Donald Trump is desperately trying to respond to the blowback after his campaign staff got into a verbal and physical fight with staff at Arlington National Cemetery Tuesday.
Trump was participating in a wreath-laying ceremony, and a cemetery official tried to stop Trump staffers from taking pictures and videos in section 60, where recent military casualties are buried. The cemetery says taking photos in that section for political purposes is a violation of federal law, and one source told NPR that cemetery officials had stressed to the campaign that only cemetery employees would be allowed to film or take photographs in the section.
Campaign staffers didn’t take kindly to being told they couldn’t film or photograph, and they reportedly pushed the cemetery official aside and called them names.
Late Tuesday night, Trump posted a graphic with words of thanks from some family members of Marines buried in the cemetery, saying they had given permission to the Trump campaign to photograph and take video of the section.
The rest of Trump’s team is also busy trying to clean up the mess. Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, rejected NPR’s account of events, noting the campaign is “prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.”
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung added.
In another statement to CNN, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita further laid the blame on the cemetery official.
“For a despicable individual to physically prevent President Trump’s team from accompanying him to this solemn event is a disgrace and does not deserve to represent the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery,” LaCivita said.
NPR didn’t receive any footage from the campaign, and the cemetery had a different account, telling the news outlet that it “can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed.”
“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. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants,” the statement read.
All of this seems to have overshadowed the reason that Trump made the appearance at the cemetery in the first place: to mark the third anniversary of an attack on U.S. troops at Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate, which killed 13 U.S. soldiers. But however Trump wants to try and cover up the incident, it won’t help his reputation towards veterans. Earlier this month, he sparked anger by denigrating the military’s Medal of Honor, and later doubled down. He has also called military veterans “suckers and losers” in the past. One can be sure that Kamala Harris’s campaign will seek to highlight this incident and as an example of Trump’s disrespect.
