JD Vance claimed Wednesday that “the media” is manufacturing a story about whether someone in Donald Trump’s campaign was involved in a physical altercation with a top official at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, and defended the former president over accusations that the campaign did not have permission to film at a gravesite.
Vance, at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, insisted there’s no story to be told.
“The altercation at Arlington cemetery is the media creating a story where I really don’t think there is one,” Vance said.
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“There is verifiable evidence that the campaign was allowed to have a photographer there. They were invited to have a photographer there. There is verifiable evidence that the families of these poor people who had their loved ones die three years ago at Abbey Road—excuse me, Abbey Gate—those thirteen Americans, a lot of them were there with the president, they invited him to be there and support him,” Vance continued.
“That’s not an insult to the memories of their loved ones. They wanted Donald Trump there, and thank God we have a president who stands with our veterans instead of one who runs away from them.”
Yet Vance didn’t delve into the specific nature of the issue: how taking photos and videos isn’t permitted in a certain area of the cemetery called Section 60.
In a social post on X afterwards, progressive veterans’ group VoteVets labeled Vance “a spineless, gutless fraud.”
Fuming over his defense of the former president, the statement continued, “Political activity is and was always illegal at Arlington. Trump’s campaign got physical with cemetery staff who were upholding the law and protecting the solemnity of all the graves. Rather than stand up for them, JD Vance betrays them to make Trump happy. Pathetic.”
The Trump campaign was warned before Trump’s visit and again while he was there, a defense official familiar with the situation told The Washington Post on Wednesday. NPR first reported a physical confrontation in that area on Tuesday.
The Trump campaign denies that version of events.
“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung previously told the Daily Beast. Yet no such footage has since been released.
“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,” Cheung added, without providing evidence.
Vance later called Vice President Kamala Harris “disgraceful” for the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“If you want to talk about a story out of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives, it’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened,” Vance said. “And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up? She can—she can go to hell.”
