So, now, according to Donald Trump, the blame for the Arlington National Cemetery commercial-shoot fiasco should go on … the parents of the dead soldiers?
“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it. And it could have been them, it could have been the parents,” Trump told NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, pinning the blame for the controversy on what he termed a “set up.”
“I really don’t know anything about it,” Trump said in the interview. “All I do is, I stood there, and I said, If you’d like to have a picture, we can have a picture. If somebody did, if this was a set up by the people in the administration that, oh, Trump is coming to Arlington, that looks so bad for us.”
ICYMI
- Arlington National Cemetery employee not filing charges: Fears ‘retaliation’ from MAGA
- Trump team fires back at Arlington National Cemetery over photo-op
This is the latest twist of the knife in the back in the story of the crass campaign photo-op that the Trump team arranged on Monday, in violation of “federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds,” the U.S. Army said in a statement issued on Thursday.
The matter came to light through reporting from NPR that a Trump campaign staffer had shoved an Arlington National Cemetery employee who was trying to prevent the campaign from shooting photos and videos at gravesites in violation of federal law.
A Trump campaign statement suggested the employee was having “a mental health episode,” and the campaign further claimed that family members who were on hand for the commercial shoot 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.
Those folks, ostensibly, are the ones now being blamed by Trump for the “set up.”
Video: Donald Trump passes blame for commercial fiasco
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Chris Graham
