FULL INTERVIEW between @GStephanopoulos and Myeshia Johnson, widow of fallen soldier Sgt. La David Johnson: https://t.co/8fRPhejRl8 pic.twitter.com/8UzCwVDGVp
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 23, 2017
Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow says she was “hurt” by some of the things President Trump said to her in a phone call after her husband was killed in an ambush in Niger.
In a Monday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopolous, Myeshia Johnson confirmed the account of Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who was in the car when the call came and publicly that Trump told Johnson her husband “knew what he signed up for.”
“Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated, what she said was 100 percent correct,” Johnson said. “Why would we fabricate something like that? … I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it.”
{mosads}Trump has been embroiled in a weeklong controversy over the phone call after wrongly claiming last week that his predecessors had not called the families of fallen soldiers. Wilson responded to Trump’s claims by criticizing him over his call to Johnson. Several Gold Star families have also come forward, saying that the president didn’t call them.
Trump then said his chief of staff, John Kelly, did not receive call from then-President Obama when his son was killed in 2010. Kelly later entered the controversy, defending Trump and attacking Wilson over her description of the call, which was corroborated by the soldier’s mother.
Trump has also repeatedly attacked Wilson on Twitter in the wake of her criticism.
Johnson said in her Monday interview that the worst part of the call was realizing that the president could not remember her husband’s name.
“He told me he had my husband’s report in front of him, and that’s when he actually said ‘La David,’ ” Johnson said. “I heard him stumbling trying to remember my husband’s name, and that was hurting me the most.”
Asked if there was anything she’d like to say to Trump, Johnson said she has “nothing to say to him.”