House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that White House chief of staff John Kelly needs to “set the record straight” by acknowledging he misspoke about Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson.
The California Democrat said Wilson has been unfairly targeted by President Trump and by Kelly, who last week falsely accused Wilson of bragging in a speech about securing funds for an FBI building, calling her an “empty barrel” during remarks in the White House briefing room.
“Let me just give the general the benefit of the doubt that somebody in the White House is grossly misinforming about who Congresswoman Frederica Wilson is,” Pelosi said on the MSNBC program “AM Joy.”
“He has to admit what he did was incorrect in terms of the speech he mischaracterized,” she said. “I just think he was either misinformed or accepted something without checking about Frederica that was so wrong, so he has to set the record straight.”
Kelly was responding to controversy over Wilson’s recollection of an allegedly insensitive call Trump placed to the widow of a soldier killed in Niger. Kelly lost one of his own sons in Afghanistan in 2010 and condemned Wilson for listening into the call after she raised the matter publicly.
