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Debbie Dingell Calls for Civility After Trump Insults Her Late Husband Debbie Dingell Gets Support From Another Widow Whose Husband Trump Has Mocked: Cindy McCain
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — One day after the House impeached President Trump largely along party lines, Republicans and Democrats found themselves in agreement on something: the president’s swipe at a beloved late Democratic congressman was neither funny nor appropriate. WASHINGTON — One widow instantly knew how the other one felt.
Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said Thursday that Mr. Trump’s words about her late husband, former Representative John D. Dingell Jr., “hurt me." “I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love,” one said.
She called for civility as she faced her first Christmas in 38 years without her husband. “I’m terribly sorry,” the other replied. “Please know I am thinking about you.”
The president’s comments, suggesting that Mr. Dingell went to hell after he died, came during a rally in Western Michigan on Wednesday, as Democrats in Washington voted to impeach him. The Twitter exchange sounded like a salutation between two women facing the season alone, but the message of support from Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain, the Arizona senator, to Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, was about a different shared experience.
Mr. Dingell died earlier this year. He announced his retirement from Congress in 2014 after serving his district, just outside of Detroit, for 59 years. Ms. Dingell was elected to his seat. It was a message of solidarity sent after President Trump had mocked Ms. Dingell (“You know Dingell? You ever hear of her, Michigan? Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty.”) and implied that her husband — John D. Dingell Jr., the former Michigan congressman who died in February — was “looking up” from hell. Ms. McCain’s own husband has been the object of relentless presidential attacks since he died.
The president’s decision to go after the Dingells, a long-respected political family in Michigan — a key state in the upcoming presidential election — struck a familiar tone. Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked Senator John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona, for months after his death in 2018. In an interview on Thursday, hours after Mr. Trump became the third president in history to be impeached — an outcome she voted for — Ms. Dingell said that her husband “was never afraid to fight for what was right” but that the president’s remarks about him had cut deep.
The president’s bit did not go over well at the rally where the crowd was heard booing after his swipe at Mr. Dingell. “He hurt me,” Ms. Dingell said. “I think there’s some things that should be off limits.”
After complaining about the hypocrisy he faces in Washington, Mr. Trump described the respect he displayed for Mr. Dingell after he died, offering accounts of reverent gestures he made that in some cases, according to Ms. Dingell, were inaccurate. Mr. Trump has freely and frequently brought the power of his office down on a variety of journalists, lawmakers, Foreign Service officers and members of the military he has seen as standing in his way.
Mr. Trump said Ms. Dingell called him and thanked him profusely for steps he took to honor her husband and recalled that she said her husband would be thrilled as he looked down and saw how the country was honoring him. But Ms. Dingell is now joining the ranks of a more select group that includes the McCains and a Gold Star military family, who have suffered profound loss only to see it mocked and used as political ammunition by the president.
“Maybe he’s looking up,” Mr. Trump said during the rally. “I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe. Maybe. But let’s assume he’s looking down.” Ms. Dingell said on Thursday that she was still grieving the loss of her husband, who was the longest-serving congressman in American history. He retired from Congress in 2014 after serving his district, just outside Detroit, for 59 years. His wife, who now holds his seat, called for civility as she faced her first Christmas in 38 years without her husband.
In an opinion piece published Tuesday, Ms. Dingell explained why she planned to vote to impeach Mr. Trump. “If anything good comes out of this,” Ms. Dingell said, “maybe people will take a deep breath and think about it.”
“If we don’t address this abuse of power, we abdicate our constitutional and moral responsibility,” she wrote. “Failing to address it would also condone these actions as acceptable for future administrations.” But Mr. Trump is not prone to contemplation. At his rally on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump was speaking off the cuff to supporters as he called out Democrats like Ms. Dingell, who had voted in favor of the two articles of impeachment against him. But the president singled her out because she had done so after he approved an “A-plus treatment” for her husband’s burial.
The president’s two-hour speech began as Ms. Dingell and most other Democrats were voting to impeach Mr. Trump. Ms. Dingell’s vote appeared to surprise the president, who described how grateful she was for the tributes he had paid to Mr. Dingell. “So she calls me up: ‘It’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened; thank you so much,’” Mr. Trump said at the rally, mocking the congresswoman’s voice while recounting their call. He suggested that Ms. Dingell had begged for him to lower American flags to half-staff and, apparently impersonating her, said: “Do this, do that, do that. Rotunda.”
Ms. Dingell responded on Twitter on Wednesday and asked the president to “set politics aside.” Mr. Dingell did not lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda — Ms. Dingell said on Thursday that that had not been one of his requests. Still, Mr. Trump said Ms. Dingell had said her husband would be thrilled as he looked down and saw how the country was honoring him.
“I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love,” she wrote. “You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.” “Maybe he’s looking up,” Mr. Trump said at one point. “I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe. Maybe. But let’s assume he’s looking down.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that there was nothing funny about what Mr. Trump said. Ms. Dingell said the president had ordered American flags lowered, but beyond that, Mr. Dingell’s military service in World War II made him eligible for the only request he had made, which was to be buried at Arlington National Ceremony. At the time, she said, she had welcomed the president’s call — emphasizing that he called her.
“What the president misunderstands is that cruelty is not wit,” she said. “It’s not funny at all, it’s very sad.” “He was very kind,” Ms. Dingell said. “He had told me that he heard he was a great man and I thought it was very thoughtful for him to call at a time when I was really grieving.”
Two Republican representatives from Michigan called on Mr. Trump to apologize for what he said about Mr. Dingell. But Mr. Trump’s public remarks about their exchange were condemned by both Republicans — including Representative Fred Upton, who faces re-election next year in Michigan — and Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading 2020 candidate whose own political life has been punctuated by loss.
“To use his name in such a dishonorable manner at last night’s rally is unacceptable from anyone, let alone the president of the United States. An apology is due, Mr. President,” Representative Paul Mitchell said on Thursday. “This is equally as cruel as it is pathetic,” Mr. Biden, whose son Beau died in 2015, said on Twitter, “and it is beyond unconscionable that our President would behave this way.”
His colleague, Representative Fred Upton, said, “There was no need to ‘dis’ him in a crass political way.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has also been called “crazy” and “nervous” by Mr. Trump as she steered her caucus toward impeachment, said there was nothing funny about what Mr. Trump said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a staunch Trump defender most of the time, said he had not seen the president’s comments but, “If he said that, I think he should apologize.” “What the president misunderstands is that cruelty is not wit,” she said. “It’s not funny at all. It’s very sad.”
Asked about the remarks, a White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, said Thursday that Mr. Trump respected Mr. Dingell’s military service and decades in Congress, and it was because of his respect that the president lowered the flags after he died. Mr. Upton, a close friend of Mr. Dingell’s who delivered a eulogy for him, called on the president to apologize, and said on Twitter, “There was no need to ‘dis’ him in a crass political way.”
“He appreciates her and him,” Mr. Gidley said on Fox Business. “And you know, your heart goes out to her for her loss. There’s no question about that.” Representative Paul Mitchell, another Michigan Republican, also said the president’s comments warranted an apology. “To use his name in such a dishonorable manner at last night’s rally is unacceptable from anyone, let alone the president of the United States,” he said. “An apology is due, Mr. President.”
The president is a “counterpuncher,” he added, and then conceded that Ms. Dingell had not thrown a punch his way. The Trump campaign had no comment about whether the president’s comments could affect his political fortunes in Michigan, a state he narrowly won in 2016. Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, also sidestepped the question.
On Thursday, Ms. Dingell said the country should take a lesson from the president’s comments. “We need more civility in this country,” she said on CNN. And in an interview with Fox Business, she recognized the gravity of the vote to impeach the president for just the third time in the country’s history. “I have great respect for the Dingells’ decades of service to the state of Michigan and I’m very sorry for Representative Debbie Dingell’s loss,” Ms. McDaniel said in a statement. “I was glad to see the late Representative John Dingell honored so highly by the president when he passed away.”
“Yesterday was a very difficult day for this democracy,” she said. “And I think we know that.” As the criticism mounted, the White House did not apologize and instead suggested that the public consider how Mr. Trump might feel about being impeached.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Katie Rogers contributed reporting. “He has been under attack, and under impeachment attack, for the last few months, and then just under attack politically for the last two and a half years,” Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said in an interview with ABC on Thursday. “I think that as we all know, the president is a counterpuncher.”
She declined to explain how Mr. Dingell, who died 10 months ago, had thrown the first punch.
The president’s rough comments on his adversaries have earned him condemnation from grieving families before. In 2016, Mr. Trump criticized the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, who had denounced the president during the Democratic National Convention. Mr. Trump said Captain Khan’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak.
Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, said he felt a sense of recognition when he heard that Mr. Trump had mocked the Dingell family.
“All three of them have served this nation and they have passed,” Mr. Khan said of his son, Mr. Dingell and Mr. McCain. “They deserve to be respected.”
Mr. Trump has particularly fixated on Mr. McCain, who died in 2018 from complications from brain cancer and, as he was dying, made plans to keep the president away from his funeral.
After Mr. McCain died, Mr. Trump waited days to issue a proclamation marking the senator’s death, relenting only under enormous pressure. He has repeatedly brought up Mr. McCain’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act at his political rallies. And when Mr. Trump traveled to Japan in May, the White House asked the Navy to hide a destroyer named after Mr. McCain during the president’s visit to Yokosuka Naval Base.
The senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain, offered her own sharp criticism on Thursday.
“The comments from Trump about Rep Dingell is utterly sick and cruel,” Ms. McCain said on Twitter. “Take heed in knowing he only attacks people for whom he is threatened by their great legacies. History will forever judge him very harshly.”
The McCain family declined to comment further. But for her part, Ms. Dingell said she did not want the president to call her again, even if he had an apology.
“No,” Ms. Dingell said. “He’s taken his shot.”
Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.