Dem lawmaker: Deaths of soldiers in Niger is Trump’s Benghazi

The Democratic congresswoman who said President Trump disrespected the widow of a fallen soldier says the Niger incident where four Americans died is “his Benghazi,” comparing it to the 2012 attack in Libya.

“This is his Benghazi, and that is the reason why it took him so long to acknowledge it had happened,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (Fla.) told American Urban Radio Networks’s April Ryan in a Wednesday interview, referring to the consulate attack during the Obama administration that killed four Americans and led to its own House Select Committee.

{mosads}The president has received criticism for his delayed response to the death of the soldiers, who were killed in Niger earlier this month in an ambush.

That criticism reached new heights on Tuesday when Wilson said she heard the phone call Trump made to the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, the fourth fallen soldier to be identified by the Pentagon.

Trump told Myeshia Johnson that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” according to an account from Wilson, who serves Johnson’s district.

Both on Twitter and at the White House Wednesday, Trump denied Wilson’s version.

“I didn’t say what that congresswoman said — didn’t say it at all — she knows it,” the president told reporters. “I would like her to make the statement again because I did not say what she said.” 

La David Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, backed up Wilson’s account in a Wednesday interview with The Washington Post. 

“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson said.

During Wilson’s interview, the Florida lawmaker said Trump’s comments were not the “way to talk to a grieving widow.”

“I would say to him, ‘Mr. President, there is a way to talk to a grieving widow and you don’t say to the grieving young woman who is with child that her husband must have known what he was signing up for,’” Wilson said.

This report was updated on Dec. 18 at 10 am.