A Democratic congresswoman is claiming that President Trump made insensitive remarks to the widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger earlier this month.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) told multiple news outlets Tuesday that she overheard Trump tell the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson that Johnson “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway.”
Wilson told CNN that she was in the car with Johnson’s widow, Myeshia, to meet the body in Miami when Trump called her.
Johnson was one of four U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger nearly two weeks ago.
{mosads}Wilson said Johnson’s widow was “very distraught” after the call. The couple had two young children together, and Myeshia is six months pregnant with their third child.
“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 also told an ABC News affiliate that Trump’s comments were “insensitive.”
“He should have not have said that. He shouldn’t have said it,” she said.
The White House declined to comment to a CBS affiliate in Miami.
“The president’s conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice are private,” one official told the affiliate.
Trump called the families of the fallen soldiers nearly two weeks after the fatal ambush in Niger.
When reporters asked if Trump had contacted the families on Monday, he said that he had written them letters.
He then falsely claimed that past presidents, including former President Obama, hadn’t called the families of fallen soldiers before walking back the remark.