PBS高端访谈:特朗普承诺给阵亡将士的父亲金钱补偿

　　Army Corporal Dillon Baldridge was killed in Afghanistan in June. He and two fellow soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan police officer suspected of an insider attack.

　　Baldridge's father was disturbed by the details of his son's death and expressed that to President Trump¹ in a phone call.

　　Mr. Trump then apparently² took an unusual step for a commander in chief: He offered money.

　　Dan Lamothe helped break that story for The Washington Post, joins me now.

　　Thanks for joining us. So, how did this phone call go?

　　Yes, so several weeks after the soldier's death, the president made a call to North Carolina, where the father lives.

　　They had a conversation that the father describes mostly as respectful.

　　The father expressed some frustration³ with the way that the death gratuity⁴, basically a benefit that the family received, was going to his ex-wife, rather than some part to him.

　　And the president's response caught him by surprise. He said, well, I'm going to make sure we write you a $25,000 check, you know, basically for your troubles.

　　And did that check ever arrive? The White House said that they sent it late today.

　　Yes, so we reached out this morning and received no response for several hours.

　　As of today, the father had not received a check, so the assumption here would be that the check had not been sent until we reached out to the White House this morning to verify this father's report.

　　And you discovered this conversation in -- kind of the story has a larger context.

　　You reached out to several different families, Gold Star families, for what happened after their family member died.

　　Yes. I mean, we have got this larger conversation this week. It's a very sensitive, very politically charged conversation.

　　And at the center of it are grieving families. So, we thought it was important to reach out to those grieving families.

　　Some of them, obviously and understandably, did not want to speak to us, but quite a few of them did.

　　And we found that about half of the ones we reached -- we reached 13 different families that had lost loved ones since Trump became president -- and half of them had received calls from the president.

　　Half of them had not. The majority of the ones who had not were upset when they heard his comments earlier this week that he had called out -- called all of them.

　　And there was even some families or at least one family that had not received anything, no phone call or even a letter.

　　Right. And you wonder what's going on there, because that is something that is typically just generated.

　　There are form letters of sorts that the president then signs. There was a time during the height of the Iraq War when we had hundreds of American casualties per month.

　　We're now looking at something on the order of several dozen this year, so it's a much smaller amount.

　　So for this to slip through the cracks at this point is very much a surprise.

　　How different is this from -- when you say logistically,

　　when you think about the number of casualties that were happening in the middle or the height of the Iraq War or the Afghanistan conflict,

　　how different is this time period than what perhaps President Bush or President Obama was dealing⁵ with?

　　It's an order of magnitude smaller. At the height of the Afghan war, we were talking something on the order of 400 or 500 American fatalities⁶ per year in combat.

　　At the height of the Iraq War, we were talking several hundred per month.

　　So, at this point, we do have casualties. Each one is sad, but it's a much smaller number. And for the White House to have not kept up was a surprise.

　　Already, Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. undefined

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

3 frustration   

n.挫折，失败，失效，落空

参考例句：

• He had to fight back tears of frustration.他不得不强忍住失意的泪水。
• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration.他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。

4 gratuity   

n.赏钱，小费

参考例句：

• The porter expects a gratuity.行李员想要小费。
• Gratuity is customary in this money-mad metropolis.在这个金钱至上的大都市里，给小费是司空见惯的。

5 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

6 fatalities   

n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运

参考例句：

• Several people were injured, but there were no fatalities. 有几个人受伤，但没有人死亡。
• The accident resulted in fatalities. 那宗意外道致多人死亡。 来自《简明英汉词典》