The widow of Sgt. La David Johnson said the president's call "made me very angry."
The grieving widow of a special forces sergeant killed in Niger has broken her silence about the condolence call she received from President Donald Trump.
“He couldn't remember my husband's name,” Myeshia Johnson told Good Morning America Monday. “The only way he remembered my husband’s name is because he had my husband’s report in front of him and that’s when he actually said ‘La David.’
"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?”
The president wasted no time responding to her comments. He wrote on Twitter: “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!”
Myeshia Johnson told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos she didn't say anything and just listened.
“The president said, ‘He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway,’” she recalled. “It made me cry because I was angry at the tone in his voice and how he said it.”
She also voiced support for Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson who blasted Trump's condolence call as insensitive last week.
Last week, Wilson, who was in the car with Johnson’s widow when she received the call, was the first person to say the president said Sgt. Johnson "knew what he signed up for."
Trump denied ever saying that.
“Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated,” Myeshia Johnson said on Monday. “What she said was 100 percent correct.”
She added: “Why would we fabricate something like that?"
Myeshia Johnson, who is pregnant and due to give birth in January, said she was barred from seeing her husband’s body and claims she was told how he died in Niger. Sgt. La David Johnson, 25, and three others were killed there earlier this month.
"I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything," she said. "I don't know that part. They never told me, and that's what I've been trying to find out since day one, since Oct. 4."
La David Johnson was laid to rest in Florida Saturday. An estimated 1,200 mourners attended his service in Cooper City.
