President Donald Trump's chronic inability to turn the other cheek to a perceived slight has landed the White House with a crisis on multiple fronts over his handling of the ISIS ambush in Niger that killed four US troops.

Trump's reflexive boast that he was more attentive to the relatives of war dead than his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush set off a cascade of consequences that has left his White House reeling. A full-blown political drama erupted when Trump was accused by a Democratic congresswoman of insulting a widow of one of the soldiers killed in the clash.