The widow of a U.S. soldier killed this month in an ambush in Niger said Monday that President Donald Trump was not only insensitive in the phone call he made to console her, but that he couldn’t remember the fallen soldier’s name.
During an appearance Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Myeshia Johnson, 25, said she and family members were in a limousine last week en route to Miami International Airport to retrieve the remains of her husband, Staff Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called.
“We were literally on the airport strip getting ready to get out and he called Master Sgt. Neil’s phone,” she told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Johnson said she then asked Master Sgt. Neil to put his phone on speaker “so my aunt and uncle could hear as well.”
“The president said that ‘he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway,’” she recalled. “And it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he couldn’t remember my husband’s name.
“The only way he remembered my husband’s name is because 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 stumblin’ on trying to remember my husband’s name and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country why can’t you remember his name?
“And that’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier,” she said. “My husband had high hopes in the military career.”
La David Johnson was one of four U.S. Army soldiers killed the Oct. 4 attack.