The widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four Green Berets killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger earlier this month, is speaking out for the first time to detail her highly-publicized phone call from President Trump.
The president has been in a war of words with Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson over the call, after Wilson said in an interview that Trump told Myeshia Johnson that her husband ‘knew what he signed up for’.
Wilson is a family friend of the Johnsons, and was in the limo with the Gold Star widow and her family on the way to the airport to pick up the soldier’s body when Trump made the call.
On Monday, Johnson appeared on Good Morning America and confirmed what Wilson said.
‘Whatever Ms Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100 per cent correct,’ Johnson said. ‘The phone was on speakerphone. Why would we fabricate something like that?’
Myeshia Johnson (pictured), the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, appeared on Good Morning America on Monday to speak about her fallen soldier husband
Johnson said her aunt, her uncle, Wilson and a master sergeant were with her in the limo when they got the call from Trump.
Sgt. Johnson (pictured) was one of four Green Berets killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger earlier this month
Trump called the master sergeant on his cellphone just as they pulled onto the tarmac at Dover Dover Air Force Base to pick up Sgt Johnson’s body, his widow said.
Johnson said she asked the master sergeant to put the phone on speakerphone so that everyone in the car could hear Trump.
‘The president said “He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway,”‘ Johnson recalled.
‘It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it.
‘He couldn’t remember my husband’s name. The only way he remembered my husband’s name was because he told me 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 most. Because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risks his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name? And that’s what made me upset and cry more,’ she added.
Johnson was so stunned by the call that she says she didn’t say anything back to the president.
She says she left the call feeling even worse than before.
Johnson said she was ‘very, very upset’ after the call and that it ‘made me cry even worse’.
President Trump quickly disputed Johnson’s claims on Twitter, writing: ‘I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!’
President Trump disputed Johnson’s claims within minutes on Twitter, saying he had a ‘very respectful conversation’ and said Sgt Johnson’s name ‘without hesitation!’
In the interview, Johnson also demanded answers for what happened to her husband, and why she hasn’t been allowed to look at his body yet.
Johnson says the Army first told her that her husband went missing on October 4 after coming under a ‘mass of gunfire’.
A couple of days later they returned and said that he had been killed in action, but didn’t go into further detail.
‘I don’t know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything. I don’t know that part they never told me and that’s what I’ve been trying to find out since day one,’ she said.
She also says Army officials haven’t allowed her to look at her husband’s body.
‘They tell me that he’s in a severe wrap, that I won’t be able to see him,’ Johnson said.
‘They won’t show me a finger, a hand. I know my husband’s body from head to toe and they won’t let me see anything. I don’t know what’s in that box it could be empty for all I know,’ she added.
Johnson says she’s going to ‘keep pushing’ for answers.
Meanwhile, she says she’s speaking out to let he world know ‘how great a soldier’ her husband was, as well as what a ‘loving and caring father and husband he was to our family’.
The couple met when they were just six years old, and have two children together – a two-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. The couple’s third child, a daughter, is due in January.
When asked how she’s going to teach her daughter about her father, Johnson said this:
‘I’m gonna tell her how awesome her dad was and how great a father he was and how he died as a hero.’