Members of Donald Trump’s campaign engaged in an altercation at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday that, in any normal year, would be a wall-to-wall scandal. It was part of a political stunt staged to help Trump blunt Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging momentum, but not only did this disgraceful farce go wrong in a way that’s still unfolding, but also the very idea of it is sickening.
To create a photo op showing that Trump supports the military, his staff broke the rules of the military cemetery, verbally and physically quarreled with a cemetery official, and filmed in an area where photography is not permitted. They also seem to have violated federal law.
Compounding the incident, Trump’s campaign has refused to apologize. Instead, spokesperson Steven Cheung called the cemetery official “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode,” and top advisor Chris LaCivita tried to reverse the blame, calling for the official to be fired.
With retired Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster’s recently published book reminding Americans of how Trump regularly demeaned service members, Trump’s team clearly hoped to engineer an event through which Trump could be seen as pro-military. They also wanted to make a slap at Harris.
With Fox News cameras rolling, Trump laid wreaths at Arlington for the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate explosion at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, where 13 American service members were lost, as Americans and Afghans evacuated the country. Shortly thereafter, Trump’s team issued an email saying that Harris had “failed our soldiers and their families” by not being at Arlington to commemorate this tragedy.
However, Daily Kos could find no evidence that Trump similarly marked the first or second anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack. In 2023, Trump was apparently too busy raising money from his Georgia mugshot. And the year before that, he seems to have wasted his time railing about the removal of national security documents from his Mar-a-Lago club.
Trump marked this anniversary only because he wanted to wield it against Harris. That’s revolting, but it was just the start.
On Monday, after leaving the wreath area, Trump’s team headed for Section 60 of the cemetery, where fallen veterans of recent conflicts are interred. However, Arlington doesn’t allow filming of political events on cemetery grounds, and they don’t allow commercial photography in Section 60 where families may still be grieving recent losses.
Defense Department officials made that policy clear in a statement on Tuesday, clarifying that this isn’t some arcane rule at Arlington but rather a matter of federal law. Here’s The Washington Post:
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the cemetery’s statement said. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
But Trump was determined to get a disturbing photograph of himself giving a thumbs-up beside the grave of a dead Marine.
Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, has denied there was a physical altercation with a cemetery official and has said the campaign would release video to prove it. As of Wednesday morning, no such video has been released. That was before Cheung called the official someone “clearly suffering from a mental health episode,” and before LaCivita said that the cemetery official was “a disgrace and does not deserve to represent the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”
Late on Tuesday, Trump’s team shared a statement from relatives of two of the Marines whose graves Trump visited, but that statement in no way represents permission to film in Section 60 or conduct political events on cemetery grounds.
Trump’s actions, as well as those of his team, were a disgrace. They treated a sacred place as a stage for a political stunt. They violated the rules about political events at Arlington and filming in Section 60. And their reaction to being caught was despicable.
At the very least, this incident demands an extensive apology. An apology from Trump, and an apology from his campaign staff for how they allegedly treated a cemetery official trying to maintain federal law—and for how they’ve spoken about that official since. But Trump doesn’t do apologies, only insults.
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