GOLD STAR FLARE-UP
Trump insists he didn’t make insensitive comments to family of slain Green Beret
The firestorm over President Trump’s comments on Gold Star families is raging nationwide as he came under new fire for statements he made to the wife of a slain Green Beret — even as the family of another fallen soldier rushed to the president’s defense.
Trump has fiercely denied claims made by Florida U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat, who said he told the Green Beret’s grieving wife, “I guess he knew what he was signing up for but it still hurts.”
Trump responded on Twitter, saying, “Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!,” before doubling down and saying he “didn’t say what that Congresswoman said, didn’t say it at all. She knows it.”
Wilson said she was with the family of Sgt. La David Johnson Tuesday, including his pregnant
widow Myeshia, when she received the call while driving to the airport to pick up her husband’s body.
The soldier’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, confirmed Wilson’s description of Trump’s words to The Washington Post and slammed Trump for his comments.
“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson said.
Despite Trump’s assertion that he had proof Wilson’s account of his conversation was false, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said no recordings of the conversation existed.
But several senior officials, including Chief of Staff John Kelly, witnessed the call and described Trump’s tone as “respectful.”
Gold Star father Craig Gross, whose son Cpl. Frank Robert Gross was killed in Afghanistan six years ago, also defended Trump, telling CNN he thought the president’s “words are basically being taken and misconstrued.”
“President Trump,” Gross said, “is doing a lot of good things as far as Gold Star families are concerned.”
Trump’s phone call to Johnson’s widow came after a press conference Tuesday when he first discussed the deaths of Johnson and three other soldiers in Niger.
The president claimed he had called most of the families of soldiers who had died in action during his presidency and falsely accused other presidents of not making phone calls or sending letters to Gold Star families.
Trump later pulled Kelly — a retired Marine general whose son was killed in action in Afghanistan — into the fray, when he told a Fox News Radio host “ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?”
But Sanders said yesterday that Kelly was “disgusted” that traditional protocols for dealing with military deaths had become “politicized.”
‘President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.’ — COWANDA JONES-JOHNSON Mother of slain Green Beret