Donald Trump attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, where two members of his campaign reportedly had a “verbal and physical altercation” with a cemetery official over Team Trump’s apparent attempt to film and take photographs in an area that staff members had previously been told was restricted.
According to NPR, which first broke the news of the matter, “the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent US casualties are buried,” with a source familiar with the situation telling the outlet that “Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.”
When the official attempted to stop campaign workers from entering Section 60, Trump staffers “verbally abused and pushed the official aside,” per NPR’s source. In a statement to NPR, Arlington National Cemetery confirmed “there was an incident” and that ”a report was filed.” The cemetery also stressed that “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.”
A spokesman for the Trump campaign has insisted that no physical altercation took place, saying 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 campaign spokesman added, “We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” As of Wednesday, no footage had been released, despite several requests from The New York Times.
Trump has a long, not-great history of denigrating members of the military. According to reporting by The Atlantic, which was later confirmed by Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly, the ex-president called Marines who died at Belleau Wood during World War I “suckers” and dubbed soldiers buried at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery “losers.” While Trump has denied making the aforementioned comments, in 2016 he publicly attacked a Gold Star family, and in 2020 he suggested a group of Gold Star families might have infected him with COVID-19—despite the fact that he’d reportedly already tested positive for the virus before meeting with them. He also said, while discussing John McCain—who spent half a decade in a North Vietnamese prison—“I like people who weren’t captured”; he then spent years disparaging the Arizona senator, including after McCain had died. Most recently, Trump declared the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award given to civilians for exceptional contributions, to be “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor, an award reserved for military members, because the latter recipients are wounded or dead.
“It’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers,” he said. “They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. [Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson] gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. They’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom…and that’s through committees and everything else.”
