Overnight Defense: Trump speaks to families of Green Berets killed in Niger | McCain wants more info on attack | Trump says press should ask Kelly if Obama called after son’s death
THE TOPLINE: President Trump on Tuesday faced fierce political blowback from claims a day earlier that former President Obama and other past presidents didn’t call the families of fallen soldiers, as well as over an attack in Niger that killed four U.S. Green Berets.
Senate Armed Service Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the administration has not been forthcoming with information on Niger.
“I had a better working relationship, as far as information back and forth, with Ash Carter than I do with an old friend of 20 years,” McCain added.
Carter was the last Defense secretary for the Obama administration, which McCain often slammed for defense policies he disagreed with.
Asked for clarification on if the friend is Defense Secretary James Mattis, McCain said “yes” and added that includes national security adviser H.R. McMaster, as well.
The Hill’s Rebecca Kheel has more here.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) also said Tuesday that Trump administration “has to be more clear about our role in Niger and our role in other areas in Africa and other parts of the globe.”
“They have to connect it to a strategy. They should do that. I think that the inattention to this issue is not acceptable,” Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN’s “Newsroom”
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey hit back at Trump on Twitter. Dempsey said that Obama and former President Bush “cared deeply, worked tirelessly for the serving, the fallen, and their families. Not politics. Sacred Trust.”
Dempsey, a retired Army general, served as the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs for four years during the Obama administration.
Read more on his response here.
WHITE HOUSE, TRUMP DEFEND COMMENTS: Trump spoke on Tuesday with the families of the four soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger nearly two weeks ago, the White House said Tuesday.
“He offered condolences on behalf of a grateful nation and assured them their family’s extraordinary sacrifice to the country will never be forgotten,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement.
And Trump said on Tuesday that the press should ask White House chief of staff John Kelly if former President Obama called him after his son died in Afghanistan.
“To the best of my knowledge, I think I’ve called every family of somebody that’s died, and it’s the hardest call to make,” Trump told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade. “As far as other representatives, I don’t know, I mean you could ask Gen. Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?”
It was later reported that Obama hosted now-chief of staff John Kelly at a breakfast about six months after Kelly’s son died in Afghanistan.
Kelly attended the breakfast — held in May 2011 — for the relatives of U.S. troops killed in action, The Associated Press reported, citing White House visitor records.
Kelly and his wife reportedly sat at the table of former first lady Michelle Obama during the breakfast for Gold Star families.
US-BACK FIGHTERS SAY RAQQA LIBERATED FROM ISIS: U.S.-backed forces said Tuesday that they have liberated the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) self-declared capital of Raqqa in northern Syria.
There are roughly 6,500 ISIS fighters left in both Syria and Iraq, and only about 100 are “all but isolated in their quickly shrinking territory” of Raqqa, said Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the group.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday declared that Raqqa had been liberated and fighting has ended. The group, a U.S.-backed mix of Kurdish and Arab fighters, has been slowly taking back the city from ISIS over the past four months.
Dillon, who spoke to reporters at the Pentagon from video feed in Baghdad, said ISIS was on the “verge of a devastating defeat” and more than 90 percent of the city has been cleared, but U.S.-led forces are continuing to oust the fighters.
TRUMP TOUTS POSSIBLE $2.4B GREEK F-16 DEAL: The State Department on Tuesday announced it had approved a potential $2.4 billion upgrade of Greek F-16 fighter jets as the country’s prime minister met with President Trump.
Trump, who spoke alongside Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in the White House Rose Garden after a working lunch, said the potential deal “would generate thousands of American jobs.”
The foreign military sale, announced in February, would upgrade Greece’s fleet of Lockheed Martin-made F-16 aircraft to an F-16 Block V configuration with the purchase of new radars, radios, navigation systems, transponders and ground support systems, among other equipment.
The upgrade “will bolster the Hellenic Air Force’s ability to support NATO and remain interoperable with the U.S. and the NATO alliance. It will also help Greece sustain operations in the future, thereby reducing the threat the alliance’s enemies pose to the U.S. and the alliance,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.
ON TAP FOR TOMORROW:
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing for nominations for the State Department legal adviser, the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs and the U.S. ambassador for the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at Dirksen 419. http://bit.ly/2zlynbI
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