In normal, non-Trumpian times, it might come as a surprise to learn that the president of the United States had offered to personally send a grieving military father $25,000 to make up for the loss of his dead son. It would be even more shocking to learn that after making that strange, unusual promise, he never actually followed through. Obviously, though, these past 10 months have not been normal times. The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump, who has spent the last week falsely claiming that he‘s “called every family of somebody that’s died” since he became president, did both of those things earlier this year.

According to Chris Baldridge, the father of Army corporal Dillon Baldridge, who was killed by an Afghan police officer on June 10, the president told him, “I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000.” Baldridge, a construction worker, had reportedly “expressed frustration” with the fact that his ex-wife would be receiving the Pentagon’s $100,000 “death gratuity,” when he was struggling to get by, and Trump, who knows a thing or two about ex-wives, took the opportunity to brag about his generosity. “No other president has ever done something like this [but] I’m going to do it,” he said.

The money has yet to materialize. So far, Baldridge says, he’s received nothing else besides a condolence letter. “I opened it up and read it,” he said, “and I was hoping to see a check in there, to be honest. I know it was kind of far-fetched thinking. But I was like, ‘Damn, no check.’ Just a letter saying ‘I'm sorry.’”

When questioned by the Post, the White House said, literally, the check is in the mail. “The check has been sent,” spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. “It’s disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda.” It’s unclear what happened between mid-summer, when Trump and Baldridge spoke, and October 18, when the $25,000 check had allegedly been sent, but not yet received.