Donald Trump, the former reality television host who often stresses the importance of ratings and headlines, claimed that his controversially filmed visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Monday—during which he flashed a smile and a thumbs up over tombstones—wasn’t driven by publicity.
“I go there and they ask me to have a picture. And they say I was campaigning. I don’t need—the one thing I get is plenty of publicity. I don’t need that. I don’t need the publicity,” Trump said Thursday during a campaign stop in Michigan, after falsely saying his visit occurred Wednesday.
Trump, who added that he was “asked to go” to the cemetery, took photographs with the family of Taylor Hoover, a Marine killed in the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan.
