by WorldTribune Staff, October 24, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
The sister of slain soldier Vanessa Guillén and a family attorney debunked The Atlantic’s hit piece which claimed President Donald Trump disparaged the soldier after discovering the cost of her funeral.
Vanessa Guillén, 20, was murdered at her Texas Army base in 2020.Following Guillén’s death at the hands of a fellow soldier and his girlfriend in 2020, Trump comforted the grief-stricken family and extended death benefits. He also offered to cover the costs personally if the Army did not pay for the funeral expenses.
Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, relying on anonymous sources, claimed in an article published by The Atlantic on Tuesday that Trump was outraged when he learned that Guillén’s funeral, which included heightened security and closed streets, cost $60,000.
The article alleged that Trump said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” and ordered then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to deny payment.
Guillén’s sister, Mayra, slammed The Atlantic’s portrayal of her experience with Trump.
“I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Mayra wrote on X, garnering over 3 million views.
“President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today,” Mayra added.
Natalie Khawam, an attorney for the Guillén family, accused the Atlantic editor of lying in the piece.
“After having dealt with hundreds of reporters in my legal career, this is unfortunately the first time I have to go on record and call out Jeffrey Goldberg@the Atlantic: not only did he misrepresent our conversation but he outright LIED in HIS sensational story,” Khawam wrote on X.
“More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillén’s murder … for cheap political gain,” she added.
Khawam called the “timing” of Goldberg’s report “quite suspicious.”
“[T]his supposed conversation that Trump had would have occurred over 4 years ago!” the attorney noted. “Why a story about it now?!”
“As everyone knows, not only did Trump support our military, he also invited my clients to the Oval Office and supported the I Am Vanessa Guillén bill too,” Khawam continued. “I’m grateful we were successful in getting bipartisan support of the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act, and because of everyone’s hard work and efforts our service members now have more protections and rights while serving our country.”
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Meadows also refuted Goldberg’s allegations, writing in a post to X: “I was in the discussions featured in the Atlantic’s latest hit piece against President Trump. Let me say this. Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false. He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillén and her family.”
Meadows’s spokesperson, Ben Williamson, explicitly denied that Trump ever made the remarks in comments provided before publication of The Atlantic’s hit piece.
The Atlantic omitted these comments, claiming that Williamson denied ever hearing such remarks.
On the left: I sent Atlantic a comment saying President Trump “absolutely did not say that,” referring to the alleged comments about Ms. Guillen they printed.
On the right: Atlantic translated that comment to “didn’t hear Trump say it.”
Treat this dishonest piece accordingly. pic.twitter.com/pM1o1c9fEm
— Ben Williamson (@_WilliamsonBen) October 22, 2024
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Family of murdered soldier debunks The Atlantic’s Trump hit piece added by Editor Two on October 24, 2024
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