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What Should be the Last Word on Trump’s Arlington Visit.
Like certain people on Ricochet, Kamal Harris posted a tweet calling Trump’s visit to Arlington and his laying a wreath there a political stunt. Eight of the Gold Star Families who lost loved ones at Abbey’s Gate posted video responses. I think each one bears listening to.
They should be the last word on the visit, but almost certainly won’t by Trump’s critics who will respond starting with “Yes, but . . .”
Oft evil will shall evil mar.
1. Gold Star Families of botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris.
"Why won't you return a call and explain to us how you call my daughter-in-law's death a success?" — Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Sgt. Nicole Agee. pic.twitter.com/nr1hod7ixO
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"They called the withdrawal in Afghanistan a success. They are the responsible persons for murdering our kids." — Coral Doolittle, mother of Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez pic.twitter.com/c279FOSKQ2
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"You don't care for our military or the citizens of this country. You should hang your head in shame." – Darin Hoover, father of staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover pic.twitter.com/yzK3289tB4
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"You have zero business running this country and I pray to God, Americans wake the hell up and get your a** out of office!" — Mark Schmitz, father of Lance Cpl Jared M. Schmitz pic.twitter.com/pTlHUw5WSR
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"You have disparaged all 13 who have lost their lives. You are the worst that America has to offer." — Steve Nikoui, father of Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui pic.twitter.com/iALy5cRAGd
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
2. Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris.
"We have not seen any support from you or your administration…Your words are hollow and empty." — Herman Lopez, father of Corporal Hunter Lopez. pic.twitter.com/Vct0jWZGYC
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"No one should be running for president if they cannot honor military members…That means you should STEP DOWN Kamala." — Jaclyn Schmitz, mother of Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz pic.twitter.com/Zb3nmGYgBI
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Gold Star Families of American heroes killed in botched Afghanistan withdrawal slam VP Kamala Harris:
"You have failed for 3 years and 8 months to acknowledge our kids. You have failed in your duties as vice president." — Jim McCollum, father of Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum pic.twitter.com/GXZJYM0iMp
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 31, 2024
Published in War
I will not make any further comment on this post. I feel the families’ voices do my talking on this subject.
After that, there is not much else that can be said.
Repeat a lie often is a fascist/DNC strategy.
They can be the last word, but not the last time those words are said.
I don’t think the criticism leveled at Trump about this is going to hurt him. Average Americans can look at the story and see that Trump is meeting with these families, who have been ignored by the Biden-Harris administration. It might even backfire by drawing attention to his meeting with those families.
I would not be surprised if they find a law that Trump broke by going and criminal charges coming soon.
Thank you, Mark. I’m going to repost each of these on Twitter. Well done.
Righteous outrage > Faux outrage.
Thank you for sharing
Also, Biden’s 2020 campaign ad using his visit to ANC:
Dem Fury Over Trump’s Arlington Photo Should Be Silenced by the Biden Ad That Just Resurfaced (msn.com)
The last word? Only if you’re lucky.
The idea behind the visit was brilliant. Reignite the perception that the Afghan withdrawal was a disaster and lay it at the feet of Kamala Harris. But five days later the subject is still Trump and how he and his campaign behaved. Even the headline of this post, which should be “Gold Star Families Shine Spotlight on Biden-Harris Disaster” is, instead, all about Trump. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
Now they’re forced to ask the families to do a cleanup on Aisle Trump. I know there are many here who don’t want to hear it, but no matter how much spin anyone wants to put on it, Trump and his campaign blew a golden opportunity and this will be thrown at him every time he attempts to make it an issue.
Only if you’re lucky.
We’ll see if he brings it up at the debate (if there is one.)
Do you really want to compare the images?
Have you read the responses of the Gold Star families? They don’t sound coerced. They sound furious. Something tells me your confreres scamper away from this as fast as their stubby little legs will carry them.
The ones using this sacred day as a political stunt are the wretched mouthpieces in the MSM and the Brandon administration. These families are right – they and KH have been a no-show. That’s the only consistency we’ve seen on her policies – all talk and empty words.
I am seeing and hearing a ramp up on many stations of Trump-bashing, even local. These families know the truth and there is much support for them by average Americans.
I didn’t say they were coerced. The responses were made necessary because of Trump’s silly thumbs up photo and the interaction between the campaign and an employee of the cemetery. Unforced errors both. Again, if this had been handled better and the candidate exhibited some thought behind what he was doing, nobody would still be talking about it in this manner five days later.
I know you all hate the press and their perceived biases. That doesn’t mean you have to incapable of analyzing a situation without putting hyper reverse spin on it, too.
If there’s a silver lining, Harris is not necessarily the most competent campaigner herself.
I think that shutting up those who have already responded would have been tougher than you think. Kamala and her associates have not reached out before, and don’t dare do so now.
As far as bias goes, the Kamala “interview” was over 45 minutes long. CNN went with 18 minutes. How do suppose a neutral observer would characterize the remainder?
If I had access to it I’d tell you. For what it’s worth the network says it showed the interview in full. The claim that the interview went 45 minutes originates with the Trump campaign and is not sourced.
But if you watched any of it, you’d know Dana Bash mostly offered up softballs with multiple choice questions. What makes you think that she deviated from that and peppered her with devastatingly hard policy questions that were answered so badly CNN had to omit them? You want to simultaneously believe that Bash is in the tank and yet still a viscous bulldog of an inquisitor that the results have to be hidden? Choose one.
I don’t want it to be the last word.
Elections have consequences. One consequence of electing Joe Biden was the chaos of our Afghanistan withdrawal, the tragedy that brought these families to Arlington, and the lingering catastrophe of so abundantly equipping the Taliban with all that US military equipment.
A likely consequence of electing Harris/Walz will be a further weakening of US capabilities, a continuation of the global instability that weakness has enabled, and, ultimately, more grief-stricken gatherings at Arlington.
Whether this event redounds to Trump’s benefit or Harris’ will depend entirely on how it is perceived by uncommitted voters. Those voters will see both Biden and Trump campaign spots filmed at Arlington. Try explaining that, because of a technicality, one of those is okay and the other isn’t. We are hard-wired to recognize and detest hypocrisy, and that argument looks like hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, we have this entirely plausible, and quite likely true, narrative: The families wanted Trump to be with them. They asked Trump to be with them. Biden was on a two-week vacation and Harris was similarly absent, and neither could be bothered to show up, despite the fact that it was the Biden/Harris decision, made against military advice, to make the poorly planned withdrawal.
Here’s how I’d present it were I the Trump campaign:
These families lost loved ones because Joe Biden and Kamala “last-in-the-room” Harris made a tragic military decision for political reasons. These families asked Trump to be there, because they know he respects the sacrifice they’ve made. Trump got permission to be there with a photographer to take pictures with the families. When Trump arrived some minor government person tried to prevent Trump and the families from getting their pictures, and Trump would have none of it. Because Trump fights. Biden lounges on the beach, Harris hides from the press. Trump fights. These families who have given so much understand that. Listen to what they have to say.
Gold Star moms, eh? You forgot to include this one, but I’m happy to correct the omission: Gold Star Mom Rebukes Trump’s Arlington Video: ‘It Makes Me Sick’ – Newsweek.
Talking of making people sick, I think that’s what Trump did recently to the chairman of the VFW when the loathsome con man denigrated the Medal of Honor by saying the Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military’s top award, because those awarded the latter are “ … either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” These disgusting comments rightly provoked the chairman to reply: VFW Admonishes Former President for Medal of Honor – VFW. “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.”
I note that it’s been six days since the Trump campaign claimed it had video of the Arlington altercation. So far, they’ve released nothing. I wonder why.
I have no idea how long the actual interview went, or whether the final campaign-spot-masquerading-as-an-interview omitted any of the conversation.
But I don’t think anyone believes that any omissions were the result of tough questioning from Bash. Rather, I think the suspicion would be that Harris cackled, or cranked up the salad spinner, or otherwise prattled on in her characteristic incoherent fashion, and so provided more fodder for the Trump campaign. That would be my assumption, if in fact the interview went longer than the few minutes actually presented.
Biden et al. are really insane sometimes. This reminds me of the chain of events surrounding the development of the covid vaccine. Biden said during his campaign that he would never take a vaccine developed under the Trump administration. Well, what a difference a year makes. We went right from that assertion to full mandates for federal employees to have the vaccine or lose their jobs. :) :)
One more thing: It’s easy to find military families, Gold-Star or otherwise, who don’t like Trump and who will provide sound-bites to be used against him. It’s always easy to find someone to say almost anything you want, if you look around for them and you don’t mind them being unrepresentative of the population in question.
What makes the testimonials linked in the post particularly meaningful is that they aren’t a random sample of families. Rather, they are the families who were there with Trump, the families to whom Trump responded when they called for him. So their commentary is a direct response to criticism of the event they attended.
These are the people whose rebuke of Biden/Harris carries the most weight. I think people get that.
Oh, look, Newsweek managed to find a Gold Star mom whose son was buried at Arlington 20 years ago to criticize Trump! That’ll show the Gold Star moms who invited him to the 3rd anniversary of their sons’ and daughters’ deaths, and joined him with their own smiles and thumbs up!
Good grief.
So people’s investment in the memory of their warrior children and the respect we owe them diminishes over time? It’s just like a negative interest rate! How old does a corpse have to be before you can remove it from consideration? Twenty years is clearly excessive in your view, so how about ten? Five? Do tell.
“Finding” a law that addresses these events isn’t exactly difficult, and it’s clear that Trump broke it: These are Arlington National Cemetery’s rules about politicizing grounds (thehill.com).
Criminal charges would be a splendid idea.
So every family member of someone interred at Arlington has absolute authority over everything allowed to happen at Arlington? Or is it just the haters whose hate aligns with yours?
When it comes to assessing the appropriateness of Trump’s attendance and behavior at the Arlington commemoration event in question, …
Gold Star Mom whose son’s/daughter’s death was being commemorated at said event trumps random Gold Star Mom whom Newsweek managed to scrounge up.
Clear now?
I suspect the righteous indignation being expressed about this event is almost entirely opportunistic, seen by those who detest Trump as a chance to make him look bad.
But regardless of the motive, I think the decision to make a big deal about this is going to backfire horribly on the Harris supporters.
It could have gone unremarked by the press and the campaign. Then no one would be talking about it now.
instead, Harris and her fawning press decided to score some points. And all of a sudden the contrast between Trump’s support for the military and Harris’ incompetence and disregard is what we are talking about.
good luck trying to explain why the testimonials above should be ignored. Good luck trying to explain how Trump is the bad guy for showing up.
And EJ‘s comment that these people had to say what they said because of Trump’s action is wrong. He’s picked an arbitrary starting point.
If you want to try root causes, we could say that their action was required because of Biden‘s ill-conceived order to withdraw. Or we could go back to the Bush administration, or earlier.
But if we look at what was the last choice made that prompted their response, it’s pretty clear. It was the attempt to make Trump look bad. Again, if the press had shut up and not tried to turn this into a scandal, there would have been no response and we wouldn’t be talking about how feckless Biden and Harris are.