The mother of a US soldier who was killed in action has backed a congresswoman’s claim that President Donald Trump showed insensitivity during a phone call to her son’s widow.
Representative Frederica Wilson said he had told Myeshia Johnson: “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”
Mr Trump said Ms Wilson’s account was “totally fabricated”.
Sgt La David Johnson was killed in Niger by Islamist militants this month.
He was one of four US special forces soldiers who died in an ambush.
Mr Trump had already been criticised for not contacting the families of the dead servicemen right after the fatal ambush on 4 October.
Sgt Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, backed Representative Wilson’s account of the phone call.
“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” she told the Washington Post newspaper.
A separate case which saw Mr Trump offer money to the grieving father of a dead serviceman in a call, but allegedly not pay up, has now emerged.
“He said: ‘I’m going to write you a cheque out of my personal account for $25,000’, and I was just floored,” the father told the Washington Post.
The White House subsequently told the newspaper that the cheque had been sent, saying it was a “generous and sincere gesture”.
Ms Wilson, who represents a Florida district, told CNN the president’s call had been made shortly before Sgt Johnson’s coffin arrived by aircraft in his home city of Miami.
Ms Wilson told WPLG, a Miami TV station, she had heard the president’s “so insensitive” remarks to the widow on speakerphone in a limousine.
“To me, that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn’t say that to a grieving widow,” she said.
“And everyone knows when you go to war, you could possibly not come back alive. But you don’t remind a grieving widow of that.”
Source: BBC
