WASHINGTON — President Trump defended his slow public response to the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Niger this month by claiming that most of his predecessors never called the families of service members killed in action.

“If you look at President Obama, and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls," Trump said Monday. "I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I am able to do it."

It was Trump's first public statement about the Niger incident, in which an Army special forces unit was ambushed by Islamic extremists in the western African nation. And it brought an swift and strong reaction from aides to former President Barack Obama.

"That's a (expletive) lie," said Alyssa Mastromonaco, Obama's deputy chief of staff, on Twitter, calling Trump "a deranged animal."

Trump later backed off his own statement later during an impromptu and freewheeling session with reporters in the White House Rose Garden.

"President Obama I think probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn't. I don't know. That's what I was told," he said. "Other presidents did not call. They’d write letters. And some presidents didn't do anything.”

Recent presidents have acknowledged the sacrifice of fallen soldiers in different ways — and usually with little fanfare. President George W. Bush met personally with more than 450 families of service members who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and wrote to more than 4,000 of them, according to newspaper accounts at the time.

Obama met with families at Dover Air Force Base, where the military mortuary is located, and also wrote letters and made phone calls. In 2011, he reversed a long-standing policy and began sending letters of condolence to families of service members who committed suicide while deployed to a combat zone.

Asked to clarify Trump's statement later, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president wasn't criticizing his predecessor, but "stating a fact."

"When American heroes make the ultimate sacrifice, presidents pay their respects. Sometimes they call, sometimes they send a letter, other times they have the opportunity to meet family members in person. This president, like his predecessors, has done each of these," she said.

Anyone who claims previous presidents called every family, she said, is "mistaken."

Trump has criticized Obama's handling of service members killed in action before. In 2012, he suggested on Twitter that Obama was "too busy playing golf" and sent form letters to families signed with an autopen. The Obama White House said the letters were form letters but that they were each hand-signed.

Trump said he wrote personal letters to the families over the weekend and at some point will call the families. “I felt very, very badly about that. The toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens,” he said. “I want a little time to pass. I’m going to be calling them."

The Army said four soldiers were shot and killed while on a reconnaissance patrol 13 days ago on Oct. 3. They were serving in Niger as part of an operation to train local forces to combat the Boko Haram terror group, which has ties to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

The soldiers killed were:

► Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35, of Puyallup, Wash.

► Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39, of Springboro, Ohio

► Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29, of Lyons, Ga.

► Sgt. La David T. Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Fla.

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