Former President Trump did something incredibly cynical, certainly immoral, and probably illegal the other day.
In other words, it was Monday.
Trump used an appearance on the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of many who honorably served their country, to make a campaign video.
Trump was in Arlington to mark the third anniversary of the deaths of 13 U.S. service members by a suicide bomber during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He said he was invited by the soldiers' families, some of whom disparaged President Biden at the Republican National Convention.
I have no doubt that is true, but even the grieving families of fallen soldiers have no right to criticize the Arlington protocols.
The military, which oversees the cemetery, prohibits any political activity at the site. The Trump campaign was told this is against federal law and Defense Department policy. The Washington Post reported that Pentagon officials were “deeply concerned” that Trump would turn the visit into a campaign stop, but also wanted to accommodate him.
During the visit, a cemetery official tried to enforce rules against outside cameras in Section 60, the area dedicated primarily to soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two members of Trump's staff pushed her out of the way, according to news reports.
The official declined to press charges because she feared retaliation from Trump supporters, according to a Army statement. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung quickly called her “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”
Trump smiled broadly and gave a jarring thumbs-up as he stood at the grave of Marine Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, one of those killed in the attack. He wasn’t there just to pay his respects; he was there to exploit the tragedy at the Abbey Gate of Kabul airport in 2021 and blame Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has surged in recent polls.
The frantic withdrawal and horrific loss of life occurred under Biden, as did the abandonment of at least 78,000 Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and continue to live precariously there.
Yet Trump crassly ignores his own role in the debacle. A deal he himself struck with the Taliban forced the US to meet a withdrawal deadline. Military intelligence was deeply wrong about the Afghan government’s ability to defend Kabul, which fell to the Taliban with lightning speed. There is plenty of blame to go around.
I called a dear friend whose parents are buried at Arlington. Her father was a Marine colonel and a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. At his funeral, he was given a 21-gun salute and his procession included a riderless horse, empty boots in the stirrups facing backward to symbolize a last look at his troops and loved ones.
“My father was a conservative guy, but he would have thought Trump was a pig,” my friend told me. “He believed in honor, and if you are buried in Arlington, that is an honor. It is not something that should be… [messed] with.”
Trump has a history of disparaging military sacrifices and upending honorable traditions. As president, he turned the White House into his personal political prop, using it as the backdrop for the launch of his failed 2020 reelection campaign.
Poor Ohio Senator JD Vance, whose campaign-campaign clumsiness has turned him into a meme-worthy joke. Once again he has found himself in the unfortunate position of having to try to clean up his running mate's mistakes.
At a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday, an angry Vance lashed out at the media.
“They’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV ad at a grave,” said Vance, a Navy veteran. “He was there providing emotional support to a lot of brave Americans who lost loved ones they never should have lost, and it turned out there was a camera there and someone gave them permission to have it there.”
As they say on social media, who's going to tell him?
That same day, the Trump campaign released a video showing the former president in Arlington, laying flowers on a grave and posing for photos with Gold Star families.
In a voiceover, Trump says, “We didn’t lose anybody in 18 months,” a self-centered and totally false claim he has been making for the past several years. As Reuters reported in May 2022, if Trump was referring to the time period in which he negotiated the withdrawal agreement, 15 American soldiers suffered what the Department of Defense called “hostile deaths” in Afghanistan. If he was referring to the last 18 months of his presidency, 12 military members were killed in Afghanistan.
All of this is unlikely to deter Trump's passionate supporters, but let's hope his chilling maneuver convinces the last of the undecided voters that he is truly, profoundly, unfit to be this country's commander in chief.
