When a reporter asked this week what he had to say to the families of the nearly 100 Americans killed in the Ukraine war, President Trump managed barely a stammer of vague sympathy.
“It’s so sad that a thing like that would happen,” Trump, 79, said of the volunteers who died opposing a dictator he has too often praised and never forthrightly condemned for violating the principles of freedom and justice that made America great at its inception.
Trump allowed that “some are celebrated people, they’re very celebrated.” But to have named them would have been a step toward also naming what motivated them. And that would have also been a step toward naming the Russian leader responsible for the killing. Trump instead chose to once again speak fondly of Vladimir Putin.
Among the names we should all remember and celebrate is retired Chief Petty Officer Michael “Mike” Meoli. He grew up in Southern California and spent more than four decades as a U.S. Navy SEAL, firefighter/paramedic with the San Diego fire rescue, and the city’s police SWAT team. He also answered the call from the FDNY for firefighters from other cities to bolster the attendance at their many funerals after 9/11. He saw combat in Iraq. He had remained in the Navy reserves and was 42 when he was activated to full combat duty as a SEAL. He was subsequently an international instructor in tactical combat casualty care, ranging from Sri Lanka to South Korea to Pakistan.
In the meantime, Meoli resumed serving with San Diego Fire Rescue until his retirement in 2018. He took it upon himself to design and raise the funds for a monument to fallen SEALs at Miramar National Cemetery that was completed in 2021.
“This monument honors those frogmen who went before us who created and perfected our trade craft, those who made the ultimate sacrifice, the Gold Star families they left behind, and the inspiration for SEAL candidates yet to be trained, tested and selected,” Meoli said at the dedication ceremony.
He noted that along with an inscription reading ”ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL,” the monument included “a chronology of our history and a record of those from our small ranks who gave their lives to protect freedom.“
Meoli remained ready to do the same when Russia invaded Ukraine six months later. He was a civilian in his late 60s when he responded with what he viewed as his paramount skill.
“He said, ‘I can’t save the eternal soul, but I can prolong life. That’s my job, just to save our physical life’,” one of his three sons, 31-year-old Navy veteran Luke Meoli, told the Daily Beast on Monday.
The elder Meoli was speaking as someone of deep faith who was known to reply, “another day closer to heaven” when asked how he was doing.
Meoli reportedly taught more than 14,000 Ukrainian medics and soldiers how to apply tourniquets, stem bleeding and maintain open airways. He had previously trained Luke, who remembers his father as an intense instructor with the particular sense of humor common to trauma medics.
“They all have a very, very crazy sense of humor because of stuff they’ve seen,” Luke said.
Meoli periodically returned home from Ukraine, and his efforts there to prolong life appeared to be grinding him down. Luke last saw him a year before his death and recalled, “It seemed like it was harder and harder for him. He thought Ukraine was losing a lot, even though he would always say a lot more Russians were dying compared to Ukrainians.”
Meoli was coming to believe Ukraine was likely to lose unless other countries stepped in.
“His heart was for Ukraine, so it was hard for him to see all that,” Luke said.
Meoli was also still a SEAL at heart and he returned to the struggle to prolong the life of Ukraine itself.
Then fate took an ironic twist: a retired special forces operator who had survived countless brushes with death suffered a fatal head injury in a Ukrainian car crash. Mike Meoli died on November 14, 2024. He was 71.
On Thanksgiving of 2024, just three weeks after Trump was elected to a second term, the flag-covered coffin of a hero for whom we should all give thanks landed at Los Angeles International Airport. Luke was in the cortege of emergency vehicles that proceeded south and saw first responders salute from every highway overpass on the 130-mile journey south.
“I got to ride with the body from L.A. to San Diego,” Luke recalled, “All the bridges, overpasses, there were fire trucks and everything.”
Among those who mourned the end of Meoli’s physical life was a fellow eminence in tactical combat medicine. Dr. Richard Carmona is a physician and a former police officer, once named national SWAT officer of the year, as well as a Green Beret who earned the Purple Heart in Vietnam and Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service. He served as Surgeon General under President George W. Bush.
Carmona teamed up with Meoli in the 1980s to consolidate knowledge of combat casualty care into a single program that could be distributed to all of America’s special operations teams, police and fire rescue, as well as military.
“Now that’s the standard of care for the whole nation,” Carmona told the Daily Beast on Monday.
Carmona had spoken periodically to Meoli as his comrade brought the best of casualty care to Ukraine.
“When he said he was going to Ukraine, none of us were surprised because it was just the next place that needed expertise to help them,” Carmona said.
”We admired the fact that the Ukrainians stuck to their guns and were unwilling to give up their country and the democracy that they had created.”
Carmona added, “What [Putin] was doing was something that not only was illegal or unlawful, but it was going to hurt the people of the Ukraine. And I think Mike felt very strongly about that, that he wanted to make sure that all of their soldiers had the best care. I would say he represented the best of us in the United States.”
As proof of that, Carmona recalled the first responders who filled the overpasses as Meoli began his final journey.
“[They] were sending a message that this was one of ours, and he contributed significantly to the health, safety and security of our operators and our nation,” Carmona continued, “It was a show of commitment, it was a show of praise for one of us who gave the ultimate sacrifice.”
Meoli was buried in Miramar National Cemetery, where he had established the memorial to the SEALS who gave their all. His physical life at an end, he entered an eternal life as one of them.
The principles at the core of American greatness are not transactional, as Trump leads us to believe. They are a recognition that what is most valuable and important is worth giving your all. Call it: the Art of the Real.
The post Opinion: Why This Fallen SEAL’s Love of Democracy Shames Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
