US President Donald Trump makes insensitive remarks to widow of slain American soldier

The widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson cries over his flag-draped coffin as his body arrives back home in Miami. (Photo via ABC News)

US President Donald Trump has made insensitive remarks to the pregnant widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in North Africa on October 4.

Trump, in a phone call, told the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four US Special Operations soldiers killed in Niger, that her husband “knew what he signed up for... but when it happens it hurts anyway.”

On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson told multiple news outlets that she overheard Trump making such remarks while she was in the car with the “distraught” woman to meet the body in Miami when the president called her.

Army Sgt. La David Johnson

“They were astonished,” Wilson said of their reaction. “It was almost like saying, ‘You signed up to do this, and if you didn’t want to die, shouldn’t have signed up’.”

She said that Myeshia’s only words during the five-minute conversation were “thank you” at the end of their talk.

Wilson said she tried to talk to Trump and “curse him out,” but the family refused to give her the phone.

Myeshia, who has already two young children, is also six months pregnant with a third child.

A White House official later reacted by saying that Trump’s “conversations with the families of American heroes were private."

Trump called the families of the fallen soldiers nearly two weeks after the incident. The US Department of Defense is still conducting a review into the ambush, the details of the mission, however, remain unclear and there is no final results yet.