Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik defended President Donald Trump's remarks to a Gold Star widow, asking Newsmax TV Wednesday: "You know how many times I've said that to families of those that have fallen under me?"
"I lost 23 people on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center imploded," Kerik told "Newsmax Now" host Bill Tucker in an interview. "I've said that to every family.
"These men and women in the NYPD who died, they knew the perils inherent with the job they were performing.
"They knew the dangers — and, yet, they did it anyway."
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Trump has come under fire for his comments to Myeshia Johnson, 24, of Miami Gardens, Florida, on Tuesday, the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, 25, who died in an Oct. 4 ambush by ISIS in Niger.
Trump told Johnson that her slain husband, a Green Beret, "knew what he signed up for . . . but when it happens it hurts anyway."
Kerik told Tucker that Trump's comment was "a compliment to their courage, to their bravery, to their honor.
"If those are the words that the president used, I'm 100 percent positive that's what he meant.
"But to take his comments and basically politicize this … was insane," he said.
"I just think it's disgusting.
"The hatred for the president by the left is something that we're going to have to deal with," Kerik added.
"But to politicize and exploit the death of an American soldier and to exploit the grief by his widow and family is … so repugnant that it defies description."