Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Sunday broke down Meet the Press host Kristen Welker’s claim that President Donald Trump used a ceremony held at Arlington National Cemetery, in remembrance of the 13 American service members killed at Abbey Gate, to take campaign photos.
“He didn’t take campaign photos there,” Cotton said when Welker accused the former president of inappropriately using military grave sites for campaign purposes. “These families — Gold Star families — whose children died due to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s incompetence, invited him to the cemetery, and they asked him to take those photos.”
Cotton noted that the Gold Star families also invited President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to the cemetery to meet with them, to no avail.
“Joe Biden was sitting on a beach,” he said. “Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, D.C. She was four miles away — ten minutes. She could’ve gone to the cemetery and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women, but she hasn’t. She never has spoken with them or taken a meeting with them. It is because of her and Joe Biden’s incompetence that those 13 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.”
An unnamed source told reporters in recent days that a Trump-campaign staffer “verbally abused and pushed” a cemetery official after being told that only authorized cemetery photographers were allowed to take photos or video in the area. Trump-campaign spokesman Steven Cheung denied reports of an altercation and said a private photographer had received permission to work on the site.
The families of those service members killed at Abbey Gate — Marine Corps Lance Corporal David Espinoza, Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Darin Taylor Hoover, Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss, Marine Corps Corporal Hunter Lopez, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Dylan R. Merola, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, Marine Corps Corporal Daegan William-Tyeler Page, Marine Corps Sergeant Johanny Rosario, Marine Corps Corporal Humberto Sanchez, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, and Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak — have long felt disrespected by the current president and his refusal to meet with them.
After Harris issued a statement condemning Trump’s appearance as an episode in which he “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” several family members recorded videos addressed to the vice president. The loved ones of those 13 men and women noted that neither Biden nor Harris has said their names in the three years since the Abbey Gate bombing.