Former GOP strategist turned Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson gave an emotional podcast from the Crown Room of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, at times choking up as he tore into former President Donald Trump as "a person who would use the honored graves of our military dead for a political stunt."
Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where the Trump campaign tried to stage a possibly illegal photo-op, "is a place of enormous emotional import," began Wilson — a place that holds many Iraq and Afghanistan war dead. "Young men and women, cut down in the prime of life, defending the country."
"I've been talking to a lot of my veteran friends," noted Wilson, calling the whole situation "revolting" and yet another reminder of "exactly how Trump feels about our veterans."
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"He did it for a political stunt, for a political prank. And it's reprehensible," said Wilson.
Specifically, he noted, the whole point was to "stage a fake memorial ceremony with the agreement or connivance or cooperation" of Gold Star families, to say Trump honored the soldiers killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal, purely so they could hang "around the neck" of Vice President Kamala Harris that she wasn't in attendance. Only to have a Department of the Army employee tell the Trump team they weren't allowed to do this, which reportedly led to a "physical altercation" that saw Trump staffers manhandle her.
Trump did this, said Wilson, because "he's desperate, his campaign is falling apart, he's falling apart mentally and physically." Trump "chose sacred ground," Wilson added.
"He chose to dance on the tomb of American soldiers ... what kind of moral vacuum is inside somebody who would do that?" asked Wilson.
"I don't expect to change any MAGA minds anymore," said Wilson, his voice audibly breaking. "You've abandoned the role where rationality and honor and integrity and patriotism matter anymore ... But the elephant in the room is that your souls are forfeit when it comes down to this guy's — you've got to understand that this is something at a level that, that these ferocious angels who look down on us now will never accept."
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