Arlington Cemetery incident: Trump’s crass indecency at its finest
Shaming his defenders
Jeffrey Denny
We all know Donald Trump has the reverse Midas touch — whatever he touches turns to merde.
The August 26 incident at Arlington National Cemetery captures his feculence at its utmost redolence.
Stealing valor
The chicken hawk draft-dodger — who notoriously slammed our fallen troops as “suckers” and “losers,” combat-decorated generals as “a bunch of pussies” and the late Republican Senator John McCain as “not a war hero [because] he got captured” — was at Arlington to exploit the sacred ground to shoot “Message: I care” campaign visuals to sucker his “patriotic” Fox-addled MAGA marks.
Trump doesn’t care. He was there to take a shot at Kamala Harris over Joe Biden’s tough Afghanistan withdrawal decision that Trump was too poultry to make.
Trump’s colon polyp, JD Vance, weirdly damned Harris for “yelling” about the incident before she said a word. His political fratricide against fellow veteran Tim Walz makes weird weird. Honorable vets never say my service trumped yours.
Physical bullying
A Trump campaign staffer shoved an Arlington Cemetery employee who was doing her job enforcing the rules to protect the sanctity of the hallowed ground and the dead from being abused.
Shades of when Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowsky was charged with battery for grabbing and bruising a reporter because she asked an impertinent question. (Lewandowsky recently returned as a Trump senior advisor and claimed that Democrats support post-birth abortion, i.e., killing babies.) Also note that Trump called for roughing up or shooting protestors.
And of course, we have Trump’s “beautiful” J6 rioters he incited then watched in wiggly thrill on TV in the safe comfort of public housing (the White House) as aides beseeched him to call it off and save lives. And now he blesses his fellow felons as “patriots.”
Toddlers are taught to use their words to express their emotions instead of using physical force like pushing or shoving. History is filled with brutal dictators and their thugs and mobs who think that’s for losers, suckers and pussies. But that can’t happen here.
Rules don’t apply
Trump’s campaign team knew the rules — no campaign use, no photos or videos at Arlington Cemetery.
As the Army said, “Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside.”
But we also know from two impeachments, 95 felony counts, conviction on 34, grabbing women by the privates, raping one in a department store dressing room, screwing business partners and cheating on finances, taxes, wives and golf [!] that Trump thinks rules, from basic societal and presidential norms to the Constitutional rule of law, are for suckers, losers and pussies.
Gratuitous nastiness
Did the Trump campaign honorably call the incident an honest misunderstanding?
Look up for any pigs safely flying a Boeing United Airlines on schedule.
Steve Cheung, Trump’s reliably malicious campaign Goebbels, diagnosed the Arlington Cemetery employee as “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” and declared, like a whiny playground bully playing victim, that she started it.
No sir, the Army said, as it respectfully bitch-slapped Cheung out of his Trump bunker like a Taliban terrorist.
“[The] employee who attempted to ensure adherence to [the] rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army said. “Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption.”
Shades of Michele Obama’s “when they go low, we go high,” the employee declined to play victim and press charges.
[Memo to Cheung: Political swamp PR hacks and flacks who’ve never served a day in their lives but are truly patriotic respect the Army. Which has every reason to regard you as a loser, sucker and pussie.]
No decency
In the 1950s, Red-baiting Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, who faked his military service heroism, attacked the Army — which had just saved America in WWII — as rotted with communists.
Joseph Welch, the Army’s chief counsel (and Army vet), famously mic-dropped, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” History said no, McCarthy didn’t.
McCarthy’s chief counsel Roy Cohn taught the young Trump “how to manipulate the law, and other people, to his advantage,” as Cohn biographer Kai Bird, the Pulitzer-winning author of “American Prometheus,” the basis of the Oscar-sweeping “Oppenheimer,” wrote.
Trump is beyond decency, this we know.
The question for Trump supporters is, have you any at long last?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
