[guest post by Dana]

President Trump is in the news today for having made a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq:

In typical fashion, a big media outlet jumped the gun because Trump. NBC published this headline on Christmas day:

Trump becomes first president since 2002 not to visit troops at Christmastime

As of today, NBC has not corrected the headline. However, there is now an editor’s note published ahead of the report:

Editor’s note: On Wednesday, a day after this article was published, President Trump made a surprise visit to Iraq to greet U.S. troops. It was his first presidential visit to a combat zone.

From NBC’s report:

On Christmas Day, President Donald Trump took part in a long-running practice of presidents who called troops stationed around the country and the world.

But he broke from a recent tradition of actually visiting troops and wounded warriors. He did so in 2017, when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Dec. 21 (and invited Coast Guard service members to play golf at his course in West Palm Beach, Florida).

By staying home on Tuesday, Trump became the first president since 2002 who didn’t visit military personnel around Christmastime.

Interestingly, White House correspondent at NBC News Kelly O’Donnell tweeted that no details of the trip had been released to the public, which is standard practice due to security reasons. She also noted that back in November, President Trump alluded to an upcoming trip to visit the troops:

NBC wasn’t alone:

I’m sure there are more out there, but you get the point.

Honestly, I don’t get why this is even an issue to jump on. But everything these days is when it involves Trump. And let’s face it, he gives everyone a lot to work with. So he went to visit the troops, that doesn’t make him a saint. Trump is still Trump. But. Who is anyone to criticize that which bolsters the morale of American men and women serving our country thousands of miles from home? Shouldn’t that be something we universally cheer on, regardless of which president made the trip? This seems like such a no-brainer to me. Apparently, the go-to comeback to news that the president did indeed visit the troops at Christmastime is that he was shamed into it. I say, so what? It seems ludicrous to me that troops missing their families back home really care about anyone scoring political points, or pundits smugly gloating, But he was shamed into it! Certainly our deployed troops have far more pressing matters with which to be concerned.

You’d think politics could be damned for just one brief moment, but apparently not. More’s the pity.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana