Snapshot: The Further Desecration at Arlington

The violations by Donald Trump and his enablers at our national military cemetery are an awful reminder of why we need to turn the page on this dark chapter

Arlington National Cemetery (Photo by Kevin Carter via Getty Images)

Arlington National Cemetery is a sacred space, the final resting place for about 400,000 veterans and their families dating back to the Revolutionary War and Civil War, a somber, deeply moving expression of the sacrifices that so many Americans have made for their country. It’s why I found it so appalling that Donald Trump visited there on Monday, since it was obvious that he was exploiting this sacred place as a photo op to attack the withdrawal from Afghanistan, nothing more than a publicity stunt for his failing campaign. As I put it in yesterday’s essay, “The Downward Spiral of a Weak Man,” “The issue here is that this man who despises dead soldiers felt it necessary to pretend to care.”

But then we learned yesterday from reporting by NPR that the reality is even worse—that while several military families who lost their sons during the Afghanistan withdrawal invited him there, Trump and his staff engaged in an altercation with an Arlington employee and violated federal law that disallows photography and filming by anyone other than authorized cemetery staff members in an area called Section 60. This 14-acre area is primarily reserved for fallen veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now totaling some 900 soldiers killed in those conflicts.

A handout given to visitors titled “Rules Governing Conduct” specifically prohibits “political campaign or election-related activities within the cemeteries.” But that didn’t stop Trump’s political operatives from shooting campaign video and setting up photos with their malignant candidate standing over a gravestone, grinning and flashing a “thumbs up.”

That disgusting collection of images visibly includes the gravestone of another soldier, Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano, a Green Beret who had three children and died by suicide after eight tours of combat duty. “We hope,” said his sister in a statement after the shameful incident, “that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly.”

These legal and moral violations would be bad enough, but we also learned that Trump’s staffers verbally abused and pushed aside an Arlington employee who unsuccessfully tried to stop them. That employee filed a report about what happened, the details of which haven’t been made public.

Yet a further reminder of Trump’s toxic contamination is that this employee chose to not file charges due to fear of retaliation from Trump supporters. Given the pattern of abuse in so many other instances, this is more than understandable. This decision followed Trump’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, insisting in a statement that the employee who tried to bar them from entering Section 60 was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” and later attacked the cemetery staffer’s fear about pressing charges. “That is ridiculous,” he said in a statement yesterday, “and sounds like someone who has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

I’m sure Cheung didn’t miss the ugly vitriol coming from the candidate’s running mate yesterday, who attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as “disgraceful” for criticizing Trump’s visit to the cemetery, even though she never made any comment. The despicable conclusion from J.D. Vance during a campaign stop: “She can—she can go to hell.”

I felt it necessary to follow up on this nauseating, infuriating episode because it encapsulates why we should do whatever we can to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz—to make clear how done we are with a sociopath who exploits a hallowed place like Arlington, cares not one whit if he’s breaking laws, creates conflict and misery for his own personal benefit, then exacerbates the abuse when the actions are questioned. This whole episode makes the need to end this dark chapter in our nation’s history even more obvious.

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