Sen. JD Vance has defended the Trump campaign over an altercation with an Arlington National Cemetery staff member, instead criticizing Kamala Harris over the controversy and telling an audience she “can go to hell.”
In remarks at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, Vance cited the deaths of 13 American service members during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, blaming the vice president for not having investigated the withdrawal or firing anyone.
“Sometimes mistakes happen — that’s just the nature of government, the nature of military service. But to have those 13 Americans lose their lives and not fire a single person is disgraceful,” he said. “Kamala Harris is disgraceful.”
“She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” he added. “She can — she can go to hell.”
Vance’s comments are not just disrespectful — although they follow the example that Trump has maintained throughout his political career — they’re also inaccurate. As The Washington Post pointed out, the criticism from the Harris’ campaign spokesperson was merely to call the incident “pretty sad” but “not surprising coming from the Trump team” on CNN on Wednesday, and Harris herself has not said anything about it in public.
Even as Vance has bristled at the criticism, accusing the Harris campaign of “trying to make a massive political issue” out of the incident and blaming the media for having “turned it into a national news story,” the Trump campaign’s own indignant response to the incident has kept the story in the headlines. Rather than admitting it had defied federal laws that bar political activity at gravesites in Arlington, the campaign released a video that included the grave of Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano, a combat veteran who died in 2020, without his family’s permission. Marckesano’s sister told The New York Times that the Trump campaign did not adhere to visitation rules, saying, “We hope those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly.”
In addition to the scandal of politicking at the cemetery, a Trump aide pushed a cemetery employee out of the way so that the campaign could take photos and video, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing two Defense Department officials. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the employee a “liar” in response. What’s more, Cheung and Trump campaign official Chris LaCivita have disparaged the employee in deeply personal terms, suggesting she had a “mental health episode.”
The employee initially filed an incident report with military officials but later declined to press charges, fearing retaliation from Trump supporters, according to the Times.
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