John Kelly gives emotional defense of Trump’s calls to military families

WASHINGTON— White House chief of staff John F. Kelly on Thursday gave an emotional defense of Trump’s calls to the families of soldiers killed earlier this month in Niger, and assailed a Democratic congresswoman who was among the president’s chief critics.

Kelly said he was “stunned” and “broken hearted” to see a member of Congress, Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, describing Trump’s conversation with the widow of Stg. La David T. Johnson, one of four U.S. soldiers who died in an Oct. 4 ambush in the West African country.

Wilson, a friend and mentor to the Johnson family, was with Myeshia Johnson in a car when the widow took Trump’s call, and heard him on a speakerphone. Wilson later described Trump’s message as insensitive for suggesting the sergeant knew what he was getting into when he joined the Army.

In the call to Johnson’s widow, Trump was echoing words that Kelly had suggested, the chief of staff told reporters at the White House. Kelly lost a son in a landmine explosion in Afghanistan in 2010.

Before Trump placed the calls, the president had asked what to say, and Kelly recounted for him what Kelly’s best friend had said when Kelly’s son, Lt. Robert Kelly, had died. The friend said the young man at the moment of his death was doing exactly what he wanted to do, that he knew what he was getting into and that he was surrounded by the “best men on earth” when he died.

“That’s what the president tried to say to four families the other day,” Kelly said. “In his way, he tried to express that.”