President Trump caught cracking joke about terrorists while discussing Niger ambush where four U.S. soldiers died – By Chris Sommerfeldt (nydailynews.com) / Sept 10 2018
President Trump drew laughs from some of his aides as he joked about what a “rough business” terrorism is while discussing an ambush in Niger that left four U.S. soldiers dead last year, according to the latest secret recording released Monday.
Trump made the comments during a closed-door meeting at the White House in the wake of the Oct. 4, 2017, attack on the U.S. Special Forces, who were advising local troops fighting Islamic extremists in the African nation.
Former White House communications aide Omarosa Manigault Newman secretly recorded the conversation and provided a tape of it to MSNBC on Monday afternoon.
The President can be heard on the tape telling his aides the U.S. and Nigerien troops “got attacked by 50 real fighters,” who he claimed were in Africa because the American military had chased them out of the Middle East.
“So it’s a rough business. I wouldn’t, I don’t think I’d want to be a terrorist right now,” Trump said, prompting guffaws from the staffers in the room. “It’s not a good life…The reason they’re there, is because we forced them out, and it’s not nearly as many, it’s not nearly as intense, but it’s pretty intense, you see that happening. So that’s that.”
In an interview with host Craig Melvin, Manigault Newman said Trump made the off-the-cuff comments during a communications team meeting attended by several people who she said didn’t have proper security clearances for such a conversation.
Manigault Newman, who has been on a media blitz since the release last month of her tell-all book about the Trump administration, said she interpreted the President’s lighthearted comments, and the subsequent laughter from aides, as “kind of mocking the death of these soldiers.”
“It’s not a laughing matter,” Manigault Newman told Melvin. “We lost four American soldiers.”
Sgt. La David Johnson was among the four U.S. soldiers killed in the October 2017 ambush. (AP)
The ambush, which also left four Nigerien soldiers dead, has been shrouded in controversy since U.S. Special Forces in Africa are only supposed to advise and assist local troops from behind the front lines. The Pentagon has blamed the bloody ambush on “individual, organizational, and institutional failures,” but has yet to fault any particular individual or strategic decision.
During the private White House chat, Trump shed some light on what his views are on U.S. military involvement in Africa.
“You know, it’s a rough business,” he can be heard saying in the recording. “They’re rough too, they want to kill us. We’ve let the military do what they have to do. And whether you call it rules of engagement or any way you want to say it, but we’ve let them do.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was present for the meeting, did not return a request for comment.
Trump infamously inflamed the ambush controversy further after he was accused of forgetting the name of one of the fallen soldiers while on a condolence call with his wife.
“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” Myeshia Johnson, the wife of late Army Sgt. La David Johnson, told ABC News weeks after his death.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who represents Johnson’s district and listened in on the condolence call, also accused Trump of telling Johnson that her husband “knew what he was getting into.” Trump denies the allegation.
Wilson said Monday she wasn’t surprised Trump tried to “make light” of the Niger ambush.
“It is appalling, but this is the same man, after all, who told the widow of my constituent, Sgt. La David Johnson, during his so-called condolence call that her husband knew what he was signing up for,” Wilson told the Daily News. “The recording is yet another example of how unfit Mr. Trump is to serve as our nation’s commander-in-chief and how he cannot resist any opportunity to massage his insatiable ego by taking false credit.”
Bob Woodward, in his recent book, “Fear” details the President’s struggle dealing with the families of fallen soldiers.
“Some in the Oval Office had copies of the service records. None of what Trump cited was there. He was just making it up,” Woodward writes. “He knew what the families wanted to hear.”
