“I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!” President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter. | Mandel Ngan/Getty Images Trump disputes widow's assertion that he couldn't remember slain soldier's name

President Donald Trump on Monday denied that he had trouble recalling the name of Army Sgt. La David Johnson during a phone call with the slain soldier’s widow, disputing her assertion that he had struggled to remember the sergeant’s name during a condolence conversation.

“I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!” Trump wrote on Twitter Monday morning.


An hour earlier, Myeshia Johnson, the widow of La David Johnson, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that her conversation with the president last week had left her “very, very upset and hurt” and that he had “made me cry even worse.” Most offensive, the widow said, was that Trump seemed to have a hard time producing La David Johnson’s name.

“He couldn't remember my husband's name. 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.’ I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband name,” she said. “And that’s what 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? And that’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”

The first accounts of the president’s conversation with the widow came from Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who was in the car with Myeshia Johnson when she took the call from Trump on speakerphone. The White House spent much of last week disputing Wilson’s version of events, with the president writing on Twitter that the Florida lawmaker had “totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof).”

Myeshia Johnson’s recounting of her call with the president matched closely with that of Wilson, and the widow told ABC that “whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100 percent correct.”



Myeshia Johnson, wife of slain soldier says Trump made her cry