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| Top aide defends Trump over widow remarks | Top aide defends Trump over widow remarks |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The White House chief of staff has launched an impassioned attack on a congresswoman who said President Trump made a war widow cry. | |
| General John Kelly said he was "broken-hearted" that the Democrat had listened to the president's condolence call to Sgt La David Johnson's wife. | |
| Gen Kelly also said he did not receive a call from President Barack Obama when his son died in Afghanistan in 2010. | |
| Sgt Johnson was one of four killed in Niger by Islamist militants this month. | |
| Trump sends cheque after family complains | |
| The chief of staff, a former Marine Corp general, said in the White House briefing room that Florida congresswoman Frederica Wilson was "an empty barrel". | |
| She said on Wednesday that Mr Trump had told bereaved Myeshia Johnson of her slain husband: "He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway." | |
| Gen Kelly said he was so "stunned" by the representative's attack that he spent more than an hour walking among soldiers' graves at Arlington National Cemetery, just outside Washington. | |
| The chief of staff said he had advised the president not to call the loved ones of the four American servicemen killed in Niger, telling him: "There's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families." | |
| Gen Kelly described such a task as "the most difficult thing you can imagine". | |
| "There is no perfect way to make that phone call," he added. | |
| He also discussed the death of his own son, Robert Kelly, a 29-year-old first lieutenant in the Marines who died when he stepped on an Afghan landmine. | |
| Gen Kelly said: "He [President Trump] asked me about previous presidents. And I said, 'I can tell you that President Obama, who was my commander-in-chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family.' | |
| "That was not a criticism. That was just to simply say, I don't believe that President Obama called. That's not a negative thing. | |
| "I don't believe President Bush called in all cases. I don't believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high, that presidents call." |