On Monday, President Trump attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery that honored the 13 service members who were killed by the Taliban at Kabul Airport in 2021. Trump was accompanied by a photographer and videographer, and the ceremony produced stirring images:
Democrats criticized Trump’s visit, alleging that he was “politicizing” the cemetery, the deaths of the service members, or both. Initially such criticisms were muted, but the Democrats thought they had gotten hold of a valuable theme, and ratcheted up the noise. Thus headlines like this one from CNN: “Arlington cemetery controversy deepens as Trump and Harris trade attacks.”
Yesterday Kamala Harris weighed in. Her tweet prompted many harsh replies, of which this, by JD Vance, was only one:
President Trump was there at the invitation of families whose loved ones died because of your incompetence.
Why don’t you get off social media and go launch an investigation into their unnecessary deaths? https://t.co/UC2jIGIfaE
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 31, 2024
The Democrats’ criticism of Trump forced the hand of the Gold Star families who invited Trump to the ceremony, but who until now had mostly remained silent. This brutal response to NBC News by the mother of one of the murdered soldiers has been widely viewed:
NBC SHOULD BE ASHAMED.
NBC News asked Gold Star mom Kelly Hoover if it was “appropriate” for President Trump to visit Arlington National Cemetery
"Are you in my shoes? I invited him. My son was murdered under the Biden-Harris administration." pic.twitter.com/zArtnd3sY9
— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) August 29, 2024
This incident illustrates why the Democrats’ attacks on Trump so often fall flat. They really have no understanding of how people outside their bubble see the world. This is why they refer to Trump as “teflon” Trump, much as, decades ago, liberals referred to Ronald Reagan as a teflon president. They can’t understand why their attacks (most of them, anyway) don’t work.
If the Democrats were smart, they would avoid like the plague any reference to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was universally, and correctly, seen as a debacle, and the Afghanistan fiasco precipitated a drop in Biden’s approval ratings from which he never recovered. Normal observers see that the current controversy was stirred up by the Democrats in hopes of political gain. The controversy, kept alive by Democrats, mostly serves to remind voters of one of the Biden/Harris administration’s worst failures, and to tie that failure more securely to Kamala Harris.
So in my opinion the Democrats’ attacks on Trump for his Arlington visit constitute political malpractice. We can only hope that they keep it up.
UPDATE: If you click on the X, you can see all of the Gold Star families that have taken Trump’s side and criticized Harris:
Here is a thread of every Gold Star family member that has called out Kamala Harris on social media so far. 🧵
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) September 1, 2024
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.