On Thursday, former President Donald Trump attempted to spin away reports that one of his aides pushed a staffer at Arlington National Cemetery during a visit to the burial ground earlier this week, blaming the controversy on “very bad people.” He also suggested in an interview that the Gold Star families he accompanied may have been the ones who published videos from his visit, rather than members of his campaign.
During a Thursday rally in Michigan, Trump claimed that he, “read that I was using the site to politic.”
“This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington,” he added, “these are bad people we’re dealing with.”
“So I go there, they ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning,” Trump complained. “The one thing I get is plenty of publicity… I don’t need the publicity.”
Earlier that day, the Army confirmed that a member of Trump’s entourage “pushed” a cemetery staffer when they attempted to prevent the former president’s aide from entering the area in order to film and photograph the visit to Section 60 — an area of the cemetery reserved for recently deceased service members with strict rules surrounding media presence.
Army and cemetery rules prohibit campaigning and political activity on the burial ground. Following the visit, Trump’s campaign social media posted several videos and images taken during the visit — including in Section 60.
In an interview with NBC News following Thursday’s rally, Trump was asked whether his campaign should have published videos and photos from his visit.
Trump claimed that he didn’t know “anything about” the use of the images on his campaign social media. “We have a lot of people, we have TikTok people,” he said, “you know, we’re leading the internet.”
Pressed on it again, Trump suggested the parents of the deceased service members he had accompanied may have been responsible for distributing the videos and photos.
“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it,” Trump said. “It could have been them — it could have been the parents.”
This is not true. Informed his campaign published videos from the visit on TikTok, he said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”
On Thursday The Washington Post reported that ahead of the visit, Arlington National Cemetery officials had warned Trump’s team that he could visit the grave sites, but not as part of a campaign event. The cemetery made clear that while media could accompany Trump to a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they could not accompany him into Section 60.
The controversy won’t go away anytime soon. On Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Politico that “As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I am troubled by the reporting and want to see the incident report.”
