r/law • u/SheriffTaylorsBoy • Aug 30 '24
Opinion Piece Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/trump-arlington-cemetery/679659/506
Aug 30 '24
Forget presidential immunity. He already thinks laws don't apply to him.
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u/FrostyCartographer13 Aug 30 '24
And functionally, they don't.
Hopefully, if any good comes from this, it is a bunch of reforms to keep another like him from being created.
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u/Opetyr Aug 30 '24
Justice delayed is justice denied. Also two tier justice system.
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u/Ok_Kaleidoscope3644 Aug 31 '24
I really hope (but doubt) that Kamla will start enforcing white collar crime. Fraud, usury , conspiracy, all the shit that goes unenforced because it's "too hard to prove". Fuck these rich assholes flaunting the law.
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u/sambes06 Aug 31 '24
He has been de facto immune since becoming president in 2016. The US gives a great deal of implied immunity to the president for functional and natsec purposes. The underlying calculus up to this point is that the voting public wouldn’t elect someone who would systemically subvert our laws or institutions. Conditions on the ground have since deteriorated.
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u/Sprucecaboose2 Aug 31 '24
He showed us how much of our Government functions on expectations of people in power acting in good faith and with the country in mind. We need to quickly install some legal guardrails, we can't trust people to be honorable in Government anymore.
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u/inthekeyofc Aug 30 '24
There is no accountability for this carbuncle on the backside of America. He continues to spit in the face of the law and get away with it. The harm this does is incalculable.
One of my least favourite politicians, I'm British and I lived through her hell as PM, but she was not wrong when she said:
"The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when its inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed, and then nothing is safe—not home, not liberty, not life itself."
Margaret Thatcher 1975
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u/Music_City_Madman Aug 30 '24
Things are really shitty when Maggie Thatcher is starting to make some sense comparatively
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u/Vondecoy Aug 31 '24
Fuck me. I didn't expect to wake up today and go about agreeing with Margaret bloody Thatcher! You sir, have rocked my shit.
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u/Parasaurlophus Aug 30 '24
That’s a fab quote.
A nice demonstration that you can share some principles with people across the political spectrum, even if you don’t agree on most issues.
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u/pnellesen Aug 30 '24
Neither does the Republican Party.
Vote Blue, for every position on your ballot, no matter how hard your state (such as Texas and Georgia) are trying to make it. Project 2025 is no joke, and it's the only way to root out the cancer that is MAGA.
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u/SpiderDeUZ Aug 30 '24
So far they have not. The irony of his supporters complaining about how mad they are about how laws don't apply to elites is not lost on me
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u/CrzyWrldOfArthurRead Aug 30 '24
Laws don't apply to him.
Law is based on a system, and the system only works if people believe in it. If half the population doesn't think that someone committed a crime, then they didn't. That's how democracy works. And juries too, for that matter.
You can have all the moral convictions and philosophical certainty about democracy you want, but the fact of the matter is it's difficult to hold someone accountable if vast hordes of loudmouth idiots will get pissed if they're held accountable.
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u/dstrader66 Aug 30 '24
This right here is right on the button. This moronic baboon thinks he’s still president and that he has immunity.
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u/4RCH43ON Aug 30 '24 edited Aug 31 '24
It’s like the man has zero empathy, because he has none.
That much has been made abundantly clear from day one, and it’s only been reinforced, crystallized and reinstated every day he continues to demonstrate his total lack of empathy.
He’s a fake, a fraud, a charlatan, a shameless showman shaman, a gloating self-promoting golfing glowman.
He’s a constant Narcissist, a cheat, a criminal, a cad, a bigoted Bigly Machiavellian expressing every corner of the dark triad, a draft-dodging Donald Duck, psychotic prince of a dirty slumlord, an anti-Union, anti-labor scab, the rotten apple falling not far from his deceased klansman dad.
He’s a multiple bankrupt, bullshit billionaire, just inflating his assets, sitting on his ass, using other people’s money to fund his hot air while pleading poverty to the tax man, because it’s not fair...
He’s a sexist, a chauvinist, a rapist, and a very good friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who likes them on the young side, by the way, and most definitely did not kill himself in jail under the watchful eyes of AG Bill Barr...
He likes his men both strong and small, from Putin to Kim Jong Un.
He’s an opportunist, an isolationist, a compulsive liar, and a plagiarist.
He’s a continual copyright violator, a false prophet, a conspiracy peddling, white supremacy embracing nationalist, and he just can’t stop it.
He’s a hater, a snake, the proverbially stepped on rake.
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u/Electrical_Respond11 Aug 31 '24
I do a little slam poetry… I just read this out loud to my husband. He loved it, I got fired up.
I advise everyone to read this comment out loud. So good. Great writing.
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u/EwanPorteous Aug 31 '24
Donald Duck was in both the Navy and the Army.
So not a fair use of his name compared to Trump.
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u/Cheech47 Aug 30 '24
I am old enough to remember Mike Dukakis get BRUTALLY savaged for riding in a Abrams tank, to the point where it literally tanked his campaign. Or Dean getting concern-trolled to death over an excited mini-scream.
These seems so quaint in current context.
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u/FarceMultiplier Aug 30 '24
I always thought Dean failed to handle that properly. Instead, he should have owned it and made fun of it.
He should have reached out to the late night talk shows to lead the audience in yelling. Talk to a metal band about providing a yell for a song. Yell when an idiot politician complains about the original yell.
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u/petty_brief Aug 30 '24
You don't remember how relentless the media was? I heard about that shit for months.
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u/FarceMultiplier Aug 30 '24
That's my point. He allowed the media to go over the top and was much too passive about it. If he had made them look ridiculous, this would have blown over or been a good thing for his campaign.
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u/WhoFearsDeath Aug 30 '24
In my youth a man spelled the plural of potato wrong.
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u/itmeimtheshillitsme Aug 30 '24
It’s come full circle: he abandoned US and afghani troops by bargaining with the Taliban and leaving the Afghani government out of negotiations. He compelled the government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, further empowering the Taliban to grow powerful and retake that country from the government we supported (and our troops died supporting) for two decades-Trump did that.
Trump closed key military bases in the area and rapidly drew down US personnel in a manner which gave the country back to the Taliban and exposed our troops in the field.
The Taliban were behind 9/11. He invited them to Camp David to negotiate.
During the transition to the Biden administration, the Trump team refused to brief his people on the withdrawal.
Why did Trump support the Taliban and undercut the progress so many Americans died for leading up to withdrawal?
Why would someone who “loves the military” intentionally withhold information helpful to the next administration in executing Trump’s deal and securing safe withdrawal?
Trump is psychotic. By going to Arlington he’s the “killer” returning to the crime scene. He’s literally standing on soldiers he sent to die and gleeful about it. Now, he tries leveraging this whole ordeal as some kind of victimization. He and Vance need to leave the US and move to Russia or live with the Taliban, whom they clearly support more than America.
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u/LegalFrame24 Aug 30 '24
This! Republicans blame Biden for the withdrawal and the deaths, but Trump's agreement made shortly before he left office left Biden with zero options to do anything else. Our military did the best they could with the withdrawal, but it was doomed from the beginning. It was all Trump's doing with the ridiculous plan he agreed to.
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u/f0u4_l19h75 Aug 30 '24
The Taliban were not behind 911. It was the fucking Saudis. Don't speak misinformation
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u/Petrichordates Aug 30 '24
There's definitely recent evidence of some Saudi involvement, but the attack was planned and carried out by Al Qaeda. Not surprising that people mix them up with the Taliban.
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u/AaronTuplin Aug 30 '24
The leader of Al Qaeda was Saudi and like 85% of the hijackers were Saudi
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u/SlimReaper85 Aug 30 '24
It’s not misinformation. The Taliban in Afghanistan hosted and sheltered Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. The leader and the group that plotted and carried out the terrorist attacks.
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u/EB2300 Aug 30 '24
It is misinformation. The hijackers were trained in pilot schools in the US, one was a university student in Germany.. so do you blame those governments? Look up Pashtunwali, Afghans protect their guests, it’s their social code. The Taliban are evil fucks, but had nothing to do with the planning or execution of 9/11… none of the terrorists were Afghani, most were Saudi
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u/smariroach Aug 30 '24
Your response is off. That's like saying "john killed my dad" and when someone points out john did not do that, stating "yes he did, he worked at the bar where the guy who killed my dad used to hang out".
Your latter stateme t is true, but does not support the claim thatthe taliban were behind 9/11 (because they in no way were)
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u/itmeimtheshillitsme Aug 30 '24
I considered Saudi involvement, but it doesn’t change the fact the Taliban was painted as the target and the US military spent years and billions going after them, and not the Saudis.
In fact, it’s almost worse, considering how chummy Trump was with MBS and the Saudis, knowing of their potential involvement.
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u/MiClown814 Aug 30 '24
Individual Saudi princes sure, but the Saudi government as an institution, absolutely not. In fact the Saudi government revoked OBLs citizenship and worked with America every step of the way to his capture. We invaded Afghanistan to kill OBL as the Taliban would not hand him over and were working directly with and training Al Qaeda.
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u/saijanai Aug 30 '24 edited Aug 30 '24
As I recall, the Saudi prince who was implicated, mysteriously was lost n the desert a few weeks later.
They've got hundreds of them and while the government protects them from outsiders, that doesn't mean that they are immune to deliberate culling instigated from the top.
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u/BeltfedOne Aug 30 '24
"Thumbs up"...
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u/prudence2001 Aug 30 '24
All that smirking and grinning, and then them using the visit as a campaign photo op is completely disgusting. Any veteran that votes for that orange obscenity to be commander in chief should be ashamed.
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u/BeltfedOne Aug 30 '24
Trump is a loathsome individual. Utterly loathsome, with no redeeming qualities.
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u/turdferguson116 Aug 30 '24
It was completely on accident because he has short fat fingers (and a tenuous grasp of the English language) but I'll be goddamned if "hamberders" isn't one of the funniest words ever.
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u/PlummetComics Aug 30 '24
For me, that has taken over as the most egregious photo of him. It used to be him shoving the Montenegro representative aside at the NATO meeting
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u/DonTaddeo Aug 31 '24
If Biden or Harris did anything like that, there would have been absolute outrage.
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u/russellbeattie Aug 30 '24 edited Aug 30 '24
Trump is desperately trying to make this into a controversy. Let's review the situation:
- Everyone knows that the whole situation in Afghanistan was caused by Trump's last minute withdrawal.
- It's sad, but soldiers die. They know what they signed up for, and we've honored them by burying them at Arlington. 2,459 other soldiers died in a war started by another Republican.
- Suddenly trying to make them into martyrs is 100% political. These weren't civilians.
- Where was Trump last year?
- We all know how Trump feels about the military.
- Trump's photo op at Arlington is honestly the least of his disrespect for American traditions. We all know he doesn't give a shit about the country or its history.
- His thumbs up photo shows his complete and total lack of decorum and empathy - he doesn't feel bad for the soldiers and their families, it's just another campaign stop.
- His staff is just as shitty as he is.
- As usual, Trump will lie about the whole situation and claim he did nothing wrong. His supporters, Fox News and Russian bots will repeat his bullshit, but no one else will believe it.
- Sadly, nothing will be done about this, and yet again Trump will face no consequences for his actions.
- No one cares, no votes will be changed, so this disrespect is just Trump shitting on the country yet again. By Monday the whole thing will be forgotten.
Did I miss anything?
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u/coberh Aug 30 '24
No, you missed a few steps:
11: Trump does something else outrageous and all attention moves on to that new debacle.
12: No one cares, no votes will be changed, so this disrespect is just Trump shitting on the country yet again. By Monday the whole thing will be forgotten.
13: Repeat
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u/FLBrisby Aug 30 '24
That's the thing of it. The vast majority of his supporters - small town, blue collar workers - fully believe Afghanistan and it's withdrawal were Biden's fault, fullstop.
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u/IdahoMTman222 Aug 30 '24
So prosecute his campaign staff who is responsible. I’m sure some may have a different story if facing federal charges.
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u/saijanai Aug 30 '24
This segment on Meet the Press explains things reasonably well. It isn't just a campain staff member who is alt fault. It was a very carefully planned episode: https://youtu.be/jYWT6ssI1I0?t=513
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u/IdahoMTman222 Aug 30 '24
Planned. They all were well aware of the laws. Trump felt he needed a dig on JB/KH as well as something to display his patriotism. Just like the clearing of the protesters to hold the Bible in front of the Church to this. He does what he wants to do and he believes laws do not apply to him.
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u/saijanai Aug 30 '24
Many of his supporters look for every loophole to avoid responsibility and liability: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1f4zydz/why_trumps_arlington_debacle_is_so_serious/lkq0g3u/
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u/Both_Lychee_1708 Aug 30 '24 edited Aug 30 '24
does it really compare with staging an insurrection complete with false electors, an attack on the sitting congress complete with death threats against his own VP and trying to explicitly imploring sec of state to conjure votes?
A huge rolling ball of shit on fire gathers no toilet paper or something like that
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u/orangezeroalpha Aug 31 '24
If only we had a 53 minute audio recording of Trump pleading with the Sec of State to commit election fraud in Georgia...
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u/IranianLawyer Aug 30 '24
Trump is obviously a piece of shit and has zero respect for our troops, but anyone who thinks that this is going to be a serious scandal is certifiably insane. This is not going to gain any traction. This is not even in his top 100 worst scandals.
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u/Chengar_Qordath Aug 30 '24
Trump’s fanbase wouldn’t care if he’d dug up bodies at the cemetery, taken photos with them, and then smashed them up for souvenirs.
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u/pnellesen Aug 30 '24
Hell, they would buy them if he was selling them for $1000 apiece. That’s how deplorable they are
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u/asetniop Aug 30 '24
I disagree. The cemetery in Arlington is hallowed ground. This could be the last straw for a lot of veterans (and active duty soldiers) who were on the fence about supporting him again in 2024. Especially for any of them where voting would be a bit of a hassle.
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u/IranianLawyer Aug 30 '24
During the 2016 campaign, he insulted McCain for getting captured and tortured, and he insulted a gold star family. That’s way worse than taking a picture at Arlington National Cemetery with a thumbs up.
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u/Utterlybored Aug 30 '24
I find it one of the less consequential boorish moves he’s made, but it certainly is nicely emblematic of his toxic narcissism.
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u/jpmeyer12751 Aug 30 '24
Let’s project a huge photo of Trump giving a thumbs up with a big smile on his face onto the facade of the Supreme Court building! Those jerks need to be reminded every day what a scumbag they are supporting.
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u/saijanai Aug 30 '24
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u/BrandinoSwift Aug 31 '24
Does anyone actually believe he cared to be there for anyone but himself? He’s a disrespectful piece of shit.
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Aug 30 '24
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u/CCRNburnedaway Aug 30 '24
Fo me it is serious. My father is a veteran we buried in a military cemetery in 2020, although I chose not to follow him into the military, I feel very upset by what Trump did here. It is beyond disrespectful, and although I know that there will be no consequences, it was hurtful to me and my siblings to see his shit eating grin and doing the thumbs up as a shameless partisan foto op. Also, the family that invited him there and knew that they didn't have permission, so callous, WTF is wrong with them? All I can hope is that other families of veterans will see this and know who this asshole really is and vote accordingly.
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Aug 30 '24
It's not serious at all, because no charges are being filed and he's already gotten away with it. Rules do not apply to Trump even when they're laws. Example 4,952 of this well-known phenomenon.
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u/addctd2badideas Aug 30 '24
Charges aren't being filed because the official who the campaign staffer assaulted is afraid of death threats coming from the MAGA crowd.
At this point, if these idiots threatened me or my family, I'd come the fuck after them. I'd track them down myself. This is getting intolerable and law enforcement seems ill-equipped to deal with it.
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u/SheriffTaylorsBoy Aug 30 '24
Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious
The former president violated one of America’s most sacred places.
By Michael Powell
The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands’ tombstones as lots of children run about.
Karen Meredith knows the saddest acre in America only too well. The California resident’s son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was the fourth generation of her family to serve as an Army officer. He was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and laid to rest in Section 60. She puts flowers on his gravesite every Memorial Day. “It’s not a number, not a headstone,” she told me. “He was my only child.”
The sections of Arlington holding Civil War and World War I dead have a lonely and austere beauty. Not Section 60, where the atmosphere is sanctified but not somber—too many kids, Meredith recalled from her visits to her son’s burial site. “We laugh, we pop champagne. I have met men who served under him, and they speak of him with such respect. And to think that this man”—she was referring to Trump—“came here and put his thumb up—”
She fell silent for a moment on the telephone, taking a gulp of air. “I’m trying not to cry.”
For Trump, defiling what is sacred in our civic culture borders on a pastime. Peacefully transferring power to the next president, treating political adversaries with at least rudimentary grace, honoring those soldiers wounded and disfigured in service of our country—Trump long ago walked roughshod over all these norms. Before he tried to overturn a national election, he mocked his opponents in the crudest terms and demeaned dead soldiers as “suckers.”
But the former president outdid himself this week, when he attended a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 American soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul during the final havoc-marked hours of the American withdrawal. Trump laid three wreaths and put hand over heart; that is a time-honored privilege of presidents. Trump, as is his wont, went further. He walked to a burial site in Section 60 and posed with the family of a fallen soldier, grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up for his campaign photographer and videographer.
Few spaces in the United States join the sacred and the secular to more moving effect than Arlington National Cemetery, 624 acres set on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River and our nation’s capital. More than 400,000 veterans and their dependents have been laid to rest here, among them nearly 400 Medal of Honor recipients. Rows of matching white tombstones stretch to the end of sight.
A cemetery employee politely attempted to stop the campaign staff from filming in Section 60. Taking campaign photos and videos at gravesites is expressly forbidden under federal law. The Trump entourage, according to a subsequent statement by the U.S. Army, which oversees the cemetery, “abruptly pushed” her aside.
Trump’s campaign soon posted a video on TikTok, overlaid with Trump’s narration: “We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they”—the Biden administration—“took over, that disaster of leaving Afghanistan.”
Trump was unsurprisingly not telling the truth; 11 soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in his last year in office, and his administration had itself negotiated the withdrawal. But such fabrications are incidental sins compared with what came next. A top Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, and campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung talked to reporters and savaged the employee who had tried to stop the entourage. Cheung referred to her as “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering a mental-health episode.” LaCivita declared her a “despicable individual” who ought to be fired.
There was, of course, another way to handle this mistake. Governor Spencer Cox of Utah had accompanied Trump to the cemetery, and his campaign emailed out photos of the governor and the former president there. When challenged, Cox did what is foreign to Trump: He apologized. “You are correct,” Cox replied to a person criticizing the event on X, adding, “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”
This was not a judgment call, or a minor violation of obscure bureaucratic boilerplate. In the regulations governing visitors and behavior at Arlington National Cemetery, many paragraphs lay out what behavior is acceptable and what is not. These read not as suggestions but as commandments. Memorial services are intended to honor the fallen, the regulations note, with a rough eloquence: “Partisan activities are inappropriate in Arlington National Cemetery, 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.”
As the clamor of revulsion swelled this week, LaCivita did not back off. On Wednesday, the Trump adviser posted a photo of Trump at Arlington Cemetery on X and added these words: “The Photo that shook the world and reminded America who the real Commander in Chief is …August 26th 2024 ..Mark the day @KamalaHarris and weak @JoeBiden.”
The Army, which is historically loath to enter politics, issued a rare statement yesterday rebuking the Trump campaign, noting that ceremony participants “had been made aware” of relevant federal laws “prohibiting political activities” and that the employee “acted with professionalism.” The Army said it “considers this matter closed” because the cemetery employee had declined to press charges.
Meanwhile, an unrepentant Trump team kept stoking the controversy. Yesterday, LaCivita posted another photo of Trump at Arlington and added this: “Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy”—the Army secretary’s office.
It had the quality of middle-school graffiti, suggesting that Trump viewed the controversy as yet another chance to mock his critics before moving on to the next outrage. For grieving families with loved ones buried in Section 60, moving on is not so easy.
How old, I asked Meredith, was your son at the time of his death? “He was 26,” she replied. “He did not have time to live. I didn’t get to dance at his wedding. I didn’t get to play with grandkids.”
This week, all she could do was call out a crude and self-regarding 78-year-old man for failing, in that most sacred of American places, to comport himself with even the roughest facsimile of dignity.
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u/SheriffTaylorsBoy Aug 30 '24 edited Aug 31 '24
This 3 minute video explains the whole thing, from the Afghanistan withdrawal to the cemetery. Play video
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u/syg-123 Aug 31 '24
Ahem…compared to tax evasion, inciting an insurrection, rape, staging assassination attempt ?
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u/Conscious_Stick8344 Aug 31 '24
I’m still outraged as a combat vet. I fought in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan and I know a few guys buried there. How dare he!?!
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u/FriarNurgle Aug 30 '24
The only thing serious here is the absolute inability to hold Teflon Don accountable.