Rep. Wilson: Trump White House is ‘full of white supremacists’

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said President Trump’s White House is “full of white supremacists” in a new interview Friday.

“The White House itself is full of white supremacists,” she told The New York Times.

It is the latest response in a four-day controversy over Trump’s response to military families who have lost a loved one. Wilson earlier this week described a phone conversation she was listening in on between Trump and the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger. The White House later accused Wilson of politicizing a “sacred” issue.

Wilson’s interview is not the first time a critic has suggested racial bias plays a role in the controversy, although the congresswoman did not get more specific.

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Wilson said she feels “very sorry” for White House chief of staff John Kelly after Kelly accused her of using a speech during a 2015 dedication of a new FBI building to take credit for securing the building’s funding.

“I feel very sorry for him because he feels such a need to lie on me and I’m not even his enemy,” Wilson told the newspaper. “I just can’t even imagine why he would fabricate something like that. That is absolutely insane. I’m just flabbergasted because it’s very easy to trace.”

Kelly called Wilson an “empty barrel” on Thursday in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room and criticized her for her speech at the 2015 event.

But video released Friday appears to show that Kelly was incorrect in his remarks about Wilson.

The White House defended Kelly on Friday, with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling it “highly inappropriate” to criticize Kelly because of his record of military service.

“If you want to go after Gen. Kelly, that’s up to you, but I think if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate,” Sanders said in a White House press briefing.

Wilson accused the White House of trying to “assassinate [her] character.”

“They are assassinating their own because everything they say is coming out and shown to be a lie,” she told the newspaper.