Rep. Frederica Wilson, the congresswoman who represented one of the fallen U.S. soldiers in Niger, said Tuesday the incident could be the Trump administration’s “Benghazi,” adding that she wanted to curse President Trump out when she heard him tell Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow he “knew what he signed up for.”
According to a report from ABC affiliate Local 10 News, Wilson claimed that Trump said Johnson “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway.” She further explained the call and her reaction during an interview on CNN.
“I asked them to give me the phone because I wanted to speak with him, and I was going to curse him out,” said Wilson, who was on the way to the airport with Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, to collect her husband’s body when she received the call from Trump. “That was my reaction at that time. I was livid. But they would not give me the phone.”
Wilson, D-Fla., said Myeshia Johnson did not say anything in response to Trump’s comment because she was overcome with emotion, particularly since she had just been informed they could not have an open casket at her husband’s funeral.
“The only thing she said when it was time to hang up was, ‘Thank you, bye bye,'” Wilson said of the mother-of-two, who is six months pregnant with the couple’s third child.
Wilson said the family would be asking questions about why Johnson became separated from three other U.S. soldiers who died under enemy fire earlier in October while on a reconnaissance patrol as part of an advise-and-assist mission in Niger.
“They were upset because they don’t know why he was separated from the rest of the soldiers,” Wilson continued. “This could turn out to be another Benghazi, and I have asked for an investigation,” she added, referring to the controversy over the State Department’s handling of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.
Wilson said she was expecting a classified briefing on the incident when she returned to Washington.
Trump’s remarks follow the president criticizing the way in which former administrations treated grieving military families.
