WASHINGTON — I live near the studio, so on Thanksgiving, I agreed to do a hit on MSNBC since I could easily fit that in and be on time for a holiday dinner. I was surprised to see Rep. Debbie Dingell in the green room and wondered why the Michigan Democrat did not go home for the holiday.
Her husband, ex-Rep. John Dingell, was the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history. He died on Feb. 7 at the age of 92.
Dingell is still grieving.
I knew that because I run into her in the Capitol and read her poignant Facebook posts about plowing ahead as she grapples with John Dingell’s death.
We chatted.
The reason she stayed in D.C. over Thanksgiving, she told me, is that it was too painful to remain home.
She would rather be busy here, volunteering at a soup kitchen, filling some shifts as Speaker pro tempore for the day — technically keeping the House in session, even if only for a few minutes — and doing a few TV interviews.
With this background, consider how cruel President Donald Trump was on Wednesday night during a rally in Battle Creek, Mich., taking place as he became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
Trump suggested at that rally that John Dingell was in hell, as he taunted Debbie Dingell, who voted in favor of impeachment. “Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know,” Trump said.
Trump went on an incoherent rant, full of lies.
“You know Dingell? You ever hear of her, Michigan? Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty. So she calls me up like a month ago, her husband was there a long time but I didn’t give them the B treatment, I didn’t give him the C or the D, I could have ... I gave them the A-plus treatment, take down the flags. Why you are taking them down? For ex-Congressman Dingell. Oh, okay. Do this, do that, do that, rotunda, everything I gave them, that’s okay, I don’t want anything for it, I don’t need anything for anything.”
Fact check from Dingell’s office:
• Trump called her.
• John Dingell did not lie in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. The rotunda is under sole control of Congress. Trump has no power to order anything in the Capitol Rotunda.
The tributes would have flowed to John Dingell by virtue of his stature he earned as the longest serving member of Congress.
I talked to Dingell in the Capitol on Thursday about Trump’s attack.
“It hurt, I mean, I was sort of stunned that someone would do that. And — Thanksgiving was hard — and I’m having a hard time as we’re going into Christmas. I loved him. And there are a lot of memories and rituals and traditions that bring up those memories.
“… I’m not going to get into his head. I’m just — I think we need to put politics aside. ... It hurt.
“ … He called me and he was very kind. … He called to tell me the flags would be lowered at half mast. And he was very empathetic. The call did mean a lot. And I did thank him.”
Trump also attacked the late Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a Vietnam war hero.
Dingell told me McCain’s daughter, Meghan, reached out to her Thursday morning.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asked about this at a press conference Thursday, said, “What the president misunderstands is that cruelty is not wit. Just because he gets a laugh for saying the cruel things that he says doesn’t mean he’s funny. It’s not funny at all. It’s very sad.”
If cruelty were an impeachable offense, Trump would qualify for that charge, too.
