Donald Trump, the former reality television host who often stresses the importance of ratings and headlines, claimed that his controversially filmed visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Monday—during which he flashed a smile and a thumbs-up over tombstones—wasn’t driven by publicity.
“I go there and they ask me to have a picture. And they say I was campaigning. I don’t need—the one thing I get is plenty of publicity. I don’t need that. I don’t need the publicity,” Trump said Thursday during a campaign stop in Michigan, after falsely saying his visit occurred Wednesday.
Trump, who added that he was “asked to go” to the cemetery, took photographs with the family of Taylor Hoover, a Marine killed in the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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But the behavior of a Trump staffer at the cemetery has come under intense scrutiny. After NPR first reported on a physical altercation between the individual and an employee of the cemetery, the Trump campaign denied this, claiming without any evidence that the employee had had a “mental health episode.” The campaign claimed that video footage would refute NPR’s account, yet it still hasn’t released any such footage.
On Thursday, the Army confirmed that a Trump staffer “abruptly pushed” a female employee at the site after she tried to “ensure adherence” to a federal law prohibiting recording for political purposes. The New York Times, citing military officials, reported Wednesday night that she declined to press charges, fearing retribution from Trump’s supporters—the same reason some Republican members of Congress declined to vote for Trump’s second impeachment and conviction, according to a recent biography of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.
The Times also reported that the family of a Green Beret buried near Hoover took issue with how Trump’s campaign filmed his gravesite without permission.
Yet Trump on Thursday tried to portray the conflict as part of some scheme by Democrats, rather than an instance of his campaign doing something illegal.
“Last night, I read that I was using the site to politick—that I used it to politick. This all comes out of Washington, just like all of these prosecutors come out of Washington,” he said. “They all come out. They send their prosecutors into the DA’s office, they send them into the attorney general’s office. These are bad people we’re dealing with.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, similarly attempted to absolve Trump and his camp of any blame, insisting on Wednesday that “the media” was manufacturing the controversy.
