3 F'ing things. First, there's an old saying in the Army...

[davsand]

50. He had several days to formulate an idea of what to say to that family.

It isn't like he got handed the phone and had to make that call. He had quite a while to come up with something to say and never did it. He's not terribly bright nor is he quick on his feet mentally. He can always formulate an attack or a deflection (Look! It's Haley's Comet!) but he never quite manages to pull off a sympathetic or even normal human response when he needs to. Appearing human is tough for him. The rest of the planet has the ability to offer up at least a minimally sympathetic response to loss in the form of an I'm sorry to hear of your loss, or My deepest sympathies to you, but that is clearly beyond his ability.

Something else at work here is that he's not terribly bright. By all accounts, Kelly fed him a reasonable and fairly respectable response to use and all he could manage was a couple phrases from that. Sadly, what he did manage to retain was not the comforting part of Kelly's instructions, but given his own lack of compassion it was slightly more defensible than his own words probably would have been. Remember, Kelly originally suggested trump NOT call, and given past attempts at letting the rotting mango out without a script, a teleprompter, and a leash, it is pretty easy to see why.

Just my opinion here, but I honestly think he's a sociopath and he's stupid along with it. That's dangerous in combination.



Laura