President Trump early Wednesday ripped Rep. Frederica Wilson, saying the Florida Democrat’s claim that he made an insensitive comment about a fallen soldier’s wife was “totally fabricated.”
“Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” the president said in a tweet.
Wilson said on Tuesday that she overheard Trump tell the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in an ambush in Niger nearly two weeks ago, that Johnson “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway.”
{mosads}Wilson told CNN that she was in a car with Johnson’s widow, Myeshia, during a trip to meet her husband’s casket when Trump called, and that Myeshia was “very distraught after the call.”
“She has just lost her husband, she was just told that he cannot have an open casket funeral which gives her all kinds of nightmares about what his body must look, what his face must look, and this is what the president of the United States says to her,” Wilson told CNN.
Wilson said during a CNN interview early Wednesday that Trump is a “sick man.”
“I have no reason to lie,” she added.
Trump ignited controversy on Monday at a press conference when he made the disputed claim that his predecessors did not call the families of fallen soldiers.
He attempted to walk back the claim at the same press conference.
— This report was updated at 8:30 a.m.