Donald Trump lied about consoling a Michigan homicide victim’s family

Former President Donald Trump angered the family of a Michigan homicide victim when he used her death to rile up supporters during a campaign rally on Tuesday in Grand Rapids.

At the rally, Trump said he had spoken to family members of Ruby Garcia, who was killed by her boyfriend on March 22. The suspect is a 25-year-old undocumented immigrant who came to the United States as a child. 

But Ruby Garcia’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told Grand Rapids  station WOOD TV8 that Trump never spoke to any members of her family.

“It was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Mavi Garcia said. “Shocking. I kind of stopped watching it. I’d only seen up to that, after I heard a couple of misinformations that he had said, I just stopped watching it.”

In addition to her anger about Trump’s lying about speaking with the family, Mavi Garcia said she was angry that he used her sister’s killing to gin up hate against immigrants. 

“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” she told the local news station. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like this?”

This is not the first time Trump has gotten into a dust-up with family or friends of those who have been killed.

In 2017, Florida U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson said Trump told the widow of American soldier La David Johnson, who was killed in action in Niger, that her husband “knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt.” 

“You know … that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn’t say that to a grieving widow,” Wilson told a CNN affiliate at the time of Trump’s comment. “Everyone knows when you go to war you could possibly not come back alive, but you don’t remind a grieving widow of that. That is so insensitive. So insensitive.”

Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, later spoke out, telling ABC News that Trump made her cry.

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” Johnson told ABC News.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump attacked Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim American soldier who was killed in the Iraq War in 2004. Khizr Khan spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, where he addressed Trump: “Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one.”

Trump lashed out at the Khans, questioning why Ghazala had appeared on stage at the DNC but had not spoken: “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.” Ghazala said later she did not speak because she would have been too emotional if an image of her late son had been shown.

Trump came under fire in January after a campaign rally in Iowa, where he mentioned a school shooting that took place on Jan. 4 in Perry, Iowa, in which the school’s principal and an 11-year-old student were killed.

“We have to get over it. We have to move forward,” Trump said. 

President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address in March slammed Trump for those comments.

“After another shooting in Iowa recently, he said — when asked what to do about it, he said, just ‘get over it.’ That was his quote. Just ‘get over it,'” Biden said. “I say stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it.”