US Army confirms Donald Trump’s staff ‘pushed aside’ Arlington National Cemetery worker
The US Army has hit out at Donald Trump’s campaign after they downplayed an altercation at one of America’s most hallowed resting places for its war dead.
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The US Army has confirmed a worker at America’s country’s most hallowed resting place for its war dead was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with members of Donald Trump’s staff.
Mr Trump went to the Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington on Wednesday local time with family members of some of the 13 service members killed in a 2021 bombing during the last hours of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
His campaign posted photos from the visit, including one showing him giving a thumbs-up gesture while standing with relatives at the grave of one of the Marines killed.
Officials at the famed cemetery claimed members of Trump’s campaign team verbally abused and pushed an employee during a photo opportunity for the Republican presidential nominee earlier this week.
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In a statement, Arlington said one of its representatives became involved in the altercation with two Trump staffers.
The worker told Trump staffers that only cemetery representatives were allowed to take video and photographs in Section 60, the area where recent US casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the statement said.
“Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants,” the statement said.
Going on the offensive, Mr Trump’s campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita had described the employee as a “despicable individual,” while campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said she was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.
But the Army said an Arlington employee was “abruptly pushed aside” when she sought to ensure a law prohibiting political activity on cemetery grounds was followed.
“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the (Arlington National Cemetery) employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson added that the incident was reported but that the employee decided not to take further action.
“Therefore, the Army considers this matter closed,” the statement said.
Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, just outside Washington DC, is the final resting place of 400,000 military personal as well as several presidents including John F. Kennedy.
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He mocked lengthy delay between Ms Harris ascending to the ticket and her first media interview.
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“I just did an interview backstage. It was NBC fake news. She asked me about all sorts of things.”
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Mr Trump this time also implicated his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, referring to her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The former US president reposted a photo from Truth Social of the women smiling side-by-side that read: “Funny how b--- jobs impacted both their careers differently …”
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Kamala Harris’s first interview as presidential candidate has been slammed as “weak sauce” on the same network that will broadcast the highly-anticipated sit-down.
The Democratic candidate will break her 39-day interview drought alongside running mate Tim Walz in a two-on-one with CNN anchor Dana Bash, who co-moderated the first presidential debate.
CNN’s senior political commentator Scott Jennings and anchor Kasie Hunt panned the “joint interview”, to air at 11am AEST Friday, raising more questions over Ms Harris’ inability to face the press directly.
“I think it’s incredibly weak, weak sauce, to show up with your running mate. The fact that they don’t have enough confidence in her, to sit herself, the actual top of the ticket, and do a single interview,” said Mr Jennings, a former assistant to former president George W Bush.
“In fact, I think the hand-wringing and the gyrations over this over the last month show a troubling lack of confidence in her political ability, which also makes you wonder as a voter what kind of president would you be if this kind of small-time decision, can we do an interview or not, what does that look like for your decision-making process.”
Ms Hunt, meanwhile, asked a panel discussion if the vice president waited too long “because this has become … kind of a thing”.
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While Ms Harris was widely mocked online over having Mr Walz take up half the interview space, it’s unusual for the network hosting the event to raise questions over the format of its own production.
“There are a lot of policy proposals we don’t know necessarily where Kamala Harris stands, Dana is going to be asking about those things … and this has not always been her strongest forum necessarily, interviews,” Ms Hunt said.
“Part of why there has been this focus on it is there is this history of Harris in some cases struggling.”
The interview will be the first time Ms Harris faces the media for a sit-down interview since Joe Biden dropped out of the campaign on July 21, local time.
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JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, has slammed Kamala Harris over the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying she can “go to hell”.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Mr Trump’s VP pick argued that the altercation at Arlington national cemetery was “the media creating a story”.
Mr Vance also argued that 13 Americans died in Afghanistan because Harris “refused to do her job”.
“Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened and she wants to give Donald Trump because he showed up, she can go to hell!”
It came as a resurfaced clip from 2021 showed Mr Vance attacking teachers who did not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.
In the clip, Mr Vance, attacked Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children during remarks he made at a forum held by the Centre for Christian Virtue.
“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me,” Mr Vance said in the clip.
“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”
In a post on X, Ms Weingarten blasted the comments as “gross”, saying they were “sad and insulting to millions of modern families, and school teachers including Catholic nuns, none of whom should be targeted for their family decisions”.
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Taylor Swift has yet to weigh in on the US presidential race, but some of her superfans are already stumping for Kamala Harris.
As of Thursday AEST, “Swifties for Kamala” had raised more than $140,000 ($A206,000) in favour of the Democratic White House hopeful.
They held an inaugural fundraising call the evening prior that was joined by some 27,000 viewers, launching the effort aimed at “turning our swiftie power into political power,” as the group’s political director put it during the meeting.
Stars like Carole King along with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand appeared in the virtual meeting.
“I am a Swiftie, and Taylor and I are actually friends,” King, the legendary singer-songwriter behind hits including I Feel The Earth Move and You’ve Got A Friend said on the call.
“I’ve been a political activist for years. I’ve been a volunteer, I’ve been a door knocker, even as a famous person,” King continued.
“I’m telling you all this because if any of you are thinking of volunteering to be door knockers or phone callers, but you’re a little nervous about what you might say, please believe me: there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Swifties For Kamala began as a social media initiative founded by social media user and Swiftie Emerald Medrano in the hours after US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
The effort blossomed across platforms, and with accounts that currently have more than 72,000 subscribers on X, and nearly 50,000 on Instagram.
Swift herself is not personally affiliated with the group.
- with AFP
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Originally published as US Army confirms Donald Trump’s staff ‘pushed aside’ Arlington National Cemetery worker
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