You are right. It happens to me personally. The more horribly unfair the press is, the more I feel called to support him.
In the case of the "other call" it is possible for anyone to "take things the wrong way" IOW, to willfully misconstrue the meaning of something in order to cast the speaker in a bad light. There is no way to prevent malicious, hateful people from doing this.
The context of a comment like, "He knew what he was getting into" regarding military people is saying that they were courageous, heroic people because they "went into harm's way with eyes wide open", instead of naiveté. So it enhances the character of someone to make that observation.
The only other interpretation is that the president was trying to be deliberately offensive. Of course for leftists, who are incessantly, horrendously detached from reality in so many ways, believing that is as easy as taking a crap.