WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump has come under fire after he reportedly told a widow of a fallen soldier that her husband "knew what he signed up for."
Trump spoke on Tuesday to the families of four slain U.S. soldiers who got ambushed by Islamic State militants in Niger earlier this month, amid questions that why he had not made any comment about the killings.
After stirring controversy by invoking White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's son, a Marine Corps lieutenant killed in Afghanistan in late 2010, to defend his delayed response, Trump came under a fresh round of criticism over one of his condolence telephone calls.
Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson lashed out at Trump Tuesday night for what she described as "insensitive" remarks to the widow of Amy Sergeant La David Johnson, one of the four soldiers killed in Niger.
"Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts," Wilson recounted Trump's words during an interview with CNN.
"He shouldn't have said it," Wilson told an ABC News affiliate. The Florida lawmaker said she was in a car with Johnson's widow, Myeshia, to meet the body in Miami when the president called her.
Wilson told CNN that the widow, which has two young children and is six months pregnant with a third, was "very distraught" after the call.
"She has just lost her husband. She was just told that he cannot have an open casket funeral which gives her all kinds of nightmares about what his body must look, what his face must look, and this is what the president of the United States says to her," Wilson said.
Trump denied on Twitter on Wednesday that he had made such kind of remarks, saying that Wilson "totally fabricated" what he said and claiming to have proof.
"I didn't say what that congresswoman said. Didn't sai (say) it at all," Trump told reporters at the White House hours later, insisting that he had a "very nice" conversation with the widow.
But Johnson's mother backed Wilson's account. "President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband," Cowanda Jones-Joshnson told The Washington Post.
Wilson said on Twitter that she stood by her account of the call between Trump and Myeshia, suggesting that the president didn't even know the name of the widow.
At Wednesday's press briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there was not recording of the call but several people were present when the president made the call, including Kelly, who, according to her, thought the call was completely appropriate and respectful.
Trump asserted that former President Barack Obama didn't call families of fallen service members, a claim that aides of the former administration slammed as "an outrageous and disrespectful lie."
He invoked the death of Kelly's son in his defense Tuesday, suggesting that reporters ask the retired four-star general whether Obama reached out to him when his son died serving the country.
Sanders said she doesn't know if Trump warned Kelly before bringing that up in an interview, but adding that the White House chief of staff is "disgusted" by the politicization of Trump's phone calls to the families of fallen service's members.
The president also said that he has called "every family of somebody that's died," but several Gold Star family members told news outlets that they have never had a call with Trump after their relative was killed in action.
