I was actually, genuinely, hoping I wasn’t asked to write about this, because it’s just so sickening.

If you haven’t been following this one at all, British teen Harry Dunn was killed when a vehicle driven by Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat working in the UK, struck him.

Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road at the time that her vehicle struck Dunn on his motorbike, on August 27, and she left the country shortly afterwards.

She has claimed diplomatic immunity from prosecution and refuses to return to the UK to face charges.

How did President Donald Trump react initially? Well, here’s his reaction a week ago:

That can happen! The opposite side of the road and all, you know?

All of that is bad enough, but then we move on to how he tried to get Harry’s parents to meet with Sacoolas – without having asked any form of permission.

Over to the Daily Beast:

The Dunn family, now in the United States to drum up support to send Sacoolas back to the U.K. to face justice, had accepted an “urgent” invitation by the White House from National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, to visit Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night…

Trump, it seems, thought he could convince the Dunns to meet the woman who killed their son, and would do so by opening a side door through which she would walk. The whole scene would be captured by a pool of photographers who had been summoned for the meeting, a family spokesman charged.

But the Dunns would have none of it and refused to meet her. Dunn family spokesman Radd Seiger said that the family felt “ambushed” when the “bombshell” was dropped that Sacoolas was next door.

They had envisioned meeting her one day, but as Seiger told The Daily Beast, “only on British soil” and “only with mediators, counselors, and their legal team in tow.”

Imagine springing the news on two grieving parents that the person responsible for their son’s death is on the other side of a door, and setting up a pool of photographers to capture the moment.

Imagine doing so without as much as an iota of consideration for the parents, or any form of consent to try and engineer such a meeting.

Then again, we know Donald has a long-standing problem with the idea of consent.

Dunn’s father Tim had suggested on CBS News earlier in the day that he would like to meet the president “man to man, father to father” to plead with him to send Sacoolas back to face justice…

The Dunn family blames National Security Adviser O’Brien for the misstep. “It struck us that this meeting was hastily arranged by nincompoops on the run and in particular Mr. O’Brien, who appeared to be extremely uptight and aggressive and did not come across at all well in this meeting which required careful handling and sensitivity,” Seiger wrote. “The family remain open to the possibility of meeting Mrs. Sacoolas one day in the future but in a neutral and appropriately controlled environment.”

The Dunn family actually had some kind words for Trump, saying that he had been “quite respondent” to the family’s grief during their meeting.

I would guess they did so because they know that ultimately, Trump is their only chance of seeing any justice done. If he chooses to uphold Sacoolas’ diplomatic immunity, she can never be prosecuted for taking their child’s life.

Donald, on the other hand, probably thought he was teeing up a Nobel Peace Prize-winning moment.

We know how much he loves those. Remember this from the Oval Office, when he met with Nadia Murad, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018?

Skip ahead to the 2:30 mark, where she details how her family was murdered, and Trump offers his heartfelt condolences:

His takeaway here is asking why they gave her the Nobel Peace Prize.

The man knows no empathy.

[source:dailybeast]