Florida Democrat calls Niger ambush ‘Trump’s Benghazi’
The Florida Democratic congresswoman who clashed with President Donald Trump over his call to the widow of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger wants Congress to investigate what she’s calling “Mr. Trump’s Benghazi.”
Rep. Frederica Wilson said Trump was slow to speak publicly about the ambush before her “dust-up” with the president Tuesday, when she accused him of being insensitive during a phone call with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, saying Trump said Johnson “knew what he signed up for.” Trump denied that he said that; White House chief of staff John Kellysaid Thursday that the president’s words were similar to Wilson’s recounting but that she had the context wrong.
Wilson, calling Trump a “jerk” and a “liar,” said in an interview in Miami Thursday that she believed the ambush that led to four deaths two weeks ago resembled the 2012 attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that also left four dead, including a U.S. ambassador. The attack led to criticism of former President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by conservatives who said the facility was unprepared for such an incident and also took issue with their handling of the aftermath.
“The circumstances are similar,” Wilson said. She said in Niger, the four soldiers providing counterterrorism training “didn’t have appropriate weapons where they were. They were told by intelligence there was no threat. They had trucks that were not armored trucks. They were particularly not protected. Just like in Benghazi, they were given the impression that everything was fine.”
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, disputed the comparison.
“In Benghazi, you had U.S. fighter jets sitting in Crete that could have been there very quickly. Here, we did not have U.S. capabilities that we were freezing in place,” Gaetz said. “It is not like that in Central Africa.”
In Niger, Gaetz said, U.S. special forces were trying to keep a light footprint so as not to draw attention as they equipped and trained local forces to combat terrorists chased out of North Africa. As a result, he said, the soldiers were exposed because of the dangerous nature of the mission.
“When you’ve got Americans in a zone where there’s really little command and control, it’s a highly volatile environment,” Gaetz said. “It is not atypical to begin these types of operations by having our high-intensity special operators — the Green Berets, the Navy Seals, the air commandos — and then over time increase our capabilities. In Central Africa, it is important that we maintain low visibility in some cases. And having a massive extraction force in the region doesn’t always facilitate low visibility.”
Gaetz said the mission in Central Africa may change and more U.S. soldiers could be deployed there.
But until then, Gaetz said, the military has relied on a private contractor — identified in press reports as Berry Aviation — to provide transportation services or, in the case of the Niger ambush, extraction of the wounded or dead.
Gaetz said the armed services panel is gathering information on what happened, so he could not discuss further details.
Wilson said it had been hard to get information, and she still doesn’t know exactly what happened to Johnson, a constituent and young man who graduated in 2010 from her 5000 Role Models of Excellence program to help at-risk black youth in the Miami area. She said she understood that Johnson was separated from his fellow soldiers and wasn’t found until two days later.
“We’d like to know,” Wilson said. “Why was he separated? Was he kidnapped? Was he lost? Was he already expired? What happened to him? Why, 48 hours later, did we still not know where he was?”
The tussle between Wilson and Trump has put Rep. Gaetz in an awkward position. Gaetz is a Trump supporter and hails from a district that adores the president. But he’s also friendly with the Democrat and knew her when they served together briefly in the Florida Legislature.
Asked if he thought Wilson was honest, Gaetz didn’t miss a beat: “Yes.”
Asked if he thought Trump was honest, Gaetz paused. “He’s never lied to me,” he said.