President Donald Trump struggled to remember the name of the US soldier killed in an ambush in Niger when he called the man’s widow for condolences, the woman told ABC on Monday.
“Yes, the president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyways and I was — it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it,” Myeshia Johnson, the widow of the late Sergeant La David Johnson, said on the Good Morning America TV program.
Trump “couldn’t remember my husband’s name,” she said. “The only way he remembered my husband’s name because he told me he had my husband report in front of him and that’s when he actually said La David.”
Trump responded quickly via Twitter. “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!” he said.
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The widow, who is pregnant with the couple’s third child, said that she “heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband name and that hurt me the 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?”
That, she said, “made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”
Johnson was among four US soldiers killed in a jihadist ambush October 4 in Niger, where Islamic State fighters have established a presence.
The Miami native’s body was returned home on October 17.
