Two empty chairs at two dinner tables. Two families getting the kind of phone call every parent prays they never receive. That’s where this story begins—not in a press room, not on a campaign stage, but in living rooms shattered by grief.

Two young members of the National Guard were killed while wearing the uniform of the United States, doing what so few are willing to do: serve and protect. In moments like this, the country usually stops. Flags dip. Voices soften. Politics pauses—at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

But this time, it didn’t.

Before the pain could even fully reach the families, before their names could be properly honored, the tragedy was dragged under the harsh spotlight of partisan warfare. Instead of leading with consolation, Donald Trump stepped to the microphone and did something else: he pointed a finger.

He didn’t just criticize policy. He explicitly blamed the previous administration—Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—for the deaths of those soldiers. He told the country that their blood was on the hands of the people who came before him in office. And in the same breath, he used that claim to justify something huge: a freeze on asylum. A shutdown of hope for thousands seeking safety through legal channels.

That’s not just a political jab. It’s a story he’s trying to make the country believe.

Because once you say “they have blood on their hands,” you’re not just disagreeing with someone. You’re turning them into villains in a national tragedy. You’re telling millions of Americans who voted for those leaders that they are somehow complicit in the chaos. You are weaponizing grief.

Obama, reflecting on that response, warned that this isn’t just another partisan skirmish—it’s a warning sign about the soul of the country. He knows what those days feel like from the inside. As president, the worst moments were the briefings about fallen service members. Those were the days when the flag didn’t feel like a symbol—it felt like a weight.

In those moments, the job of a president is not to inflame. It’s to comfort. To steady the ship, not rock it for ratings.

Trump did the opposite.

Instead of leading a mourning nation, he turned a specific act of violence into a justification to slam the door on asylum seekers, to revive the “open borders” slogan, to feed a narrative that kindness equals weakness and compassion equals danger. It wasn’t about solutions. It was about fear.

And fear is powerful.

By tying the shooting directly to Biden–Harris policies, Trump wasn’t just blaming two politicians—he was selling a simple, emotionally loaded story: If you care about asylum, you don’t care about safety. If you supported them, you helped cause this. That isn’t leadership. That’s division as a strategy.

It also ignores the basic truth: the villain in this story is the person who pulled the trigger, the criminal who committed the act. But in the rush to point at “open borders,” asylum, and the previous administration, that fact gets blurred. Instead of focusing on how to catch criminals, improve security, and support the families, the energy is redirected toward punishing people who followed the law and sought legal refuge.

That’s not security. That’s collective punishment.

Freezing asylum doesn’t stop criminals; criminals don’t fill out asylum forms and patiently wait in line. It punishes those trying to do it the right way—families fleeing violence, mothers carrying children across hellish journeys, people who desperately hope America still stands for something better. It’s a reaction that sounds “tough” on TV, but does nothing to fix the underlying problem.

And while this plays out on screens, the most important people in this story—the fallen Guard members and their families—start to disappear from the narrative. Their names become background noise in a shouting match. Their sacrifice turns into a backdrop for talking points and slogans.

They deserved better than that. So did the country.

Obama’s deeper warning is about what happens when this becomes normal—when every tragedy is instantly converted into a partisan weapon. If we accept that, then nuance dies. Middle ground disappears. Saying “We need to be safe and fair” becomes suspicious. Compassion is repackaged as weakness, and any attempt to see complexity is treated as betrayal.

That’s how you turn neighbors into enemies.

When Trump tells the country that Biden and Harris have “blood on their hands,” he’s not just critiquing policy. He’s telling millions of people that the leaders they chose are not just wrong—but morally corrupt, complicit in murder. That’s not debate. That’s demonization. And once you start seeing your political opponents as murderers rather than opponents, democracy stops being a contest of ideas and starts becoming a cold civil war of identities.

Meanwhile, the families of the fallen still have two empty chairs at their tables.

They should be hearing about their loved ones’ bravery. Instead, they hear their loss being used to sell an asylum freeze. They see their children’s memory tied to a narrative that says America must slam the door shut to prove it’s strong.

And then there’s the message to the world.

For generations, the United States held itself up as a place where laws and compassion worked together—where you could protect your people and still welcome the persecuted, where the Statue of Liberty’s promise actually meant something. When a president responds to tragedy by effectively saying, “We’re scared, we’re closed, blame them,” it doesn’t make the country look strong. It makes it look small.

In Obama’s view, true strength is something else entirely: staying calm when the pressure is suffocating, taking responsibility when something goes wrong on your watch, and refusing to turn grief into a campaign prop. Harry Truman kept a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.” Today’s politics sometimes feel more like: the blame goes anywhere but here.

That’s not the standard we teach our kids. And it shouldn’t be the standard we accept from the Oval Office.

So the real test isn’t just about border policy or asylum procedures. It’s about us. Are we going to let fear dictate the story of who we are? Are we going to accept that every loss, every tragedy, is just another chance to hurt the “other side”? Or are we willing to demand something better—a politics that honors the dead by uniting the living?

Because at the end of the day, those two empty chairs aren’t red or blue. They’re American.
And the question is whether our response will be worthy of their sacrifice—or just another round of blame in an endless, exhausting fight.