In a Tuesday phone call with the widow of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four American soldiers killed in Niger, Donald Trump reportedly said, “He knew what he signed up for, but when it happens it hurts anyway.” The president immediately disputed the claim made by Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida), who was sitting with Johnson’s family when the call came. “Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof),” Trump tweeted. “Sad!” Unfortunately for him, the fallen Green Beret’s mother has confirmed Wilson’s account.
“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Cowanda Jones-Johnson told the Washington Post on Wednesday. The Gold Star mother refused to go into any further detail about what happened, though she did explicitly confirm Wilson’s account of what the president told her son’s widow: “Yes.” As of this writing, Trump has yet to respond to this latest development — either officially, or on his preferred medium, Twitter. Considering his torrential back-and-forth with the parents of U.S. Army Captain Humayun S. M. Khan during the 2016 election, however, anything is possible.
Trump, who has been taking flak from politicians and the press for not immediately reaching out to the fallen soldiers’ families, initially made a baseless claim about President Obama in the hope of deflecting the issue. He also doubled-down on his criticism, saying Obama had never called Chief of Staff John Kelly when his son died in 2010.
(Via Washington Post)