From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, for the past week, the new cycle has been consumed by a back and forth between the president and the widow of a US soldier killed in Niger.

But lost in the controversy is what actually happened in Niger. And a Republican senator delivers an impassioned rebuke of the president and quits the 2018 election.

It's Wednesday, October 25th.

Thank you very much. I just want to say that we just spent quite a bit of time inside with the Senate Majority Leader.

On Monday of last week, after a joint appearance with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Trump took questions from reporters in the White House Rose Garden.

Why haven't we heard anything from the US like our back of the soldiers that were killed in Niger and what can we have to say to them?

I've written them personal letters. They've been sent or they're going out tonight, but they were in during the weekend.

The president didn't answer by addressing the circumstances surrounding the soldier's death, but instead turned the question to whether he would reach out to the soldier's families.

It's the toughest calls I have to make. Are the calls where this happens, soldiers are killed. It's a very difficult thing.

Now, it gets to a point where you make four or five of them in one day is a very, very tough day. For me, that's by far the toughest.

So the traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls. A lot of them didn't make calls.

I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it.

That kicked off more than a week of back and forth between President Trump, soldiers, families, members of Congress, the president's own chief of staff and the media, but largely ignored what had been the original question of what happened in Niger.

So, Helene Cooper, what did we know about what happened in Niger when President Trump was asked about it in the Rose Garden that day last week?

Well, at the point last week that President Trump addressed this, it was already two weeks after the initial attack that happened on October 3rd.

At that point, we knew that there were four American service members who had been killed. We had initially thought that there were only three, but then we found out later that Sergeant LeDavid Johnson, who had originally been listed as missing. His remains were found.

So why were people starting to ask questions about this incident in Niger, Helene last week?

Because we haven't gotten a straight story yet about what happened.

And we begin tonight with a story that wasn't a story until Donald Trump made it one. It's actually more than that by now.

It's deeply disturbing to most folks because President Trump got that question in the Rose Garden and then started talking about President Obama not calling family members in President Bush.

Even in the face of mounting criticism, President Trump today defended his claim that other presidents, including President Obama, did not personally call the grieving families of fallen soldiers.

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