By A recent report by The Atlantic claiming that former President Donald Trump refused to pay for Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen’s funeral and made derogatory comments about her ethnicity has been swiftly rejected by Guillen’s family and their attorney, according to a report by The New York Post.
The article, written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, alleges that Trump refused to cover the $60,000 funeral costs after Guillen’s brutal 2020 murder. According to the report, during a December 2020 Oval Office meeting, Trump reportedly told his aides, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f–king Mexican,” instructing then-chief of staff Mark Meadows not to pay the bill. This claim comes after Trump had allegedly promised the family financial support for the funeral.
Vanessa Guillen’s tragic murder at Fort Cavazos, Texas, sparked a nationwide outcry over the military’s handling of sexual harassment cases. The soldier was killed by fellow service member Aaron Robinson, whose girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, assisted in dismembering and hiding Guillen’s body. Aguilar was sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in the crime.
This is not the first time Goldberg has reported controversial statements allegedly made by Trump. In 2020, the editor claimed that Trump had referred to U.S. soldiers who died in battle as “suckers” and “losers” during a 2018 trip to France, which Trump and those in his administration have also denied.
However, both Mayra Guillen, Vanessa’s sister, and the family’s attorney, Natalie Khawam, vehemently dismissed the report.
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.
More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillen’s murder… for cheap political gain.
I would like to also point out that the timing of this “story” is quite suspicious, as this supposed conversation that Trump had would have occurred over 4 years ago!
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 Guillen bill too.
I’m grateful we were successful in getting bipartisan support of the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act, and because of everyone’s hard work and efforts our service members now have more protections and rights while serving our country.
Mayra Guillen voiced her frustration on Twitter, calling the article “hurtful and disrespectful.” She criticized Goldberg for politicizing her sister’s death and emphasized that President Trump had shown her family respect.
Wow.
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. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today. https://t.co/o8cDrKOKBV— Mayra Guillen (@mguilen_) October 22, 2024
Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also denied the allegations, saying: “Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” adding that Trump was “nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family.”
Kamala Harris used the story, which again uses unnamed sources and has been denied by everyone involved, to attack Trump from the vice president’s residence, mumbling about the former president talking about Nazi generals over five years ago in an offhand comment to John Kelly, his then chief of staff.
Vice President Harris: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler…this is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best.” pic.twitter.com/WKu4xFXRl8
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 23, 2024
The move smelled of desperation from a candidate who seems to be giving up on the race, especially because the vice president focused on The Atlantic‘s rehashing of a tale told by Kelly two years ago.
On August 8, 2022, The Guardian wrote that “in an exchange with his then White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, Trump reportedly complained: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
Kelly asked which generals, prompting Trump to reply: ‘The German generals in World War II.'”
While Trump and Vance have been crisscrossing the country making their closing pitch, Harris has not been holding rallies, needing the time to prepare for interviews.
Harris: For the second day in a row, and with 13 days to go, zero rallies. Just travel and prep for a CNN appearance this evening. pic.twitter.com/DC9LBlJ858
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) October 23, 2024
Democrats have apparently decided to run the 2016 playbook again rather than offering a positive policy outlook that could deliver material benefits to Americans.
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