It's unusual, to say the least, for a president to personally pay a relative of a soldier killed in action. Survivors' benefits are paid to whoever the soldier listed as his beneficiary; in this case the soldier named his mother. Trump spoke to the father in one of his fake condolence calls, and the father complained that he wasn't getting any survivor benefits, so Trump blurted out that he'd send him $25K himself (doubtless not meaning a word of it). But the guy never got a check and mentioned it to the media, which put Trump on the spot. It's not illegal, per se, for him to give money to whomever he wants (although he hardly ever gives money to anyone), but it's a strange precedent and raises the question of what might happen if some other soldiers' survivors don't get the military survivors' benefits because they weren't named beneficiaries, and try to get Trump to pay them, too?
Of course, he made a gratuitous promise and was under no legal obligation to follow through on it, but once it became public he saw it would look bad if he didn't pay. $25K is probably what they find under the couch cushions at Merde-a-Loco, but "looking bad" is Trump's Kryptonite.
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