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This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes."
If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s going to be exactly who he is — all the time, every day, no matter what. Nothing ever really seems to stick to him politically.
If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s going to be exactly who he is — all the time, every day, no matter what.
Trump was just indicted all over again by another federal grand jury and he’s celebrating an endorsement from a suspected whale decapitator, but there is a scandal that has the former president and his aides scrambling for cover. It has to do with a bizarre photo op he did on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery. Trump can be seen grinning and giving the camera a thumbs-up over the grave of a Marine killed in Afghanistan.
That appearance was off-putting enough by itself. But then, NPR reported that Trump campaign staff at Arlington had gotten into an altercation with a worker at the cemetery over their filming among the graves of the dead.
The Trump campaign’s top spokesperson downplayed the incident in a statement to NBC News: “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.”
But the worker had a good reason, Arlington National Cemetery suggested, telling NBC News that a report has been filed on the incident and adding in a statement:
"Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign…Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
Trump’s co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, told NBC News that Trump went to the cemetery to honor Gold Star families not to film a political campaign ad and Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio tried to play it off, saying it wasn’t a political ad and there “just happened to be a camera there.”
There just happened to be a camera? Trump went to a military cemetery to film a video reminding viewers of the U.S. deaths during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming his successor for them without mentioning that Trump tied his successor’s hands by agreeing to a withdrawal timeline set by the Taliban. But that’s not a political ad, right?
But Trump wasn’t the only politician capitalizing off of that Arlington visit. He was accompanied by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah. Cox used photos of the event to solicit donations in a campaign email — a violation of federal law and something the governor now acknowledges was a mistake.
Trump’s team, however, isn’t admitting any mistakes. Instead, they’ve got Vance, the member of the Republican ticket with some military experience, responding on the campaign trail. Vance chastised the media for turning the altercation “into a national news story” and noted that Trump was invited by the family of the fallen marine:
"They wanted Donald Trump there, and thank God that we have a president who stands with our veterans instead of one who runs away from them.”
It’s true Trump was invited … but not by all the families of all the 400,000 veterans and dependents buried at Arlington — who didn’t and can’t consent to being used as props by a few other bereaved families.
Beyond Vance disparaging someone who works at Arlington National Cemetery for enforcing the rules, is Trump really “a president who stands with our veterans instead of one who runs away from them?”
Is Trump really “a president who stands with our veterans instead of one who runs away from them?”
Donald “I don’t like losers, I like people that weren’t captured” Trump? The Donald Trump who spent much of his first presidential campaign attacking the parents of an American Army officer who died in Iraq in 2004? The Donald Trump who, as president, fumbled the name of a fallen soldier in a condolence call to his widow then bickered with her and knocked her in interviews?
The Donald Trump, who according to his chief of staff — a retired four-star Marine general — refused to pay his respects at a veterans cemetery in Europe, saying, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” And who, on that same trip, called the more than 1,800 Marines who died at Belleau Wood “suckers” for getting killed.
Or was it the Donald Trump who reportedly hated being filmed or photographed with wounded veterans? At Army General Mark Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2019, the general had chosen a combat-wounded soldier, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America” at the ceremony. Milley claimed that afterward, the president told him, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
Less than two weeks ago, Trump used war-wearied American service members as a punchline to talk up one of his biggest political donors. Recalling the moment Miriam Adelson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Trump told the crowd:
"That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor — they’re soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.”
So you could be forgiven for looking at all of this and thinking that Trump only has respect for the most revered American institutions — the military, the justice system, the free elections — only when they’re working for him.
Join Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and many others on Saturday, Sept. 7, in Brooklyn, New York, for “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024,” a first-of-its-kind live event. You’ll get to see your favorite hosts in person and hear thought-provoking conversations about what matters most in the final weeks of an unprecedented election cycle. Buy tickets here.