Trump's visit to Arlington Cemetery becomes controversial after “incident”

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WASHINGTON – Donald Trump's campaign team was warned not to take photos before an altercation at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week during a wreath-laying ceremony honoring soldiers killed during the withdrawal from the Afghanistan war, a defense official told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter related to Monday's events. A day earlier, NPR reported, citing a source familiar with the incident, that two Trump campaign staffers “verbally abused and shoved aside” a cemetery official when he tried to prevent them from filming and taking photographs in Section 60, the burial site for service members killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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The defense official told AP that the Trump campaign team had been warned before their arrival and the confrontation not to take photos in Section 60. Trump was in Arlington on Monday at the invitation of some family members of the 13 soldiers killed in the Kabul airport bombing exactly three years earlier.

Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 400,000 soldiers, veterans and their families. Cemetery officials said in a statement that an “incident” occurred and a report had been filed, but did not go into details of what happened. They declined to release the report.

“Federal law prohibits political campaigning or election-related activities at Army National Cemetery military cemeteries, including photographers, content creators, or others who are there for the purposes of or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign,” the cemetery officials said in a statement. “Arlington National Cemetery has emphasized this law and its prohibitions and has communicated it widely to all attendees. We can confirm that there was an incident and a report was filed.”

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Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the Republican presidential candidate's team had been assigned a photographer. He denied the allegation that a campaign staffer had shoved a cemetery official.

“The fact is that a private photographer was allowed onto the grounds, and for whatever reason, an unnamed individual, obviously suffering from a mental disorder, decided to physically block the path of members of President Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony,” he said.

Chris LaCivita, a top adviser to Trump's campaign, pointed out that Trump was there at the invitation of the families of the soldiers killed in the airport bombing. The Trump campaign released a message signed by the families of two soldiers killed in the attack, saying: “The President and his team have behaved with nothing but the utmost respect and dignity toward all of our soldiers, especially our beloved children.”

“For a despicable individual to physically prevent President Trump's team from accompanying him to this solemn event is disgraceful and does not deserve to represent the hollow ground of Arlington National Cemetery,” he said in a written statement, misspelling the word “sacred.” “Whoever this individual is, by spreading these lies, he dishonors the men and women of our armed forces.”

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Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Trump's Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, called the reports “pretty sad in the end.”

“That's what we expect from Donald Trump and his team,” Tyler said on CNN. “Donald Trump is a person who wants to make everything about Donald Trump. He's also someone who has a history of humiliating and degrading military personnel who have made the ultimate sacrifice.”

Democratic U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia called on the cemetery administration to release more information about Monday's events.

“It is sad but all too predictable that Donald Trump would desecrate this sacred ground and put campaign politics above honoring our heroes,” he said. “His conduct and that of his campaign is abhorrent and disgraceful.”

Trump's running mate JD Vance was asked about the incident at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday and said that “apparently someone at Arlington Cemetery, a staff member, had a little disagreement with someone” and “the media made it a national story.”

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Instead, he tried to focus on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling Harris a “disgrace” for not firing anyone over the deaths of soldiers in the terrorist attack. “She can go to hell,” Vance said.

The terrorist militia “Islamic State” claimed responsibility for the attack.

A Pentagon investigation into the deadly attack concluded that the suicide bomber acted alone and the deaths of more than 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. soldiers were unavoidable. But critics have slammed the Biden administration for the disastrous evacuation, saying it should have started sooner.

Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox was criticized Wednesday for including a photo of him and Trump at the Arlington ceremony in a campaign email asking for donations for his re-election. One of the victims of the suicide attack was Sergeant Darin Taylor Hoover, a Utah resident.

Cox's campaign team apologized for using the photo and politicizing the memorial service.

“This was not a campaign event and was never intended for campaign use,” the governor wrote in a post on X. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent out.”

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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Schoenbaum from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York and Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

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