.” Wilson, never a fan of Trump’s, went public with it all, along with her own blunt criticism of Trump. Another president might have responded by calling the widow and apologizing if he’d inadvertently offended her. Trump? Not a chance.

At his remarkable appearance before reporters Thursday, Kelly said he was “stunned” and “broken-hearted” that Wilson not only revealed what Trump said on the call but that she was even in the car. That’s nonsense. Wilson is a family friend of the Johnsons and a neighbor. She mentored La David as a boy through her 5000 Role Models of Excellence program. She had every right to be in the car and to report what she heard.

Wilson was also justified in calling out Kelly for not telling the truth about what she said at the FBI building dedication in Miramar in 2015. He accused her of grandstanding and taking credit for getting the money for the building by calling Obama and getting $20 million. Totally false, as a Sun Sentinel video showed. Wilson wasn’t a member of Congress when the FBI building (which cost $194 million) was approved. In her dedication speech she did brag about pushing the naming of the building through Congress in record time, but said she’d done so with the help of GOP House speaker John Boehner and all the Republican House members from South Florida, whom she named individually and asked to stand.. Hardly grandstanding.

The on-going battle of tweets between Trump and Wilson has been unbecoming to both. Wilson went too far when she made vague accusations about “white supremacists” in the White House. Trump went too far when he labeled her “wacky.” That language is well beneath the dignity of the presidency, but of a piece with the coarseness and vulgarity Trump has brought to the office.

Yes, Wilson is idiosyncratic, even quirky. She won’t go anywhere without one of her sparkly hats. But that’s her style. Credit her for years of service as a teacher, principal, school board member, state legislator and now member of Congress.

She’s not “wacky.” But that label seems to fit the guy who called her one.

This story was originally published October 23, 2017 at 8:46 PM with the headline "Stop the insults, Mr. President. Four Green Berets died. Find out why.."