On Monday, President Donald Trump hosted a press conference in the White House Rose Garden that was bizarre even by the currnent administration’s incredibly lofty standards of absurdity.
For one thing, Trump responded to sexual assault allegations against him by barking his “fake news” mantra at the assembled media.
Of course, that’s the president’s standard response to accusations and criticism.
What followed, however, no one could have predicted, and no, we’re not talking about the fact that Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell chose to hold hands as they left the dais.
In one of the more bizarre and outlandish lies of his presidency, Trump alleged that other previous presidents did not contact the widows of fallen servicemen, as he himself had.
“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls,” Trump told the press.
“A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate.”
Of course, hundreds of military widows have since come forward to refute that claim, affirming that they did indeed receive phone calls from President Obama after their husbands were killed.
In the wake of an ambush from ISIS-affiliated forces in Niger that left four dead, it seems Trump did indeed contact the widow of at least one of the fallen, but far from offering comfort, it seems his remarks only deepened her suffering.
Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL) says she was present when Trump contacted the widow of La David Johnson, a Green Beret who was killed in the attack.
Her account of Trump’s conversation with Myeshia Johnson is genuinely appalling:
“Basically he said, ‘Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt,"” Wilson told Don Lemon on CNN last night.
Naturally, Trump was quick to tweet his incendiary response to the allegation:
“Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!”
“I have proof, too: this man is a sick man,” Wilson responded on CNN this morning.
She added that Johnson’s widow “broke down” after her call with Trump.
“When she actually hung up the phone she looked and said, ‘He didn’t even know his name,"” Wilson says of her time in the Johnson home.
Myeshia Johnson has yet to speak publicly about the incident, and the president has yet to offer the “proof” he promised in his tweet.
