Widow of slain soldier: President's words 'made me cry even more'

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Oct 26, 2017 - 9:50:45 AM

(Inset photo) Army Sgt. La David Johnson; (Above) Myeshia Johnson, the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson kisses her husband’s casket at Hollywood Memorial Gardens. Johnson was working with U.S. Army Special Forces in northwestern Africa when Islamic militants ambushed them on Oct. 4, near the Niger border. Photo: Mike Stocker, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

WASHINGTON— President Donald J. Trump and his senior White House staff stood by their demonstrably false statements about the President’s consolation call to the family of a U.S. soldier killed with three others by hostile fire in a heretofore, virtually unknown mission in Niger, West Africa.

And a grieving widow challenged the White House accounts, sharing how the president’s mishandling of a highly sensitive and delicate situation deeply hurt her.

“I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!” Mr. Trump tweeted Oct. 21, referring to Rep. Frederica Wilson, (D-Fl.). Rep. Wilson had first questioned the nature of the African mission in which Sgt. La David Johnson and three others died—the same number as were killed with much more fanfare in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

Rep. Wilson was in a limousine, accompanying Myeshia Johnson, Sgt. Johnson’s widow and his parents, to retrieve his remains, when Mr. Trump telephoned to offer condolences. Mr. Trump told her that her husband “knew what he was signing up for.”

The pregnant widow Oct. 23 contradicted President Donald Trump’s account of his phone call about her husband’s death and said what he told her “made me cry even worse.”

Mrs. Johnson told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that Rep. Wilson was practically a member of their family and was among a group of people listening to President Trump’s call on a speaker phone as they drove to receive Sgt. Johnson’s body.

“The president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyway,” Mrs. Johnson said. “And it made me cry be- cause 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 could remember my husband’s name was he told me he had my husband’s report in front of him and that’s when he actually said La David.”

“Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated,” Mrs. Johnson said in her first interview after her husband’s death. “What she said was 100 percent correct.”

Myeshia Johnson is presented with the American flag that was draped over the casket of her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, during his burial service at Fred Hunter’s Hollywood Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Florida, Oct. 21.

Sgt. Johnson and three comrades died Oct. 4 in Africa when militants tied to the Islamic State attacked them.

She said she also wants to know why she hasn’t been allowed to see her husband’s body. He was buried Oct. 21.

“I need to see him so I will know that that is my husband,” she 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. But I need to see my husband. I haven’t seen him since he came home.”

Mrs. Johnson said everyone in the car was listening to Mr. Trump’s call. “The phone was on speaker phone. Why would we fabricate something like that?”

Asked if she had anything to say to Mr. Trump now, Mrs. Johnson said, “No, I don’t have nothing to say to him.”

Rep. Wilson has been a friend of the Johnson family for years and Sgt. Johnson was in her 5000 Role Models program that pairs Black boys with mentors who prepare them for college, vocational school or the military.

Mrs. Johnson said she had known her husband since they were about six years old.

Mrs. Johnson said she wants the world to know “how great of a soldier my husband was.” She also said he was “a loving and caring father and husband.”

She said she learned her husband was missing in action when military members came to her house.

Cowanda Jones-Johnson, (center) the aunt of Sgt. La David Johnson, weeps during his burial service at Fred Hunter’s Hollywood Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Florida, Oct. 21.

“They told me there was a massive gunfire and that my husband, as of Oct. 4 was missing,” she said. “They didn’t know his whereabouts or they didn’t know where he was or where to find him. A couple of days later is when they told me he went from missing to killed in action.”

Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly confirmed that account when he told reporters that he’d advised Mr. Trump to tell Gold Star families that their lost loved ones knew what they had signed up for. But then Gen. Kelly falsely attacked Rep. Wilson for bragging about securing funding for an FBI building at a dedication ceremony in 2015. Video published by the Sun Sentinel of that 2015 event however, shows that Rep. Wilson did no such thing.

“Despite President Trump’s suggestion that I have recanted my statement or misstated what he said, I stand firmly by my original account of his conversation with Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson,” Rep. Wilson said in a statement posted on her official website. Her congressional office was unavailable at Final Call press time.

“Moreover, this account has been confirmed by family members who also witnessed Mr. Trump’s incredible lack of compassion and sensitivity,” the statement continued. “The Johnson family and the families of the three other soldiers who tragically lost their lives in the Niger ambush are experiencing what I am certain must feel like an unbearable loss. Rather than engage in a petty war of words with Mr. Trump, it is so much more important to embrace and support the families and honor these fallen heroes.”

What is even less clear, is what is the mission on which four elite U.S. Army Green Berets, as well as a number of Nigerien troops lost their lives? “I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on NBC’s Meet the Press Oct. 22. “This is an endless war without boundaries and no limitation on time and geography,” he added.

“Well, sure they’re hiding something,” Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Houston said in an interview. “They’re obscuring the reality that there has been a significant U.S. military intervention in north-central Africa, which compliments the U.S. military base in Djibouti, to the east.

“But not only that, because this intervention is so shrouded in secrecy, that allows corruption to fester and flourish, which means more budgetary dollars directed toward this intervention in Niger. And with the flow of dollars, inevitably comes the flow of humans, which inevitably means attacks on these U.S. nationals.”

“I’m all for going after terrorists,” said Sen. Graham, “but I want to know before I read about it in the paper where our people are and what they’re doing.”

African Command is tasked with combating so-called al- Shabab in Somalia, which is adjacent to Djibouti, and also confronting the religious zealots in northern Mali, adjacent to Niger in the west.

All of these new threats to U.S. power in Africa “were boosted into influence by the ill-advised U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011, which led to a French military intervention, which the United States is now assisting, and, I’m afraid to say, that the prospects are that there will be more slain U.S. soldiers in that part of Africa, because the situation is heating up,” said Dr. Horne.

(L to R) Richard Johnson Sr., holds La David Johnson Jr., Ah’Leesya Johnson, and Myeshia Johnson, the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson. He was buried at Hollywood Memorial Gardens. Johnson was working with U.S. Army Special Forces in northwestern Africa when Islamic militants ambushed them on Oct. 4, near the Niger border. Photos: AP/Wide World Photos

“This is personal for me, not political,” said Rep. Wilson. “Sgt. Johnson was a member of my community and of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project that I founded to help boys of color build successful futures. He was killed while on a mission to provide training and security assistance to West African armed forces battling vicious insurgents like Boko Haram, the group whose defeat I’ve been fighting for since it abducted nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls more than three years ago.

“The loved ones Sgt. Johnson leaves behind are my constituents,” said Rep. Wilson, “and my job now is to do all that I can to help them heal. I’ll save the bully pulpit for the necessary task of uncovering the circumstances surrounding the ambush and working to help ensure that our soldiers have all of the resources and support that they need while putting their lives on the line to keep others safe.”

The Congressional Black Caucus also called on the White House to apologize to Rep. Wilson for false actions attributed to her by Mr. Kelley.

The U.S. is using its military “to ensure continuing imperialist domination of Africa,” attorney Mark P. Fancher wrote in an op-ed for Black Agenda Report. “AFRICOM has stubbornly insisted that its sole objectives are to advise and support the armies of African government ‘partners’ and to provide humanitarian assistance. But we know the truth to be otherwise. [U.S. military involvement in Africa] is called Low Intensity Irregular Warfare, yet technically it’s not considered war by the Pentagon. But warfare is warfare to me.”

But the GOP is able to shape the conversation away from the critical issues. “Well, as you know, the Republican Party, the Party of Whiteness, has an advantage when it comes to playing the demagogue,” said Dr. Horne. “They are now seeking to escalate what the previous administration did in Africa, and we all know that the Democrats feel disadvantaged in Washington, because they do not capture, routinely the majority of the so-called White vote, and in a country based on White supremacy, that is all important.”

And as far as the shoving match between President Trump and Rep. Wilson is concerned: “What Congresswoman Wilson said was consistent with the historic attitude of disrespect exhibited by the 45th U.S. president toward the Black community in general,” said Dr. Horne. “And so, there’s no reason to disbelieve that Congresswoman Wilson, who we know to be a rational actor, would seek to put false words in the mouth of Donald J. Trump, not least because his mouth is already stock full of false words, and could hardly have space for more.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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