Common sense suggests that Donald Trump would want his Arlington National Cemetery controversy to end as quickly as possible. The story generated a ton of highly unflattering coverage last week — followed by some additional unfavorable headlines over Labor Day weekend — so it stood to reason that the former president would try to move on from the mess he helped create.
But as the 2024 presidential election enters its final stretch, the Republican nominee’s common sense is in short supply.
In fact, for reasons that defy comprehension, Trump spent much of Tuesday keeping the story alive for yet another day, starting in the morning with a missive published to his social media platform. It read in part:
There was no conflict or ‘fighting’ at Arlington National Cemetery last week. It was a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad. She made it all up...”
Soon after, the GOP candidate appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show and echoed the line, insisting that “there was no conflict” between members of his campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery. “There was no fight,” Trump added, “there was no anything.”
At this point, I could spend a few sentences explaining that Vice President Kamala Harris obviously played no role in manufacturing this controversy. I could then add a paragraph or two marveling at the former president voluntarily breathing new life into a damaging scandal that appeared to be nearing its endpoint.
But as notable as those angles are, what was perhaps most striking about Trump’s latest rhetoric about the story was his willingness to contradict, not only the U.S. Army, but also his own team.
As regular readers know, the core details of the controversy are difficult to dispute. Team Trump was made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and Pentagon policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. Team Trump apparently decided to ignore those restrictions, and according to an official written statement from the U.S. Army, when an employee who works at the cemetery attempted to ensure adherence to the rules, she was “abruptly pushed aside.”
Team Trump acknowledged from the outset that there’d been some kind of dispute at Arlington last week, with a campaign spokesperson telling media outlets that a cemetery employee had a “mental health episode.” Another campaign official added around the same time that he considered the cemetery official a “despicable individual.”
In fact, as a New York Times report noted, Trump campaign officials also said “they were prepared to release footage of the episode, though the campaign has not yet done so after repeated requests.”
That was last week. This week, the former president himself has decided to contradict his own team’s comments and declare that there was no incident whatsoever, despite the Trump campaign’s recent rhetoric. The entire fiasco, the GOP candidate wants the public to believe, was "made up," reality notwithstanding.
And in case this example of trying to rewrite recent history wasn’t brazen enough, a Washington Post fact-check report added that the Republican nominee, during his appearance at Arlington, also appears to have misled the Gold Star families in attendance about his administration’s record in Afghanistan.
Will Trump find new ways to keep the story going even longer? At this point, I wouldn’t put it past him.