Trump turns media attack dogs on grieving Army widow

Donald Trump’s most callous supporters in the conservative press have been attacking Gold Star wife Myeshia Johnson, after the grieving Army widow gave her first media interview Monday and confirmed that Trump had disrespected her family in the wake of her husband’s death.

Denouncing her as a political puppet of the left, notoriously unsavory outlets such as Breitbart and Gateway Pundit wasted little time attacking the pregnant mother of two.

Sgt. La David Johnson was one of four U.S. Special Forces troops killed in an ISIS raid on Oct. 4 in Niger.

The attack has become a major political problem for the White House, in part because Trump steadfastly refused for two weeks to acknowledge the fallen troops. When he finally reached out to Johnson’s family, he was dismissive and insensitive, telling the widow that her husband “knew what he signed up for” when he joined the military.

Monday, Johnson said Trump’s phone call “made me cry,” and noted that Trump “couldn’t remember my husband’s name. And that’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”

But her obvious pain and torment means nothing to Trump’s hateful media minions.

Breitbart’s London editor, Raheem Kassam, soon unleashed a nasty tirade against Johnson, claiming she “got whipped up into this frenzy” by Trump critics and was somehow goaded into criticizing him.

“I think there are forces acting disgracefully and besmirching the reputation and the name of a dead serviceman there, and it ain’t President Trump doing that, right?” said Kassam. He then zeroed in on Johnson: “How would you feel if you were killed in action and your wife or your girlfriend used that opportunity to attack the president of the United States?”

The white nationalist site Gateway Pundit also belittled Johnson two days after she buried her husband, claiming, “The liberal media dragged out grieving widow Myeshia Johnson on Monday to trash President Trump.”

And on right-wing talk radio, former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, completely unmoored from common decency, announced that Sgt. Johnson’s wife was now fair game for political “attack.”

Trump never attacked her.

Yes, Myeshia Johnson has a right to speak. But now that she's gotten political, we have a right to attack her. https://t.co/ZWJfhKJG0Y

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 23, 2017

Last week, Fox News talked down to Johnson, insisting that instead of being upset about Trump’s insulting call, she should have been thrilled that he deemed her worthy of a phone conservation.

The current smear campaign is part of a larger right-wing harassment effort targeting Johnson, including a Facebook post attributed to her that has been circulated within the far-right media and was designed to exonerate Trump for his horrid responses and his continued refusal to acknowledge the fallen troops. ABC News confirmed the post was a fake.

The disgusting smear campaign against a grieving widow cannot change the truth about what happened, nor about who Sgt. Johnson was. As a survivor of the Niger raid stressed to ABC News: “The guy is a true war hero. I really want his wife and kids to know that.”