Wife Of Fallen Marine To Trump: Your Tweet Is Not Enough

The wife of a Marine killed in a tragic plane crash Monday, July 10, is criticizing President Donald Trump's reaction (or lack thereof, if you ask her) to the incident. The president's only reaction to date was a two-sentence Tweet.

Anna Johnson lost her husband of 15 years, Gunnery Sgt. Brandon Johnson, to the crash in Itta Bena, Mississippi. Fifteen others were killed. To her, the president's tweet was not enough.

"My husband and his 'brothers' deserve MORE than a tweet!" Johnson said in a message shared on Facebook by News and Guts, a media company founded by news icon Dan Rather. She continued, "I don't know how to get through to tell this president and congress how insulted I am."

"He could have had a press conference, a written statement," she said, adding that anything but a Tweet would have been better.

The KC-130 aircraft was flying from Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina, to Naval Air Field in El Centro, California, when it crashed in central Mississippi, the Marine Corps Times reported. Aboard were six elite Marine Raiders, a Navy corpsman and seven Marines in the flight crew.

They were:

• Maj. Caine Michael Goyette
• Capt. Sean E. Elliott
• Gunnery Sgt. Mark. A. Hopkins
• Gunnery Sgt. Brendan C. Johnson
• Staff Sgt. Robert H. Cox
• Staff Sgt. William Kundrat
• Staff Sgt. Joshua M. Snowden
• Sgt. Chad Jenson
• Sgt. Julian M. Kevianne
• Sgt. Talon Leach
• Sgt. Owen Lennon
• HM2 Ryan Lohrey
• Sgt. Joseph Murray
• Sgt. Dietrich Schmieman
• Cpl. Daniel Baldassare
• Cpl. Collin J. Schaaff

Johnson also pointed out something that news stations and publications often overlook. "Their ranks," she said. ABC News tweeted out a video with the photos and names of the fallen Marines and sailor. They called Joshua Snowden a sergeant, when he was in fact a staff sergeant. While, to its credit, Snowden's rank was accurate in another section of the web page, Marines take rank quite seriously. Calling a staff sergeant or gunnery sergeant by the title "sergeant" is considered disrespectful; they're completely different ranks.

"They EARN rank! In the USMC, a Sgt. is different than a Staff Sgt. or a Gunny Sgt.," Johnson said in her message, noting that she attempted to contact several news agencies with the corrections but did not receive any responses. "No reply, no nothing," she said.

Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller made his statement on Tuesday about the incident.

"On behalf of the entire Marine Corps, I want to express my deepest condolences to the families of those killed in the aircraft mishap yesterday afternoon in Mississippi," Neller said. "Our focus remains on notifying and supporting the families while we conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of this tragedy."

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