Sometimes one accidentally bumps into someone in a public space. What usually happens is that each person immediately apologizes to the other that is the end of the story, with both people moving on with friendly smiles, to indicate that there are no hard feelings. There is the no attempt to determine who is at fault or place blame over such trivialities. That is the behavior of normal people who have basic social skills. But on rare occasions, one might encounter someone who reacts angrily and immediately yells out “You idiot! Why don’t you watch where you going?” or something similar. Such people are boors who lack basic social skills and are best ignored and avoided.
There has been quite a bit of media coverage of an event that took place at Arlington National Cemetery where creepy Donald Trump and his entourage arrived for a photo op at the graves of dead military personnel. The problem is that federal law prohibits political photo ops in certain parts of the cemetery and that resulted in an altercation between creepy Trump staffers and a cemetery official who was trying to enforce the law.
In a statement, Arlington acknowledged one of its representatives became involved in the altercation with two Trump staffers, telling them that only cemetery representatives were allowed to take video and photographs in Section 60, an area where recent US casualties, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, are buried.
“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,” the statement said, adding that “a report was filed” over the incident.
“Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants,” the statement said.
The staffers “verbally abused and pushed the official aside” as the person attempted to prevent them accompanying Trump into the section, according to NPR, which first published the allegation on Tuesday night.
The best way for the creepy Trump campaign to react to this embarrassing story becoming public would be to say that there had been a misunderstanding and apologize to the cemetery staffer, and that would be the end of it. But that is not how the creepy Trump camp rolls. They go into full-on attack mode over everything that crosses them and harshly attacked the cemetery official.
Instead of an apology, the Trump campaign attempted to turn around the narrative of the Arlington incident, with senior officials separately branding the cemetery’s representative “a despicable individual” who was experiencing “a mental health episode”.
“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” the campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement.
“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.”
The senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, meanwhile, posted a video to X of Trump placing flowers on a grave, and launched a tirade against the Arlington staff member, saying they were “spreading lies”.
“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, a former marine, said in a statement reported by NBC. [My emphasis- MS]
Cheung is highly pugnacious and combative and is the public face of the campaign so this is not unexpected from him. But LaCivita is co-chair of the campaign and is supposed to be one of the adults in the room, who usually works quietly in the background and keeps a low profile, so his belligerency is a surprise. It may be sign that he is under considerable stress.
That is not all. Creepy Trump later posted a photo of him grinning and giving a thumbs up sign in front of a gravestone.
New: Trump campaign staffers physically assaulted officials at the Arlington National Cemetery after they tried to prevent them from filming and photographing the burial site for campaign ads.https://t.co/aIklj9DioW pic.twitter.com/AcgtQO9o4p
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) August 27, 2024
Usually, even if they are not feeling grief, people realize the need to look somber at a gravesite in order not to hurt the feelings of those actually feeling sorrow. What kind of message is creepy Trump trying to convey with that look? “Great job dying!”? What kind of person takes photos like this at a gravesite? Easy. A narcissist who only wants to look good in a photo and does not care what the context or occasion is. In other words, someone like creepy Trump. It is very much on brand.
apologies if image embeds not allowed or if this is too ill
img didn’t work, guess the depths of my boorishness are safe.
What an excellent time to remind voters about this:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4239713-trump-rips-kelly-after-confirmation-of-suckers-remark/
So Kelly, a marine general is supporting a story spread by “the far left”???
And the above marine general is the dumbest of Trump’s “military people”?
Thumbs up, a guy got killed!
It’s illegal for someone to use the cemetery to hold a campaign event. Trump did it anyway. He breaks laws all the time, so what does he care? He had no reason to be there except to aggrandize himself--nobody in his family lost their life in the military. The poor worker trying to uphold the law was attacked by Trump’s thugs. Where was the Secret Service? They should have put a stop to that and didn’t.
Why isn’t the “librul media” reporting how illegal all of this was?
And then Trump had his photo-op with thumbs up at a cemetery, which is just appalling. Worse, in the shots near the target family you can clearly see other gravestones--the families of those people didn’t consent to Trump using their family members for his campaign.
Oh, but 10 years ago, Obama wore a tan suit in the summertime (as had presidents before him for at least a hundred years) and sent the media to their fainting couches. See? BOTH SIDES, checkmate!
Why on Earth would he want to be at the graves of “losers and suckers”? Doesn’t he prefer soldiers who don’t get killed?
“Hah, what a loser!”
-- Trump, probably.
To the GOP’s credit, at least no one was tear-gassed this time.
This bloke plows straight ahead like a Trump staffer.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74
Nice of trump to visit the cemetery for shameless self promotion.
Let’s see…what did he have to say about veteran’s during previous campaigns?
trump on McCain:
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
also, trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, in 2018:
“trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day.” (from an Atlantic article)
trump: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
Did Trump attend any of the funerals or lay wreaths at the tombs for the 64 soldiers who died in Afghanistan while he was Commander?
Why are the 13 that were killed by a bomb during the evacuation under Biden given such a display? Do not all the casualties (2420) and wounded (20,713) during this 20-yr mess of a war deserve to be recognized for their ultimate life sacrifice?
Maybe we were too distracted by Covid to notice, but in Feb. 2020, the Trump admin negotiated with the Taliban to end the war and leave within 14 months, without consultation or agreement by the Afghan government. Huh? So Republi-cons blame Biden for leaving a never-ending war that Trump negotiated to end? As if there would be no more loss of soldiers if we had just stayed and occupied a foreign country?
The Taliban are evil and it is a shame that the women are mistreated, but that is what a country looks like when religious beliefs become the rule of law and govern the people.
And christians want to rule this country, but it is okay because they are Right and have God on their side.
Creepy Trump said that God wants him to be the ruler again, that is why he was spared from the bullet--it was God saved him for this purpose.
Cemetary spokesperson -- “Filming is not allowed.”
Trump spokesperson -- “We have film of us not filming.”
@Mano:
If your job involves being one of the adults in the room around Trump, I’m having a hard time seeing any way that the job wouldn’t be stressful.
I hope they are all extremely stressed, and having nightmares about their bosses loss and what will happen to them when they become the targets of his rage. They are some of the most loathsome men in America.
Jabba-the-Hut lookalike Steven Cheung can go back to his post at Ultimate fight club, and Mr. Swiftboat Civitas absolutely knows that this was a truly appalling and illegal incident that he is trying to justify. Hypocrisy is not very appealing to the average voter. Those soldiers are in Arlington because of this stupid piece of trash. He’s never visited their graves until now, and they’ve been interred for a few years.
I hope G. Bush endorses Kamala Harris today, and the Mar-a-Lago staff quietly hide all the ketchup bottles from the orange rage-monkey.
Army confirms Arlington cemetery employee ‘pushed aside’ during Trump visit and calls incident ‘unfortunate’. Also: Trump staffers reported over altercation at Arlington cemetery during photo op. Apparently the families accompanying Trump had “given permission” for the filming, but families of those buried in military cemeteries do not have the power to waive the rules.
My dad is interred there, and no one told me I get to waive any of their rules.