One benefit of never admitting you lost a presidential election -- even though, of course, you did -- is that you can just keep on acting like the president.

That's exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do these days, overseeing a sort of shadow presidency for the base of the Republican Party in which Covid-19 isn't that big of a problem, the 2020 election was stolen and he was right about, well, everything else too.

The latest example of Trump's shadow presidency came Wednesday, when The Washington Post reported that Trump had spoken with several of the family members of those killed by a suicide bomber in the final days of American military involvement in Afghanistan.

Those calls follow hard on considerable controversy over President Joe Biden's visit to Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer of the bodies of the 13 American military members killed in the bombing. Several families refused to meet with Biden while others were confrontational with the president over his decision to end the war in Afghanistan after 20 years of American occupation.

As the Post reported about the calls the former president has been making:

"Trump has criticized the way the Afghanistan withdrawal was handled, telling at least one family that he did not understand why Biden pulled the military out of the country before getting all the civilians out, according to people familiar with the calls who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of private discussions.

"Trump has been briefed recently by former officials, including former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, about what he did in Afghanistan as president and what they viewed as missteps by the Biden administration, advisers said."

Trump even sent out a statement -- via his Save America PAC -- from the mother of one of the soldiers killed in the bombing in which she suggested that her son "was murdered for Biden optics."

It's hard to overstate what a break that sort of behavior is from the way past presidents have comported themselves after leaving office.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/09/politics/donald-trump-13-military-members-killed-afghanistan/index.html