Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump sent a $25,000 personal check to the family of a fallen soldier the same day that The Washington Post reported that he had promised the soldier's father a personal donation during a June condolence call but never followed through. 
 
 A White House official confirms to CNN that the President sent a personal check Wednesday to the family of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge Wednesday. Baldridge, 22, was killed in June by an Afghan police officer 
 
 "The check has been sent," Lindsay Walters, White House spokeswoman, told CNN on Wednesday. "It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda." 
 
 White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told CNN that it was a personal check from Trump. 
 
 The timing of Trump's donation raised questions because the Post reported Wednesday that White House official initially declined to discuss the events in detail but later told them the check had been sent. 
 
 "'I'm going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,' and I was just floored," Baldridge told the Post of his conversation with Trump. "I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, 'No other president has ever done something like this,' but he said, 'I'm going to do it. " 
 
 A White House spokesperson, speaking on background, said the check has been "in the pipeline" since the President's conversation with the father. 
 
 "The President has personally followed up several times to ensure that the check was being sent. As stated earlier the check has been sent," the spokesperson said. 
 
 When asked why it took so long for the funds to be sent, the spokesperson added: "There is a substantial process that can involve multiple agencies anytime the President interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds. In this situation there were other agencies involved." 
 
 The spokesperson did not say which agencies were involved or elaborate on the process. 
 
 Knowledge of Trump's pledge to Baldridge comes amid the ongoing flap about how presidents handle condolence calls to families of those killed in action and Trump's feud with a Democratic congresswoman over his call with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed earlier this month in Niger. 
 
 Trump called Myeshia Johnson on Tuesday and, according to Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, the President said that the serviceman killed "knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt." 
 
 Trump denied that he ever said that. 
 
 "I didn't say what that congresswoman said. Didn't say it at all," Trump told reporters during a Wednesday meeting on tax reform in the Cabinet Room. "She knows it. And she now is not saying it. I did not say what she said." 
 
 At the same time, the White House is dealing with Trump stating that President Barack Obama didn't call all the families those killed during his presidency and suggesting that reporters ask his chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, whether Obama called him after his son died in Afghanistan. 
 
 Kelly's son Robert died when he stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan in 2010. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, was a lieutenant general at the time. ||||| FILE - In this Oct. 29, 2009, file photo President Barack Obama, right, salutes as an Army carry team carries the transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., during... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Oct. 29, 2009, file photo President Barack Obama, right, salutes as an Army carry team carries the transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., during a casualty return at Dover Air Force Base, Del. President Donald Trump is claiming his predecessors... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — After her Army son died in an armored vehicle rollover in Syria in May, Sheila Murphy says, she got no call or letter from President Donald Trump, even as she waited months for his condolences, wrote to him to say "some days I don't want to live," and still heard nothing. 
 
 In contrast, Trump called to comfort Eddie and Aldene Lee about 10 days after their Army son was killed in an explosion while on patrol in Iraq in April. "Lovely young man," Trump said, according to Aldene. She thought that was a beautiful word to hear about her boy, "lovely." 
 
 Like presidents before him, Trump has made personal contact with some families of the fallen, not all. What's different is that Trump, alone among them, has picked a political fight over who's done better to honor the war dead and their families. 
 
 He placed himself at the top of this pantheon, boasting Tuesday that "I think I've called every family of someone who's died" while past presidents didn't place such calls. 
 
 But The Associated Press found relatives of two soldiers who died overseas during Trump's presidency who said they never received a call or a letter from him, as well as relatives of a third who did not get a call. And proof is plentiful that Barack Obama and George W. Bush — saddled with far more combat casualties than the roughly two dozen so far under Trump, took painstaking steps to write, call or meet bereaved military families. 
 
 The subject arose because nearly two weeks passed before Trump called the families of four U.S. soldiers who were killed in Niger nearly two weeks ago. He made the calls Tuesday. 
 
 Meanwhile, Rep. Frederica Wilson said late Tuesday that Trump told the widow of a slain soldier that he "knew what he signed up for." 
 
 The Florida Democrat said she was in the car with Myeshia Johnson on the way to Miami International Airport to meet the body of Johnson's husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called. Wilson says she heard part of the conversation on speakerphone. 
 
 When asked by Miami station WPLG if she indeed heard Trump say that she answered: "Yeah, he said that. To me, that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn't say that to a grieving widow." She added: "That's so insensitive." 
 
 Sgt. Johnson was among four servicemen killed in the Niger ambush. 
 
 Wilson said that she didn't hear the entire conversation and Myeshia Johnson told her she couldn't remember everything that was said. 
 
 The White House didn't immediately comment 
 
 Trump's delay in publicly discussing the men lost at Niger did not appear to be extraordinary, judging from past examples, but his politicization of the matter is. He went so far Tuesday as to cite the death of chief of staff John Kelly's son in Afghanistan to question whether Obama had properly honored the war dead. 
 
 Kelly was a Marine general under Obama when his Marine son Robert died in 2010. "You could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?" Trump said on Fox News radio. 
 
 Democrats and some former government officials were livid, accusing Trump of "inane cruelty" and a "sick game." 
 
 Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq veteran who lost both legs when her helicopter was attacked, said: "I just wish that this commander in chief would stop using Gold Star families as pawns in whatever sick game he's trying to play here." 
 
 For their part, Gold Star families, which have lost members in wartime, told AP of acts of intimate kindness from Obama and Bush when those commanders in chief consoled them. 
 
 Trump initially claimed that only he among presidents made sure to call families. Obama may have done so on occasion, he said, but "other presidents did not call." 
 
 He equivocated Tuesday as the record made plain that his characterization was false. "I don't know," he said of past calls. But he said his own practice was to call all families of the war dead. 
 
 But that hasn't happened: 
 
 No White House protocol demands that presidents speak or meet with the families of Americans killed in action — an impossible task in a war's bloodiest stages. But they often do. 
 
 Altogether some 6,900 Americans have been killed in overseas wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the overwhelming majority under Bush and Obama. 
 
 Despite the much heavier toll on his watch — more than 800 dead each year from 2004 through 2007 — Bush wrote to all bereaved military families and met or spoke with hundreds if not thousands, said his spokesman, Freddy Ford. 
 
 Veterans groups said they had no quarrel with how presidents have recognized the fallen or their families. 
 
 "I don't think there is any president I know of who hasn't called families," said Rick Weidman, co-founder and executive director of Vietnam Veterans of America. "President Obama called often and President Bush called often. They also made regular visits to Walter Reed and Bethesda Medical Center, going in the evenings and on Saturdays." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kristen de Groot in Philadelphia, Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, and Hope Yen and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.
– The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan in June says he was "floored" when President Trump promised to write him a check for $25,000—but it never arrived. Chris Baldridge tells the Washington Post that when Trump called a few weeks after his son, Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge was killed, he told the president that he and his wife were struggling to deal with the fact that their son and two others were killed by a rogue Afghan police officer instead of in battle. Baldridge, a construction worker in North Carolina, says Trump offered him $25,000 after he complained that his son's $100,000 death benefit would go to his ex-wife instead of his parents, even though he can "barely rub two nickels" together. "He said, 'I'm going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,' and I was just floored," Baldridge says. "He said, 'No other president has ever done something like this.'" But no check arrived in the following months, and Baldridge says Trump also failed to follow through on a promise to have his staff set up an online fundraiser. CNN reports that when asked about Baldridge's case Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the check "has been sent." "It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the president, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda," she said. (Trump is feuding with another Gold Star family.)