On to the controversial part: Spc Guillen's murder.
First, a quick cast of characters who are involved:
Mayra Guillen: The victims sister (the only member of her family to speak publicly regarding the article to my knowledge)
Natalie Khawam: Lawyer representing the family
Mark Meadows: White House Chief of Staff at the end of the Trump admin
Alex Pfeiffer: Trump spokesperson
Chris Miller: Acting SecDef
Kash Patel: Chief of Staff for Miller
Theo Wold: Spanish/English translator present for the Guillen family visit as her parents' first language is spanish and their english is limited
Okay, so the main claims made that has Trump world's panties in a twist is this:
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So Meadows has issues a direct denial, which is obviously important. You can make the determination for yourself whether he's telling the truth but he was specifically mentioned as being in the room and part of the conversation with Trump. Kash Patel was also allegedly present and he issued a denial through Pfeiffer as well.
The victim's sister and the translator have both issued statements defending Trump:
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But, kind of crucially with those two, there's no mention of them specifically being in the meeting where Trump allegedly asked about the cost and got angry. There's no reason to expect either of them to have been in the room for that, so from their standpoint I have no doubt that they're sincere and just relaying the events they were a part of. Wold is a maga guy and Guillen family was happy that Vanessa was being honoured. Again, Goldberg is relaying what a 1st hand witness is claiming to have seen and heard.
The 2nd main part is that Trump offered to pay for the funeral but then didn't pay:
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So, Khawam posted a pretty strong tweet about this:
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But she never specifically states what Goldberg (or his source) is lying about or what Goldberg is misrepping in their conversation.
But there appears to be no proof that Goldberg is wrong in stating that the funeral was paid for by a combination of the military and family donations (which raised 362K)
https://www.gofundme.com/f/pfc-vanessa-guillen-missing
A bunch of news outlets (including Newsweek:
https://www.newsweek.com/did-trump-snub-soldier-bill-vanessa-guillen-funeral-cost-1973432) have reached out to Khawam and Pfeiffer for details on whether Trump or his white house paid and they haven't received a response yet but all current information suggests that they didn't. So while I don't blame Khawam for being angry at the timing of the article, she's just repping her clients interests here. But she doesn't seem to state where Goldberg's piece is inaccurate or where the lie is.
So this boils down to two things:
- The "fucking mexican" bit and being angry about a 60K funeral: Without a better understanding of who the source is, I get being skeptical here though nothing Trump has done in his entire life makes me question whether he's capable of being angry about being charged 60K to bury a soldier and whether or not he would use racially charged language. There's simply too many examples of him being a fucking racist to think it's not possible.
- Trump offered to pay for a funeral and didn't even after the lawyer sent the bill: I mean, evidence either exists that it got paid for or it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be any dispute that he offered this to the family with other people present
