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MORE BROKEN RULES AND NORMS: TRUMP’S ARLINGTON CEMETERY FIASCO

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Norm’s restaurants are an iconic tradition here in Southern California. The way things are going, any day I expect Donald Trump to break into Norm’s. Why? Donald Trump is a norm breaking machine. And he has yet to suffer any real consequences.

The latest norm – and rule – breaking controversy swirling around Trump is the decision by him and his campaign to honor 13 fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Ostensibly, the idea was for Trump, who has long disparaged the military, to show up at Arlington cemetery to show his respect for the war dead.

But then more facts started coming to light – including the fact that Team Trump was told by an employee that the cemetery is non-political and photo ops aren’t allowed there.

Then more facts came to light:

1. The actual idea for this visit wasn’t to honor the dead. It was to do this as a private event then blast Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris for not being there.

2. The female employee who tried to stop the Trump group from politicizing Arlington National Cemetery was insulted and shoved aside.

3. The Trump campaign used footage from the event for a TikTok video featuring Trump’s voice and music.

4. The employee who was shoved aside didn’t press charges because she feared the reaction of Trump supporters.

5. The Trump campaign responded by saying she had mental issues.

6. The Army issued a blunt rebuke on Trump’s visit and defended the employee.

7. House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the strings to get Trump in to do the clearly political event.

Charlie Sykes in The Atlantic:

Trump was at Arlington ostensibly to honor the memory of the 13 service members who were killed in a suicide bombing during the chaotic final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The event was supposed to be respectful and private; according to a press-pool note, the families of the troops had asked that there be no media coverage in the area where the service members were buried. But Trump seemed to have other ideas.

According to a report by NPR, Trump’s campaign staff got into a verbal and physical altercation with a cemetery official who tried to stop campaign staffers from filming and taking photographs in the area of the cemetery reserved for recently fallen soldiers. The cemetery confirmed that an incident took place on Monday but did not provide any details, instead noting in a statement that federal law prohibits “political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries.” The Trump-campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that “there was no physical altercation as described,” and added in a post on X that Trump had been allowed a private photographer on the premises. But in his statement, Cheung also accused the cemetery official who’d tried to block Trump’s staff of “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”

It’s hard to see Trump’s Monday visit as anything but a campaign stop intended to court the military vote. Speaking to a group of National Guard members in Detroit later that day, he blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the failures of the Afghanistan withdrawal. By now, Trump’s use of the military as a prop for his own ends should surprise no one. Despite his vigorous avoidance of military service, Trump has a long history of denigrating the service of others, even as he poses as a defender of the nation’s military. As a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2015, he mocked Senator John McCain’s status as a prisoner of war. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at the time. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Later, as president, he told his then–chief of staff John Kelly that he didn’t want “any wounded guys” in his planned Independence Day parade: “This doesn’t look good for me.” Recently, he suggested that the civilian Medal of Freedom is “actually much better” than the military’s Medal of Honor, “because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”

[…]Monday’s wreath-laying at Arlington was, in part, Trump’s attempt to clean up the mess he has created, and to establish some credibility as a champion of men- and women-at-arms. But in the end, it merely served to remind Americans how little he understands about service, sacrifice, and heroism.

However, even that omits two things:

1. Donald Trump continues to have no consequences when he breaks norms, ignores rules, or breaks the law.

2. As Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch notes, the media has already blown the 2024 Presidential election. NPR broke the story, social media followed it closely, and then the mainstream media picked it up.

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