Rep. Frederica Wilson has many things to say about former White House chief of staff John Kelly. None are very nice.
“Mr. Kelly is an idiot,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
The Florida Democratic congressmember was reacting to Kelly’s recent statement to CNN, where he asserted on the record that his old boss, former President Donald Trump, made disparaging comments about military families and veterans behind closed doors — and publicly.
“A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me’ … and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France,” Kelly told CNN in a statement.
But five years earlier, Kelly defended the former president and attacked Wilson. At the time, Kelly accused Wilson of being “selfish” for calling Trump’s comments to the widow of a fallen Marine insensitive. Trump had told the widow her husband “must have known what he signed up for,” a comment Wilson overheard because she was nearby with the grieving family.
Wilson took the comments very personally. The widow’s husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, was killed in an ambush attack in Niger in 2017 and was in a mentoring program Wilson started in Miami. She said she is still close with the family.
Trump’s handling of the Niger ambush was heavily scrutinized, as was his conduct toward the families of the slain soldiers.
“He knew Mr. Trump's record,” Wilson said, in reference to Kelly. “For him to stand in the White House behind the podium and lie — he's an idiot and he should be ashamed of himself.”
Wilson wasn’t the only one who took offense at Trump’s comments. Johnson’s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, was also present during the 2017 call and told the Washington Post that “Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.”
Wilson said she wanted to take the phone away to curse Trump out.
And now, all these years later, Wilson said she’s considering suing Kelly for defamation.
“This is personal. This has to do with my feelings and my name,” Wilson said. “I don't want generations of children, years from now, to pick up a book or read an article about me and John Kelly and I’m misrepresented.”
Kelly did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Wilson said she hopes some Gold Star families may feel some relief from Kelly confirming the former president’s statements and speaking out against them. But she said she feels no relief.
“He's an idiot for selling his soul for so long to a man who he knew was lying, a man who he knew who was disrespectful to military families, to Gold Star families, to widows, to members of Congress — anything that had to do with the military,” she said.
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