Did the president of the United States "just" tell a widow of a soldier in January 2024 that "he knew what he signed up for"? No, that's not true: This quote has been traced back to 2017, when Donald Trump was the president of the United States. With this claim being posted in January 2024 plus the use of the word "just," the poster implies that Joe Biden, the president in 2024, said this. There is no record of Biden making such a remark.
The claim appeared on Instagram (archived here) on January 16, 2024. The Instagram post is a brief video of an unidentified man staring into the camera below an image of a woman in a dress mourning on top of a casket as a little girl stands next to her. The casket is draped in an American flag. The on-screen text reads:
This woman is pregnant. She has two kids. And she just lost her husband.
The President of the United States just told her that he knew what he signed up for.
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Jan 17 14:15:28 2024 UTC)
The post was published by Instagram user @ceoreact, who labels himself a "Reaction King." The post does not link to an outside source that might corroborate this claim or date when this event happened.
A reverse image search of the woman and child led to this X post (archived here) from Ginger Maddox (archived here), the assistant news director for CBS News Texas. In October 2017, she posted the image seen in the Instagam post with the caption, "The widow of Sgt. La David Johnson hugs the casket carrying his remains. He was among 4 killed in #Niger Heartbreaking - God Bless her."
A Google search for the keywords "President of the United States AND 'told her that he knew what he signed up for'" (archived here) led to a 2017 CBS article titled, "Trump told slain soldier's widow that he 'knew what he was getting into,' Congresswoman says (archived here)." The CBS article reported that U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson spoke to Myeisha Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson. Wilson said then-President Trump called Johnson after finding out her late husband had been killed in combat and told her, "Well, I guess he knew what he was getting into." CBS also embedded a Twitter post (archived here) of Trump denying Johnson's claim. The post read, "Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!"
A Google News search of "President of the United States AND 2024 AND 'told her that he knew what he signed up for'" (archived here) did not yield any results suggesting that Biden said this to a widow of a fallen soldier.
More Lead Stories articles on claims involving Donald Trump are here.
Other Lead Stories articles on claims involving Joe Biden are here.
