Former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday disputed President Donald Trump's claim that previous presidents, including Barack Obama, didn't contact families of slain soldiers as much as Trump does.
Biden told NBC10 that he and Obama regularly spent holidays with Gold Star families, so-named for the medal given posthumously to American military members killed in combat.
"I spent every Christmas Day at Walter Reed (National Military Medical Center)," Biden said following an event at the University of Delaware. "The president went over regularly. Every Thanksgiving I had the families come and have Thanksgiving dinner at my home."
Biden was responding to Trump's Monday claim that he does more than previous presidents in reaching out to families.
The claim came in Trump's first public remarks about the deaths of four special forces soldiers during an operation in Niger. Noting that he would soon reach out to the soldiers' families, he added that he didn't think previous presidents did as much outreach as him.
"Other presidents did not call, they would write letters, and some presidents didn't do anything," Trump claimed Monday in his first public remarks about an Oct. 4 special forces operation in Niger where four soldiers were killed.
When pressed on that assertion by reporters, he said he had heard it.
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"Most of them didn't make calls," he claimed of his predecessors. He said it's possible that Obama "did sometimes" but "other presidents did not call."
On Tuesday morning, he talked more about the claim.
"I think I've called every family of someone who's died," Trump told Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade. "As far as other representatives, I don't know."
But Biden overall remains befuddled by Trump's comments.
"Look I can't explain President Trump," he said.
