Trump doubles down on dishonor

I should have known that I would still be writing about Trump’s desecration of Arlington National Cemetery almost a week later.  I’ve had help:  Trump himself won’t let the story go, most recently at a rally yesterday in Michigan, where after bragging that he was “on time” for the wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and complaining about how hard it had been for him to get there, Trump started in on dishonoring the families who invited him.

“While I was there, those families had asked me to be there, they said, three families, plus one soldier who was horrifically injured, both legs and an arm, and they asked me if I would be there, so I went, and while we were there they said, could you take pictures over the grave of my son, my sister, my brother, would you take pictures with us, sir? I said absolutely, I did, then I said farewell, I said goodbye. Last night I read that I was using the site to politick. This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington. These are bad people we’re dealing with. They asked me to take a picture, and they say I was campaigning.  The one thing I get is plenty of publicity. I don’t need the publicity.  But these are great people, and when you think about it”… Trump raises his voice to a shout and makes a knife-like motion with his right hand… “Joe Biden killed their children by incompetence.  Should have never happened.  Kamala killed their children, just as though they had a gun in their hand.”

This, from the man who made the deal with the leader of the Taliban that freed 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons so they could return to the fight against the Afghan government and U.S. forces that had already caused the deaths of 11 U.S. soldiers during 2020, the last year Trump was in office.  Trump also ordered the closure of every airport in Afghanistan, including the U.S. base at Bagram, turning the Kabul airport into the only place American service men and women and embassy employees could use to depart from Afghanistan.  The 13 soldiers who lost their lives during the pull-out from Kabul were killed by a suicide bomber, not by Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.

Trump wasn’t finished, however.  After the Michigan rally, he was interviewed by NBC reporter Dasha Burns.  NBC ran an excerpt of the video the Trump campaign posted on TikTok showing Trump at the graves in Section 60, where no cameras were allowed, other than those of family members of those buried there.  A voice-over and chryon in the video tells a lie, that “we didn’t lose one person in 18 months.”  The truth is, 65 members of the U.S. military were killed during the four years of Trump’s presidency, despite what Trump claimed on TikTok.

Dasha Burns quickly got to the point, asking Trump: “Should your campaign have put out those photos and videos?”

“Well, we have a lot of people, TikTok people. You know, we’re leading the Internet. That was the other thing, we’re so far ahead of her on the Internet.”

Burns pressed him: “But on that hallowed ground, should they have put out those images?”

“I don’t know what the rules or regulations are, I don’t know who did it. It could have been them! It could have been the parents. It could have been somebody.”

“But it was your campaign that put out the TikTok video,” Burns reminded Trump.

“I really don’t know anything about it.  All I do is I stood there and I said, ‘If you'd like to have a picture, we can have a picture.’ If somebody did it; this was a setup by the people in the administration that, ‘Oh, Trump is coming to Arlington, that looks so bad for us.’”

So, just to review:  Trump blamed the families, who “could have” put out the videos and photographs, it could have been “TikTok people,” or it could have been “people in the administration.”

All over the internet this week, bloggers and commentators and pundits have been marveling, once again, that every time you think Trump can’t go any lower with his lies and outrages and moral degradation, he comes up with a new low.

This time, as he has before, he has chosen to denigrate and dishonor soldiers who served their country in uniform, some of them sacrificing their lives in war.  I come from a family of soldiers.  I was a soldier, my brother was a soldier, my father was a soldier, my great aunt was a colonel in the Women’s Army Corps and a nurse at Anzio, both of my grandfathers were soldiers, and now my son is a soldier.  Every one of us took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. My father swore me in as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry in June of 1969, and I swore in my son, Lucian V, as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry last December. 

We are a proud family with roots that date to the founding document of this country, the Declaration of Indpendence.  Trump has made this personal.  He must be beaten on November 5 and beaten soundly.  He is beneath the contempt of my family and yours.  I promise that I will write about this disgraceful man until he is gone from our national life, if not from our consciousness.  Please urge your friends and your family and everyone you know to vote in November.  I can hear the voices of my ancestors calling out to defend their service and their honor. They have given us a mission: We cannot allow this stain upon our country to ever set foot in the White House again.