'I'm trying not to cry': Gold Star mom wounded by Trump's thumbs-up photo near son's grave
A Gold Star mother condemned Donald Trump for staging a campaign event just feet away from where her son is buried.
Karen Meredith's son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was laid to rest in Section 60 – known as the saddest acre in America – after he was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and the California resident is angry that the former president and current Republican nominee recorded a video nearby to use for his re-election campaign, reported The Atlantic.
“It’s not a number, not a headstone,” Meredith said. “He was my only child.”
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Trump took part in a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 American soldiers killed three years ago in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, posed for a thumbs-up photo with two Gold Star families who spoke at the Republican National Convention and then shared video of the occasion on TikTok.
“We didn’t lose one person in 18 months," Trump says in the video's narration, "and then [the Biden administration] took over, that disaster of leaving Afghanistan.”
A cemetery employee attempted to remind the campaign staff that campaign activities, especially photos and videos, are expressly forbidden under federal law, but two Trump staffers shoved her aside and a spokesman later suggested she was suffering from mental illness and his campaign manager called her "despicable" and asked for her dismissal.
“Partisan activities are inappropriate in Arlington National Cemetery," the regulations state, "due to its role as a shrine to all the honored dead of the Armed Forces of the United States and out of respect for the men and women buried there and for their families.”
Meredith said the area where her son is buried has hosted family get-togethers that are not exactly solemn, because children are often present, but she's shocked and disgusted by the former president's blithe indifference to the sanctified setting.
“We laugh, we pop champagne," Meredith said. "I have met men who served under him and they speak of him with such respect, and to think that this man came here and put his thumb up—”
“I’m trying not to cry," she added, taking a gulp of air.