Now that the mayoral election next month is all but a technicality, the real question is who Commissioner Francis Suarez, our next city of Miami mayor, wants to have serve on the dais with him. He’s been non-commmital because he wanted to focus on his own race. But now that he’s got no opposition, not really, he can put his considerable weight behind the right candidate.
Too bad he still won’t tell us. Now, we can only guess.
“I’m not supporting anyone right now. I get along pretty much with everybody,” Suarez told Ladra this week, adding that no mayor or elected supported him when he first ran in 2009 even though he started out 25 points behind Manolo Reyes, who is leading all the polls for the seat now.
“And I liked it that way. I didn’t even use my middle name, which is the same as my father’s,” said Suarez, a chip off the old block that is Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who was also the first Cuban mayor of Miami. “I wanted to rise on my own merits, my own ideas.”
The flip side of the coin is that he doesn’t want to piss anybody off.
“As mayor, you have a responsibility to create a coalition on the commission and set the tone and get things done. If you pick the wrong side, you may end up offending somebody and shooting yourself in the foot,” he said. “I want to hit the ground running. My responsibility isn’t to the candidates, it’s to the residents.”
But just who does Baby X think he’s fooling? Some political observers say he’s being a passive aggressive pussy who is secretly helping candidates but doesn’t have the cojones to publicly endorse them. “Like always, el tira le piedra y esconda la mano,” said one Miami voter and political junkie. It’s a Cuban saying that literally means he throws a stone and hides his hand but actually means he starts some kind of trouble and avoids the blame.
Read related story: Francis Suarez says definite maye to Miami mayoral race
Ladra, too, thinks that he does, indeed, have a great deal of interest in the two commission races (especially in one). Why else would he spend money polling the commission races along with his own race and issues every time? And it is very difficult for Ladra to believe that he and his dad and his political allies in Coral Gables and beyond would just pass on this opportunity to silently grow allies and build their machinery, especially trying to help the candidates that Suarez knows will be friendlier and happier to work with him instead of on their own agenda.
Yeah, Joe Carollo, I’m talking about you. The former Miami mayor and Doral city manager likes to be a star and the protagonist and could battle Suarez for attention and control of the commission.
Despite the fact that the two candidates are apparently sharing Steve Marin as campaign consultant, the two families sorta hate each other. Ladra can’t beieve that’
Suarez wants to sit on the dais with the guy who basically unseated his father from office in 1997 for absentee voter fraud that may not have been X’s doing (it was former City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez and former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who las malas lenguas say is helping Carollo now). The election was thrown out and a second vote put Carollo in office. So, no, Ladra does not believe that Suarez isn’t actively working against Crazy Joe. You can’t trusth him because he could turn on you at any minute, like he has on almost everybody, even calling a press conference to stab you in the back. Just ask former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre. We have to believe that Baby X is ABC — Anyone But Carollo.
Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami Commission race
Athough maybe not Tommy Regalado, son and namesake of the current mayor, tampoco. There’s no real love loss between these families either. Maybe also because Suarez had the nerve to try to run against Mayor Tomas Regalado four years ago before he had to abandon the campaign after several missteps. Suarez just got rid of one Regalado, you think he wants to be saddled with another? And compete for media darling status with another block chip?
That leaves us in District 3 with Zoraida Barreiro, the wife of Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, or one of the other three guys who don’t seem to stand a chance next to the legacy candidates. Zory, as she is known, makes sense because her husband is a colleague of the new mayor’s father. This allegiance has legs. Also, Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro has not lost one election. Not for State Rep. Not for county commissioner.
There’s also a small possibility that Suarez likes Alfie Leon, the former chief policy advisor, for Commissioner Frank Carollo. But Ladra is making that hypothesis only because someone in his camp has defended Leon in private and Coral Gables Commissioner Vince Lago, a top Suarez ally, is backing Leon openly.
Still, it’s practically a toss up between the other two.
One might think Baby X is helping Reyes, who he beat by 260 votes when first elected in 2009, since he is leading all the polls, after all. Suarez has reportedly shared the polls with people to help Reyes raise campaign cash. And also allegedly lent Reyes his professional fundraiser — Brian Goldmeier reportedly made some calls on Reyes’ behalf.
But, on the other hand, Manolo is tight with the Regalados so there’s that little snag. And Baby X has been seen with Ralph Rosado at some events and neighborhood homeowner association meetings. Rosado has also shown that he can raise more money, which could be important to Suarez– or both Suarezes — in the future.
Maybe he’s hedging his bets. Does that still count as passive aggressive?

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Actor Sean Penn just made a cameo appearance in the Miami city elections.

A campaign mailer arrived at the home of voters in District 3 Saturday with a photo of the two-time Academy Award winner — and celebrated socialist sympathizer and apologist — at a Miami Heat game in 2011 with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, whose son is running for city commission.

“Sean Penn, the known defendor of the Castro and Chavez regimes, with his favorite dictators, Tomas Regalado and his son,” the piece says, adorned with pictures of the much older Jeff Spicoli with his BFFs of death: Raul Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Then there is the picture of Penn with the Regalados.

Except the son in the photo is Jose Regalado, who is not running for office. That would be the older brother, Tommy Regalado. Which doesn’t really matter to former Mayor and professional provocateur Joe Carollo, whose political action committee, Miami First, paid for the piece.

“The two faces of the Regalados,” it says, insinuating that the first family of Miami gets together for fun with those who defend the Castro and Chavez regimes, “without giving any importance to the pain of our people.”

Read related story: Ex Doral Manager Joe Carollo keeps talking post firing

It also says, without offering any evidence, that Tommy Regalado (son) has collected thousands of dollars for his political committee from Chavistas, which seems to be a theme with the increasingly paranoid Carollo. Remember, he called a Doral businessman a chavista and then, when he knew he would be fired as city manager, called a press conference to claim that Doral Mayor Luigi Boria — who he had helped get re-elected only months earlier — was being investigated for bribery. When that didn’t stick, he had multiple press conferences trying to convince the local media that the Venezuelan-born Boria was a Chavez sympathizer who still had ties to the regime and did business with Chavista interests. He promised evidence, but it was a rabbit’s hole expedition and nothing materialized.

It was all conjecture then. He doesn’t even have conjecture now. But that doesn’t stop Carollo from throwing more shit around to see what sticks. This is what he’s good at.

“Dios los cria y el diablo los junta,” the mailer said, which literally translates to “God grows them and the devil joins them,” but actually means more like bad people find each other. The piece looks like it was designed by former Sen. and campaign bad boy Alex Diaz de la Portilla, not Steve Marin, as campaign reports indicate. It just feels Alex.

Of course, it’s pure bullshit. To the point that it’s laughable and makes Ladra think that Carollo must be desperate. No way voters are going to buy that the Regalados are commies.

Candidate Tommy Regalado works for none other than TV Marti, which Carollo calls a botella or gifted job in another piece but which, you gotta admit, is no friend of the Cuban government. His grandfather, the mayor’s father and a journalist, spent 22 years as a political prisoner in Castro’s jails. And his dad is a Pedro Pan kid — sent into U.S. exile as a child without his parents through the Catholic Church. The mayor has been a staunch anti-Castro advocate for decades, first on Cuban radio and later as an elected official, giving many a key to the city to activists and exile groups.

Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami commission race

Then Commissioner Regalado was a constant fixture at the home of rafter boy wonder Elian Gonzalez, who was snatched from his Little Havana exile family in the middle of the night by federal agents so he could be returned to his father in Cuba. He was also the first elected to reject the idea of a Cuban consulate in Miami in 2014, even before former President Barack Obama announced normalized relations. After that announcement in December of 2014, Mayor Regalado criticized the president repeatedly on local and national media for giving the Cuban government everything for nada and abandoning the Cuban people.

“Free elections, the freeing of all the political prisoners in Cuba, are not part of the deal. I’m sad that Mr Obama has brokered a deal that doesn’t help the people of Cuba. At the end of the day Cuba is still not free. This is a sad day,” he was quoted as saying.

Last year, when the talks about the consulate picked up again, Regalado said he would sue to block a consulate from opening here. Conversely, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is raising money for Carollo and who Carollo worked for during his 2016 re-election campaign, was more welcoming, saying he would “work with” the feds if they chose Miami. Gimenez  also welcomed the idea of cruises to Cuba from PortMiami, saying the county did “business with carriers” and not “with countries.” Coward.

“They are trying to rewrite history,” Regalado told Ladra Saturday evening. “They are hoping that voters forget my record of 50 years here.

“You can say I’m inept and some people might believe you. You can say I’m corrupt and some people might believe you. You can say I’m a thief and some people might believe you. But you can’t say I’m a communist. Nobody is going to believe you,” the mayor added.

In fact, the family is known for being so ardently anti-Castro that the piece could backfire. Voters could decide to reject Carollo because he is trying to play them, to take them for fools. ¿Que se ha creido? ¿Nos toma por idiotas?

Regalado said he was at the game that day with 20 or so inner city at-risk youths, all guests of Office Depot. While on the floor before the game, there were a bunch of VIPs milling about, and someone from the Heat organization introduced the mayor to Penn (we don’t know why he was there).

“I was a little distracted and wasn’t sure who he was, so when someone said smile for the camera, I just did it automatically,” Mayor Regalado said. That was it. There was no conversation. There was no other contact.

Suffice it to say they did not go to Versailles later for a snack of croquetas and a cortadito.

This is classic Carollo, creating a bogus boogieman so that he can come and save the day. When the real boogieman is Crazy Joe.

A no-chance Miami commission candidate at the rock bottom of all the polls wants a judge to toss out the ballots that have been cast so far and reprint them, claiming discrimination as a female and as a Hispanic because her name was put last instead of first.

Denise Galvez, who is now suddenly calling herself Denise Galvez Turros for the election, says she filed her complaint Wednesday afternoon in order to get the coveted “pole position” on the ballot, which many political observers and candidates think is an advantage among low information voters who just check the first candidate on some lists. She wants all the absentee ballots returned so far to be invalidated and for new ballots to be printed and mailed — which might delay the Nov. 7 election.

Galvez is running in the District 4 race against, in alphabetical order, Manolo Reyes and Ralph Rosado. Using Turros, Miami City Clerk Todd Hannon put her name under the two men. If he had used Galvez, she would have been listed first.

And while I think the founder of Latinas for Trump, who works in marketing by day, is a terrible choice for commissioner, she is right about this. On principle, anyway, if not legally. After all, Galvez is not her middle name. Her full, compound last name is Galvez Turros, which begins with a G. The process should not require that she hyphenate it. Our culture certainly doesn’t require it.

Read related story: Trump Latina Denise Galvez runs for Miami city commission

“City has written me last on ballot instead of first bc I’m a woman who kept my maiden name and didn’t add a hyphen,” Galvez posted Wednesday on her Facebook campaign page, where she is just Denise Galvez. And of course she didn’t add a hyphen because she never added his name ’til now. Ladra doesn’t think she has called her Galvez Turros even once in any previous stories, except to note that she suddenly added her hubby’s name and filed to run with both. She is just Denise Galvez to us who have known her for years. All last year she was on TV pushing Donald Trump as Denise Galvez, not Denise Galvez Turros. Google it.

So maybe this is poetic justice. She was trying to pull a fast one by adding Turros and it backfired.

But that doesn’t mean that this practice is not stupid and outdated. Ladra’s puppy has a compound name with no hyphen so this is an issue near and dear to me that needs to be addressed for future Hispanic candidates, male or female, that use both their parents’ last names. In our increasingly diverse and heavily Hispanic community, there will be more and more candidates with names like former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan or Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and no hyphen — although in both those cases, they benefit by being listed according to their second last name. Rosen Gonzalez was third on the ballot in the 2015 election, before Isaiah Mosley, Jonathan Parker and Betsy Perez. If the city clerk in Miami Beach had gone with Rosen, she’d have been listed last.

Galvez probably didn’t know this when she opportunistically added Turros to her name. Maybe she should have gotten some legal help with her qualifying documents. An attorney might have also advised that she hyphenate, which would have guaranteed Galvez came first.

She may have some issues with her case at this point. The main one is that she waited too long.

“After ballots have gone out, I do not see a court changing the names on the ballot,” said Jose “Pepe” Herrera, a longtime government attorney who has worked on election lawsuits before and said that Galvez, or Galvez Turros, should have made the case earlier, as soon as she saw how the ballot would be printed. He is not working for any of the candidates in this race.

“If somebody is using a non legal name they don’t normally use and I went ot court to remove him from the ballot, if I wait ’til ABs are printed and sent out, I am upsetting the calendar or timing of the election,” Herrera told Ladra. Any reprinting of ballots could delay the election and disenfranchise voters who have already casted ballots via mail this week.

“Courts have uniformly said if you wait too long knowing the problem exists, you have no case,” Herrera added.

Read related story: Finally! Manolo Reyes looks real good in Miami Commission race

Galvez did not respond to several attempts (read: calls, voice mails, texts) to reach her. She is mad at Ladra, who she blocked on Facebook — where she defends Trump and offends the rest of us with insensitive posts and fake news and smears of anyone who disagrees with the POTUS — after I pointed out that Puerto Rico was not A-OK eight days after Hurricane Maria had ravaged the island. Ladra can still see her feeds because we have multiple friends in common. I just can no longer tag her with the truth about Puerto Rico or the NFL players’ protest or, now, the condolence call crap-up.

But according to a Miami Herald story by David Smiley, Galvez did try earlier this month to have the city clerk and Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White change the ballot:

Hannon declined to change the ballot after reviewing election law and speaking with elections officials at the county and state. He said precedent set by the handling of previous ballots holds that hyphenated last names be ordered based on the first of the two surnames, and that names without a hyphen be ordered based on the last of the two names. He also noted that Galvez didn’t specify by which name she wanted to be primarily identified on her qualifying documents.

“It is important to note that your name will appear on the ballot exactly as you provided ‘Denise Galvez Turros,’ Hannon wrote.

Even if the case is dismissed, Galvez will likely benefit from the free press and additional name recognition that this move could give her. And one has to wonder if that was the point in the first place. It is becoming almost part and parcel of any campaign to file a lawsuit or an ethics complaint, even if you know it’s ludicrous, to get the free PR. Check out this screen save of her campaign Facebook page where she announces her interview on a local news channel.

And it could work. Young women in Silver Bluff with no interest in this race might suddenly feel motivated to vote Nov. 7. And the abuelitas in Flagami might give her the pitty vote. It won’t make Galvez more viable, really, but a small increase in votes could force the other two candidates into a Nov. 21 runoff.

Some people are already saying that she did this to help Ralph Rosado.

Ya era hora. It looks like this might be Manolo Reyes‘ year after all. Every poll says so.

Even Ralph Rosado‘s poll.

These two guys have been running for Miami City Commission forever — or at least since when they both thought they would be on the 2013 ballot for District 4 before Commissioner Francis Suarez‘s first-time mayoral dreams crashed and burned after a series of campaign gaffes. Reyes a little longer even since the perennial candidate has six other commission races under his belt. Six!

People in the district — which is from Silver Bluff to Flagami, on the border with Coral Gables — are used to seeing Reyes on the ballot. He’s been running since 1985 and Ronald Reagan was in the White House — coming real close in 2009 when he lost by about 300 votes to Suarez. It’s no wonder that he’s leading all the polls. He’s practically an incumbent.

Okay, technically, Rosado has a 4 point lead in his poll. But that is within the margin of error and the poll was a push poll. If that is the only way that Rosado can get from 30 points below to a few points above, Ladra is going to go ahead and give that win to Reyes, too.

Read related story: Beleaguered Francis Suarez drops out of Miami mayoral race

The first poll we heard of was commissioned in February by former Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who wants to stay relevant as a lobbyist and may run for county commissioner or something else in the future. He showed it off to donors as he sought contributions for Reyes’ campaign. Someone sneaked me photos of the pages. He was up by 35 points. Only 9 percent of the 300 voters surveyed knew who he was.

That was early in the campaign. But a Mason-Dixon poll conducted in late June for the city of Miami’s firefighters union showed Reyes holding those 30 points months later.

Commissioner Suarez has polled twice, and while he wouldn’t disclose the results with Ladra — the new mayor is being diplomatic so as to not rock the boat — several other people who he has apparently shared them with reported that Reyes has kept the comfortable double digit lead he had from the first poll to the second.

And then we have Rosado’s poll, done for $9,500 in August. Rosado claims in an email blast that he has the lead, and links to a Miami Herald story that says the two men are neck and neck. But the numbers weren’t disclosed in the story and three different sources told Ladra that Reyes was still up by four points, which is within the margin of error (hence the “neck and neck” description).

But it is important to note, however, that the point spread is within the margin of error. And that it was a push poll, with questions designed to identify issues and character traits that would turn voters off from Reyes. “Would you still vote for him if you knew he was a career politician,” type of question. Perhaps Reyes would have held on to his lead if the questions were not pushing voters away.

Rosado knows this. Despite his bravado on his email blast, he has started to attack Reyes in a TV spot and mailer that casts the high school economics teacher and former Miami-Dade School Board budget analyst as a career beaurocrat and loser candidate who has run unsuccessfully six times.

It seems desperate, for Rosado, who ran for state rep in 2010 and lost to Michael Bileca, later moving into the city of Miami. Like the best straw to grasp onto is the false security of a 4 point lead in a push poll.

Rosado did not return multiple efforts to reach him. Instead, he texted “my quote for the story” to Ladra: “Our internal numbers tell us that there is a path to victory. I’m very excited by the support my campaign has received in the community.”

Sounds like what they all say.

Heading into the final two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Reyes — who has been active in the city and on boards for more than two decades — also has the majority of endorsements. He has nods from Mayor Tomas Regalado, Commissioner Willy Gort, former State Rep. Manny Prieguez, West Miami Mayor Eduardo Muhiña and West Miami Commissioner Luciano Suarez as well as the city’s firefighters, solid waste and general employees unions.

“Manolo has served our community his entire life and he is not part of the establishment,” said Freddy Delgado, president of the firefighters’ union. “He has as much experience as an incumbent commissioner, which is good for the citizens and those that serve them.”

Meanwhile, Rosado has the Fraternal Order of Police.

Read related story: Candidate Ralph Rosado exaggerates ‘his’ police initiatives

Oh, wait, Ladra almost forgot. There is a third candidate in the race. But marketing professional Denise Galvez, who made her claim to fame as co-founder of Latinas for Trump, is scoring around 1 or 2 percent on these polls and won’t get more than 5-8 percent on Election Day — and only if she is extremely lucky and snags that women’s vote. Then, just like her orange mentor, she will blame Democrats and everyone else but herself for her loss.

So now that we got that over with, this race is squarely between the two guys. And while there is still more than two weeks for Rosado to gain on Reyes, he may have a hard time doing that if he keeps squandering $10,000 on a push poll here and $5,000 on a billboard there and $3,400 for post-it notes on the Miami Herald — the billboard and post its are seen by thousands of people who don’t vote in his district or, even, the city of Miami. He should concentrate on direct voter contact and is getting bad advice from consultants Al Lorenzo and Fernando Diez. A billboard? Really? He could have sent two mailers with that money. And digital media is also sort of a waste in a district where about half the voters are over 55.

Rosado is spending his money faster and has less cash on hand than Reyes by about $16,000.

All this — the polls, the money, the community support — indicates that it’s Reyes’ turn. Al fin!

I had mixed feelings watching Wednesday as the Donald Trump White House walked back his ludicrous, false and self-serving claim that Congresswoman Frederica Wilson had lied about a conversation between the president and the widow of a fallen soldier from Miami Gardens who he said “must have known what he signed up for.”

It was a little bit exciting, I must admit. And vindicating. And hopeful. Because Trump, or his administration, was finally forced to go from doubling down on twitter and beating his chest with “I have proof” that she lied to “I was misunderstood” and/or “taken out of context” after the national media picked up the story and the soldier’s widow and mother confirmed the congresswoman’s recounting.

But it was also a little bit nauseating. And infuriating. And sad. Because many if not most of his outraged supporters kept insisting on Facebook and Twitter that Wilson was the one who lied, attacking her with memes ridiculing her cool signature hats and calling her crooked. And none of them have expressed the same, or any actually, outrage at the multiple times Trump said she lied and had the “proof” to boot.

“Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” That was his tweet Wednesday morning.

He later reiterated his lie and dared her to repeat it: “I didn’t say what that congresswoman said. Didn’t sy it all.  And she knows it,” Trump told a reporter later that day. “I had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife who was — sounded like a lovely woman. Did not say what the congresswoman said, and most people aren’t too surprised to hear that.”

This sad episode for the poor, emotionally exhausted family of Sgt. La David Johnson is, however, the perfect example of what Ladra finds the scariest thing about the Trump presidency: His die-hard fan base and their blind, knee-jerk, defend-him-at-all-costs campaigns that use smear tactics to discredit anybody that has the nerve to say anything except how great he is.

Read related story: Donald Trump announces — ‘stupid losers, make me POTUS’

Remember how San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz Soto nearly cried on live television after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico last month, literally begging Trump to step up and “save us from dying.” It sort of reminded Ladra of Kate Hale when the former Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Management director also criticized the federal response after Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in her famous “where the hell is the cavalry” speech. Nobody villified Hale. Nobody said she was politically motivated. Hale was a hero as far as anybody was concerned.

But not Cruz Soto. Despite the fact that she was wading in waist high water, personally looking for survivors, while Trump played golf and insulted her on the internet, she was demonized.  Immediately — as people on the island still struggled a week after Maria to get clean water to drink — she was attacked as a leftist Democrat who was only critical of Trump to help her party and build her profile so she could run for governor. After all, how could things really be so bad in Puerto Rico if she had the time and resources to get a custom t-shirt printed with “we are dying” and another one with the word “nasty” after Trump’s critical Cruz Soto tweetstorm? Huh? Huh? They lambasted her for vacationing in Cuba in 2015, even though Trump toyed with doing business there, and called her a socialist because she has supported labor unions, which are more American than hot dogs.

To top it all off, they accused her of hoarding relief supplies in her home instead of distributing them to her desperate constituents, which is as fake news as it can get. Today, a month after Maria landed on the island, there are people still posting that Yulin Cruz Soto has been or is about to be “impeached” by the city council for “stealing hurricane supplies.”

Why don’t they just call her a whore and get it over with? Oh, I know. Because they have moved on.

The target del dia is Wilson, who was in the limousine when Myeshia Johnson, the soldier’s widow, took the call from Trump and put him on speakerphone. “She was crying the whole time, and when she hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, ‘He didn’t even remember his name.’ That’s the hurting part,” Wilson was quoted as saying.

“He was almost like joking. He said… something to the effect that ‘he knew what he was getting into when he signed up, but I guess it hurts anyway.’ You know, just matter-of-factly, that this is what happens. Anyone who is signing up for military duty is signing up to die,” Wilson said, communicating what the whole family, who she has known for years, was feeling.

“That’s the way we interpreted it. It was horrible. It was insensitive. It was absolutely crazy, unnecessary. I was livid,” Wilson said.

As most of us were when we heard about it. Except the Trumpistas who cannot ever see anything the president does as bad or wrong. Like he said during the campaign, he could “shoot someone and not lose any voters.” By gosh, I think he was right.

After all, it was only a few days ago that Trump suggested he is doing a better job of honoring war dead by saying he is the only president who had called the families of all the fallen soldiers and said or implied that previous presidents, specifically Barack Obama, had not done that. He went so far as to invoke the dead son of his chief of staff, John Kelly, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. Well, several families have already come forward to say that they did, indeed, get calls from Obama. And at least four families who have lost loved ones in the military since Trump was elected have said he did not call them. Trump has not apologized for or acknowledged these lies — told hastily and under pressure when he was asked why was waiting so long to call the families of Sgt. Johnson and three other fallen soldiers after they were ambushed in Niger Oct. 4 by militants believed to be linked to ISIS. That’s bad but it’s come to be expected of the narcissist manchild devoid of any empathy.

Karen Meredith, who lost her son in Iraq, bristled at his remarks and said they were “disgraceful” and “unbecoming.” In a statement, the Gold Star and Military Families coordinator for VoteVets said, “This is not about you, it is about them. It is about all of us who lost our loved ones in war. For once in your life, please stop making everything about you. For once in your life, at least pretend to know what empathy is. For once in your life, at least try to care about other people and their feelings.”

You kind of expect Trump supporters to attack her, too, and dig up something awful she did or said in college, don’t you?

By late afternoon Wednesday, the White House walked back its insistence that Wilson had lied and said the president was simply misunderstood — all the while still insisting that the congresswoman took advantage of a sacred moment for political purposes. “This is a president that loves our country very much,” his spokeswoman said, changing the narrative, “who has the greatest level of respect for men and women in uniform, and wanted to call and offer condolences to the families. To try to create something from that, which the congresswoman is doing, is, frankly, appalling and disgusting.”

That gave license to the Trumpistas to continue their campaign, some questioning why she was there in the first place. “Why was crooked Fredricka there when the president called? She orchestrated the entire scheme. Disgusting,” one woman wrote in TrumpTweet style on her Facebook page.

Well, because she has known this family for years, since he was a member of her 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project mentorship program, which she started at the Miami-Dade County School Board. She is probably the one who got the limo to take them to Miami International Airport to receive Sgt. Johnson’s remains. It probably comforted them to have her there.

Read related story: Donald Trump win is scarier than an unlikely civil war

How is it possible that it is easier for these people to continue to attack the congresswoman than to admit that their beloved president made a mistake or said something wrong? This is not so unique or even terrible — if he admits it. What he said could, indeed, have been a clumsy attempt to give Johnson’s death some meaning, to provide some comfort to the family about Johnson being where he wanted to be. How many of us have not said the wrong thing at a funeral or memorial service? I know I have. I once told the boyfriend of a dear friend who took her own life that maybe I could have done something if I had reached out. Of course, immediately it ocurred to me that it may have sounded like I was saying I could have done more than he and I clumsily apologized in tears. He embraced me and said he understood. Nobody was hurt. It’s hard to come up with the right words in these circumstances. People understand that.

Trump could have done that. He could have apologized as soon as it was brought to his attention that it was taken the wrong way. He could have said, “You know, what I said sounded terrible. I’m sorry. It didn’t sound that way in my head but I can understand why you might have been hurt. Please forgive me. It’s difficult to find the right words.” Man, he would have been a hero. Even I would have had to stand up and take notice.

Instead he lies and lies to defend himself. And his legion of supporters lie even more so they can continue to laud him. They won’t call him out on anything.

Not even on the other Gold Star widow in Indiana who told reporters Wednesday that she was still waiting for Trump’s call after her husband was killed in Afghanistan — over the summer. Whitney Hunter stayed by the phone for days after military officers told her to wait for the president’s call. But it never came.

I’m waiting for Trumpistas to call Hunter a liar and post memes insulting her tomorrow.