The female Arlington National Cemetery employee who was “abruptly pushed aside” by a Donald Trump campaign staffer as the ex-president was filming a commercial on the hallowed grounds on Monday isn’t filing charges because she fears “retaliation” from Trump’s MAGA supporters.
For anyone who remembers what the MAGA people did on Jan. 6, 2021, overrunning Capitol Police and threatening to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence, it’s hard to blame her.
The U.S. Army issued a statement on Thursday defending the unnamed employee, who according to the statement “attempted to ensure adherence” to “federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”
“Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption,” the Army said in the statement. “The incident was reported to the JBM-HH police department, but the employee subsequently decided not to press charges. Therefore, the Army considers this matter closed.”
It might be closed as far as the Army is concerned, but the fallout for Trump and his campaign is far from being over and done with.
Employee fears ‘retaliation’ from MAGA
Even without the part of the story involving a campaign staffer shoving a cemetery employee, the stunt – filming a campaign commercial to promote a crass effort by Trump to politicize the third anniversary of the deaths of 13 servicemembers killed in a suicide-bomb attack in Afghanistan – was already over the line.
Trump has tried to pin the blame for the bombing on the Biden administration; a 2023 State Department report on the attack excoriated both Biden and Trump, concluding that the “decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”
After the failed Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump completed his administration’s drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, leaving just 2,500 military personnel, the lowest level since 2001, despite warnings from congressional Republicans, led by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Republican, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that the drawdown would lead to a “Saigon-type situation.”
The situation that Rubio forewarned of was aided by a key win for the Taliban in the February 2020 agreement negotiated by the Trump administration – the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters who had been held by the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
Amrullah Saleh, then Afghanistan’s first vice president, told the BBC in January 2021 that Afghan leaders had told Trump officials that “violence will spike” with the release of the prisoners, and that as Trump completed his drawdown, indeed, “violence has spiked,” Saleh said.
“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told an audience of 4,000 National Guard members and their families at a campaign rally in Michigan after the Monday photo-op, trying to rewrite himself out of the story.
“The voters are going to fire Kamala and Joe on Nov. 5, we hope, and when I take office, we will ask for the resignations of every single official,” Trump said at the Michigan rally.
“We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity, to be on my desk at noon on Inauguration Day. You know, you have to fire people. You have to fire people when they do a bad job,” Trump said.
Reminder: elections are how we hire and fire people in government, and 81 million voters voted in 2020 to hire Joe Biden, and by extension, fire Donald Trump.
Back to the story about the commercial shoot that the Army is confirming broke federal law: family members who were on hand for the commercial shoot have since said that they invited Trump and gave approval for his photographer and videographer to record.
Included in the group were people who spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention last month, so, yes, this is entirely political.
NPR reported Thursday that it has learned the family of a Green Beret who died by suicide, and whose headstone is visible in pictures and videos posted by the campaign, did not give permission to be included in the commercial spot.
But now the matter is considered closed by the U.S. Army, because Trump’s MAGA army has people living in fear.
Share
Chris Graham
