Donald Trump does not respect members of the United States military. Trump is especially dismissive and hostile towards members of the US military who have been captured, wounded, or killed in the line of duty.
Over the last few weeks, Trump has continued to show his disrespect for members of the United States military and the ideals of courage, sacrifice, and patriotism.
At a campaign event last month, former President Trump bragged that receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom — as bestowed by him to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Republican Party super donor Miriam Adelson — is a greater honor than receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for military service and “gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”
Trump explained: “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 [who] 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."
During an interview with CNN, Ret. Marine General John Kelley, who served as Trump’s Chief of Staff, smacked down such a false equivalence:
Think of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Vietnam or Fallujah. The Medal of Honor is earned, not won, by incredibly brave actions on the battlefield under fire typically by very young men who joined when others did not to defend their country. Their oath to the nation is essentially the oath the president and members of Congress take, that federal judges take, that political appointees also take and includes ‘...that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties...’
To the service member, the oath is sacred and taken with the understanding that one could be seriously wounded, captured or killed in living up to the words. No president, member of Congress, judge or political appointee — and certainly no recipient of the Presidential Medal — will ever be asked to give life or limb to protect the Constitution. The two awards cannot be compared in any way. Not even close.
Last week, Trump further fueled the controversy about his long pattern of disrespect towards members of the US Military when he turned a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery honoring the 13 members of the military who were killed during the panicked evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021 into a photo-op and political commercial for his campaign. To make matters even worse, when an Arlington employee intervened, a member of Trump’s staff allegedly shoved the woman as she tried to stop them from filming in Section 60, an area of the cemetery where that is not allowed. While at Arlington National Cemetery, Trump recorded a TikTok video. Trump also posed near the grave of a US Marine, grinning while giving a thumbs-up in the photograph.
Arlington is hallowed ground that is supposed to be above partisan politics. Trump and his staff’s alleged behavior is a violation of Arlington’s stated norms and customs (which are really basic human decency), as well as Army directives and federal law. The Army issued a statement, which is very uncommon, pushing back against the Trump campaign for its violation of the rules “prohibiting political activities,” and defending the staffer at Arlington who “acted with professionalism.” The employee in question has decided not to press charges against the Trump campaign for fear of retaliation and harassment.
Writing at the Atlantic, Michael Powell reflects:
The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands’ tombstones as lots of children run about.
Karen Meredith knows the saddest acre in America only too well. The California resident’s son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was the fourth generation of her family to serve as an Army officer. He was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and laid to rest in Section 60. She puts flowers on his gravesite every Memorial Day. “It’s not a number, not a headstone,” she told me. “He was my only child.”
The sections of Arlington holding Civil War and World War I dead have a lonely and austere beauty. Not Section 60, where the atmosphere is sanctified but not somber—too many kids, Meredith recalled from her visits to her son’s burial site. “We laugh, we pop champagne. I have met men who served under him, and they speak of him with such respect. And to think that this man”— she was referring to Trump —“came here and put his thumb up—”
She fell silent for a moment on the telephone, taking a gulp of air. “I’m trying not to cry.”
For Trump, defiling what is sacred in our civic culture borders on a pastime. Peacefully transferring power to the next president, treating political adversaries with at least rudimentary grace, honoring those soldiers wounded and disfigured in service of our country—Trump long ago walked roughshod over all these norms
The elite agenda-setting news media is now presenting the controversy about Donald Trump and his staff’s behavior at Arlington within its horserace narrative of “he said versus she said” and partisanship instead of as (another) example of the corrupt ex-president’s poor character, failed leadership, and the existential danger he and his neofascist MAGA movement represents to the nation.
Writing at the Columbia Journalism Review, Ben Kesling details how:
As more publications followed suit, the Arlington stories suffered a dreadful fate: they all started to sound the same. News outlets ended up with articles bogged down in parsing federal law, carefully defining what exactly counts as an altercation, and quoting milquetoast official statements like “There was an incident and a report was filed.”
Lumped together, the reporting this week left readers and listeners, especially those with no knowledge of the military, at a loss to understand what actually happened—and, crucially, why it mattered so much. The Trump campaign team had successfully muddied the waters by alleging that the photographer had been invited to the event by family members of soldiers buried there. …
Readers needed to know that, when you visit Arlington, you might not know exactly what you’re supposed to do when confronted by those rows of headstones, but you damn sure know what you’re not supposed to do. But the coverage this week left many readers with the impression that the whole thing might have been a bureaucratic mix-up, or some tedious violation of protocol. It focused on bland horse-race coverage so common during election season, rather than clearly stating what really took place: an egregious and willful violation of long-standing norms. What was missing from the coverage was a willingness to quickly and decisively state what a grievous insult the whole debacle was to the dignity of Arlington. The sacred had been profaned.
In all, mainstream news media’s coverage of Arlington is another example pointing to its institutional failures where Trump’s aberrant and dangerous behavior is normalized as it is processed through the endless churn of the attention economy and the 24/7 news cycle.
Of course, Trump and his propagandists are using Arlington as a weapon to attack Kamala Harris and her patriotism with lies. On Tuesday, Trump posted the following on his Truth Social disinformation site:
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 to make up for the fact that she and Sleepy Joe have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS for the INCOMPETENT AFGHANISTAN Withdrawal - THE MOST EMBARRASSING DAY IN U.S. HISTORY!!! They should have been at Arlington, not on a beach or studying for a Debate. Thank you to my friends, the GREAT GOLD STAR FAMILIES, for revealing the TRUTH OF A BEAUTIFUL DAY OF HONOR. Could not have been a nicer moment-And there were no fights or problems, only in the heads of those that are destroying our Country! MAGA2024
Trump’s behavior at Arlington National Cemetery last week, and his use of the Presidential Medal of Freedom as an extension of his ego and personality cult, are examples of a man who does not value service to anyone or anything but himself. In terms of how Trump understands political power, such values are reflected by how he is an aspiring dictator who channels Hitler and the Führer principle’s logic that such a leader is above the law and should be the embodiment of the State like some type of God-king. For Trump, the ultimate honor is not the selflessness of sacrifice for one’s country and the greater good, but service and loyalty to him and his fascist personality cult.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is one of the few voices with a national platform to highlight this aspect of the recent controversy about Trump and Arlington. Last week, Hayes told the truth about the MAGAfied Republican Party and how “It is a party and a movement built around a candidate for whom nothing is sacred — not a military cemetery, not the judicial system, not even democracy — unless it serves his twisted aims.”
And who does Donald Trump venerate as heroes and role models? The Jan. 6 MAGA terrorists who participated in the lethal attack on the Capitol as part of his coup attempt. Trump has made them into near saints and “political prisoners” who he has raised money for and is promising to free when/if takes back the White House in 2025.
Trump also admires authoritarians and tyrants such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong, and China’s President Xi Jinping. These are the types of leaders and political forces that so many of the men and women interred at Arlington died trying to stop in defense of American and global freedom.
At the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg summarizes it perfectly: “This is the truth of Donald Trump: He has contempt for men and women who serve their country.”
For Trump, all that matters in the world is him, and anyone who is not selfish is a sucker and a fool who deserves to be taken advantage of. Those are the values of criminal thugs, bullies, gangster capitalists, and political strongmen and dictators. These should not be the values of the president of the United States.
