WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump Monday disputed criticism from a soldier's widow about his call to console her, escalating a week-old controversy over the president's belated response to the deaths of four Americans after an Oct. 4 ambush of U.S. forces in Niger.
Two days after the funeral of her husband, Sgt. La David T. Johnson, Myeshia Johnson appeared on television to describe Trump's call last week, confirming her congresswoman's account that Trump couldn't remember her husband's name and that he upset her by saying her husband "knew what he signed up for" when he enlisted in the Army.
"It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it," Johnson said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name. And that's what hurt me the most. 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?" she said.
Within minutes, Trump contested the widow's account in a post on Twitter _ just as he had for days disputed Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., a Johnson family friend who was listening in on the call with several others who were with Myeshia Johnson. In numerous interviews, Wilson criticized the president as insensitive.
Trump wrote: "I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"
By taking on a Gold Star wife, Trump raised to a new level the controversy over his handling of the role of consoler of families of the fallen. Already he was under fire for his attacks since last week against a member of Congress; he called Wilson's account a "total lie" and, as he does for many critics, called her by a pejorative nickname _ "Wacky Congresswoman Wilson" _ as recently as Sunday.
At the White House Monday, Trump did not answer questions from reporters about his response to the widow.
La David Johnson was killed with three other soldiers in while on a Special Forces patrol in Niger, an attack apparently carried out by militants affiliated with Islamic State. Johnson was initially unaccounted for after the attack. His body was found by Nigerien villagers after a two-day search.
The loss of life was the worst in combat since Trump took office, but for 12 days the president did not publicly comment on it. On Oct. 16, he was asked by a reporter at the White House why he'd been silent. He did not answer that question but instead described how he had made more phone calls to the families of service members killed in action than previous presidents.
That sparked immediate, outraged rebukes from officials in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.
The dispute then snowballed. After the White House disclosed that Trump subsequently called the families of the four soldiers killed in Niger, Wilson publicly conveyed Myeshia Johnson's unhappiness with him; Trump called her liar, and his chief of staff, John Kelly _ a retired Marine general and a Gold Star father _ excoriated Wilson, accusing her of actions that, a video proved, were false.
The episode has highlighted Trump's sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the military and military service. Trump has promised to fund the military at historic levels and hired former generals including Kelly to his staff and Cabinet, but his brash and undisciplined style, and his willingness to contradict "my generals," have often rankled top military officials. Early this year, for example, he blamed "the generals" for a botched raid in Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL.
In the furor over the Niger attack, Trump's lack of military service again became an issue. On Sunday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime prisoner of war in the Vietnam War years and a frequent critic and target of Trump, made a thinly veiled allusion in a television interview to Trump's avoidance of the draft, with multiple deferments including for bone spurs in a foot.
McCain was pointing out the economic and class divisions that were apparent on the battlefields of Vietnam.
"One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never, ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America, and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur," McCain said on C-SPAN3.
"That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve."
