Trump will desecrate Arlington National Cemetery today
Today, Donald Trump will desecrate Arlington National Cemetery and America’s most hallowed ground.
He will use Arlington National Cemetery as a political stage to score cheap and partisan points in a moment of political desperation as his campaign spirals. He intends to visit the graves of 13 Americans killed in action during the chaotic, incompetent, deadly and unnecessary evacuation from Kabul. After his gravesite desecration and photo op, the malignant Trump will deliver a campaign speech attacking the wrong person for being responsible. America has one commander in chief at a time, and his name is Joe Biden. Trump can’t seem to process the Harry Truman concept of “the buck stops here,” or the fact that Joe Biden isn’t a candidate anymore.
Trump is returning to the scene of some of his foulest desecrations and abdications of basic humanity. Arlington is where, at a 2017 Memorial Day event, he turned towards his White House chief of staff, a Gold Star father, and USMC general named John Kelly, and said the following: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Later, Donald Trump refused to travel to an American military cemetery in Aisne-Marne, France, during a European visit to commemorate the end of the First World War. He blamed the rain, but the real reason, according to The Atlantic, was that he didn’t want to dishevel his hair. This was the spot he called America’s war dead “suckers” and “losers.” The reporting has been confirmed by Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Associated Press.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley was an eyewitness to Donald Trump’s cruelty, faithlessness and utter contempt for virtue. From a New York Magazine article:
While Donald Trump loves to portray himself as a patriot who deeply loves the United States military, his appalling disrespect for service members has actually been a running theme throughout his political career.
The latest example comes from a profile of General Mark Milley, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the final 16 months of Trump’s presidency. Jeffrey Goldberg reports in The Atlantic that Milley came to feel Trump’s attitude toward service members was “superficial, callous, and, at the deepest human level, repugnant.” Milley’s misgivings started during his first day on the job in 2019 when Trump reportedly told him “no one wants to see” wounded soldiers after he met Luis Avila, a severely injured Army captain:
At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.
It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Hollyanne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley. (Recently, Milley invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.)
Today will be a most disgusting day.
There is a truth about Afghanistan that must be asserted. There is a fundamental reality that cannot be ignored about America’s longest war. It was fought across four presidential administrations — those of Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. The war was begun by the Bush administration, and was lost by the Bush administration. Wars are much easier to begin than stop, and this was a war, like Iraq, that decimated the wisdom of the “Powell Doctrine,” cost $1 trillion dollars, destabilized the Middle East, empowered Iran, and risked, in the end, the existence of Israel. These 20 years of war were the most colossal foreign policy blunder in American history, and the blame is not shared between the parties and the administrations. The “forever war” ended in a manner that caused a profound moral injury to a generation of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, and explains, in part, the extraordinary suicide epidemic among them that is plaguing our country.
Blaming Kamala Harris for Afghanistan may make Trump feel good, but it is ludicrous, and not so different than blaming her for the Vietnam War. Donald Trump could not figure out how to leave Afghanistan, and if he had been re-elected, Americans would still be being killed there for nothing, and that was the point. The goal of achieving democracy in Afghanistan was delusional, and it will always be.
There are many commentators and journalists starting to demand that Vice President Harris be more specific about policy — whatever that means.
What the VP needs to communicate to the American people is her philosophy. The world is dangerous, and an American president must understand the concept of restraint.
Trump does not.
Lastly, every American should hold the Trump campaign and Trump in contempt today. What they are doing in Arlington is truly disgusting. The American patriots who gave the last full measure of devotion to our nation do not deserve it. This is a sacred space, and what Donald Trump is doing there today is shameful beyond measure.
You have captured well Trump’s malevolence and total disrespect for those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. He must be treated to the disgust and contempt and the full force of it by media and the American public. Anyone who casts a vote for this man is a USA traitor. Full stop.
Well said, Steve. This is so very disgusting and appalling for someone who clearly has no respect for the military and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. From "suckers and losers" to "what was in it for them" to "no one wants to see them" to the "Presidential Medal of Freedom means more than the Medal of Honor", to today's planned desecration. He's such an unqualified piece of shit.