Gold Star dad: Liar & ‘lunatic’ didn’t call me
THE BROOKLYN father of a soldier killed in Iraq two months ago blasted President Trump as a cold-hearted con artist on Wednesday.
Uvince Brooks, 58, said his family hasn’t received a call or a condolence letter from the White House since 30-year-old Army Sgt. Roshain Brooks lost his life Aug. 13 to an artillery blast.
“This guy is a liar,” the distraught dad said of Trump. “When I heard what he said, it got me so mad. I called my daughter and said, ‘Can you teach me to tweet? I wanna tweet Trump.’ That’s the only way to reach him.”
He was referring to a comment Trump made Tues- day during an interview with Fox News radio.
“I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died,” the President told host Brian Kilmeade.
“He’s lying. He didn’t contact us,” Brooks told the Daily News. “Nobody from the White House cares about my family and our grief. If they cared, they would say something to us.”
First reached by The News in August, Brooks initially declined to comment on whether any White House officials attended his son’s dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Brooks said Trump’s boastful comments and reports he “disrespected” relatives of slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson on Tuesday filled him with fury. Johnson, 25, and three other U.S. soldiers were killed during an ambush in at Niger on Oct. 4.
“I’m so upset,” the elder Brooks, a Canarsie handyman originally from Jamaica, said of Trump. “He’s a damn disgrace to the White House. I’ve been here for 17 years. Presidents George Bush and Obama, none of them behaved like this guy. This guy is a damn lunatic.”
The grieving dad said he wished he could offer comfort to Johnson’s pregnant widow, Myeshia Johnson, who was photographed crying over her husband’s flag-draped casket on Tuesday.
“We grieve with her,” Brooks said. “I pray for her just like I pray for myself.”
According to Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida, Trump compounded Myeshia Johnson’s pain Tuesday when he called and said her husband “knew what he signed up for” before he was killed.
Wilson said she was in the car with the widow and heard part of their conversation on speakerphone.
President Trump called Wilson’s account “fabricated” in a Twitter post and claimed he had proof. But La David Johnson’s mother, Cowanda JonesJohnson, told The Associated Press that Wilson’s version was accurate.
“When I listen to what the President is saying, I want to fight,” Brooks told The News.
Brooks recalled his son as a dedicated soldier who loved his country. The son completed a prior tour in Afghanistan in 2014.
“From the day that guy was born, he was a hero to me. He was my firstborn, my right eye. He was everything to me,” the proud father said. “He’s a hero. We did a lot of things together. Losing him was almost like losing myself.” PRESIDENT TRUMP showed obvious “disrespect” during a condolence call to the family of an Army sergeant killed during an ambush, the soldier’s mother said Wednesday.
Trump defiantly denied accounts that he told the family of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of four Americans killed nearly two weeks ago in Niger, that “he knew what he signed up for . . . but when it happens it hurts anyway.”
Despite the protestations of the President, Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, said Wednesday that Trump called as she and her son’s widow, Myeshia, drove to Miami International Airport to meet her son’s body. “I was in the car, and I heard the full conversation,” Jones-Johnson told The Associated Press.
“Not only did he disrespect my son,” but he disrespected his wife and me and my husband, she said.
The back-and-forth came amid new revelations of how Trump has and hasn’t dealt with families of the fallen — in one instance promising a grieving father a $25,000 personal check, and in other instances having no contact at all. It was also reported that Trump had surprised his chief of staff John Kelly when he defended his actions by referring to Kelly’s dead son.
Jones-Johnson’s account backs up what Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said a day earlier of Trump’s insensitive comments.
The President stayed on the defensive,