Gold Star Families Earned the Right to Invite Trump to Arlington
Gold Star Families Earned the Right to Invite Trump to Arlington
Kamala Harris and the media think differently.
Anyone who doubts the influence that today’s mainstream media still wields need only consider the ability of wordcels and their punditocracy accomplices to steer the national discourse, dictating what is, and isn’t, a scandal, and what does, and does not, make something newsworthy—with the determination based almost entirely on the party affiliations of those involved, so that one very specific party gets preferential and even deferential treatment.
There are countless examples proving as much, but I want to focus on a recent one that’s particularly disgusting. It has to do with Trump, Arlington National Cemetery, and an event to honor the 13 fallen service members1 killed during the Biden administration’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
Let’s first talk briefly about said withdrawal. Anyone interested in an impeccably well-researched account should read Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End. Suffice it to say that authors Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson convincingly show that the deaths of those 13 service members “were neither inevitable nor the product of good-faith decisions poorly executed,” and that our exit from Gandhara was such a shit show because of the Biden administration’s ignorance, self-assurance, and impatience. During his first week in office, Biden asked his team, “How quickly can we get out of Afghanistan?” The meeting, recounted to Dunleavy and Hasson by a senior official, made it clear that the administration “wanted to shape the realities of the battlefield around his decision instead of vice versa.” The disaster that occurred in the final days of August 2021 was entirely predictable.
And no, the FUBAR exodus was not predetermined by a binding agreement negotiated by Trump, as Democrats and their media minions still like to claim. Though it’s true that the Trump administration negotiated a flawed deal, it was a conditional one, and wasn’t set to take effect until after the Talibs fulfilled several concrete obligations. The Biden team simply ignored those conditions altogether and withdrew on its own accord.
Military and intelligence leaders alike repeatedly warned our somnambulant Commander in Chief. The Pentagon, the congressionally mandated Afghanistan Study Group, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and several other groups commissioned reports concluding that a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and a precipitous drop in US troops would create a dire security situation and lead to the rapid disintegration of the Afghan military; that the Taliban could not be trusted to “assist”; and that maintaining a small military presence in the country along with a retrograde of contractors was necessary to ensure no American was left behind.
Biden proceeded anyway. “The president decided, ‘We’re going to leave,’” said Colonel Seth Krummrich, a twenty-two-year Green Beret who served as the chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) during the withdrawal. “And he’s not listening to anybody.”
On April 14, 2021, Biden formally announced the decision he’d made months, if not years, earlier. The withdrawal date was to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11. He later moved the withdrawal date up to the end of August, perhaps recognizing the poor optics of the decision. But it was clear that things were being rushed. The president’s directives and planning for the withdrawal were never even put into a national security memorandum, despite that being the standard process for major national security decisions. A Biden official later admitted that the decision “came down to where the assessment they were receiving from the military in Afghanistan did not support the preferred policy decision that the administration and certainly the State Department wished to pursue.”
Which brings us back to Trump attending a Wreath Laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in honor of the service members killed in the Kabul airport suicide bombing. The former president was invited by Gold Star families. Biden and Harris were invited to attend as well. They did not, even though neither had any public events scheduled for that day.
But some people objected to Trump being there. His presence served to magnify the roles both Biden and Harris played in the withdrawal…
…as well as Harris’s reaction when she was asked about the Abbey Gate deaths.
Army officials reportedly “dragged their feet and ‘stymied’ the families’ request to have Trump, according to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who heard of the families’ problems and enlisted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to intercede with Arlington officials to get approval for the event.”
Following the ceremony, the families invited Trump to visit their loved ones’ grave sites and take a few photos2 in what’s known as Section 60 at Arlington, where veterans who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq are buried. NPR reported that there was some kind of altercation between a campaign official and a civilian cemetery staffer. Apparently an obscure federal Park Police regulation had been violated; you’re not supposed to take pictures in Section 60 unless you’re a federal staff member, and Trump is not currently a federal staff member.
That is the sum total of the purported “scandal.” Naturally, the Democratic propaganda organs went full-on Leeroy Jenkins, as if Trump had desecrated the graves of all 400,000 veteran souls buried in Arlington. They even accused him of “defying a ban on political campaigning” at the cemetery.
Because obviously the focus should be on creating a fake scandal rather than asking Kamala Harris why Trump was there but she was not,3 or perhaps recognizing that taking photos with Gold Star families in Section 60 isn’t as bad as putting service members in the ground there.
Incredibly, the Harris campaign then made an impressively bad comms mistake by wading into the “Arlington controversy,” with Kamala herself releasing a statement about how Trump is “unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself,” and Americans have a “sacred duty” to properly honor veterans. A bold move, considering that Trump was there specifically to pay respects to those killed in a disastrous operation for which our marvelous, totally qualified Vice President previously claimed credit. As the second in command for the administration responsible for the shockingly incompetent surprise evacuation of Afghanistan, why would you ever put yourself in a position of having to answer the question, “What was Trump doing at Arlington anyway?”
An epic PR debacle has ensued. Gold Star families decided to respond directly, addressing Kamala Harris by name. And my God, the video messages they put out — which Trump posted on X, and which have received millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes and reposts — are just brutal. Here’s a taste:
And here are some quotes I pulled from additional videos:
“Where were you and Joe Biden on Aug 26, 2024? Neither one of you have called to speak with us or share in our grief. You should be ashamed and embarrassed at your lack of empathy and decency as a human being.” — Darin Hoover, Father of Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover
“Your administration killed my son...You were not at Dover for the dignified transfer. At no time have you reached out to me to offer your condolences, to offer a thank you for Kareem’s sacrifice and service. Not once have you honored him by saying his name.” — Steve Nikoui, Father of Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nikoui
“Here we are on a beautiful holiday weekend day, I gotta stop what I’m doing, spending time with what’s left of my family, to address the heinous, vile, and disgusting post put out by Kamala Harris, trying to incite those that don’t follow the truth…Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign. We wanted a leader…Imagine for a second that your kid is killed. And there’s a President of the United States willing to take you under his wing and listen to you. That’s what we found in President Trump. Certainly not you, and certainly not Joe Biden. You have 13 families that have been waiting three years to so much as get a phone call, to so much as hear our kid’s name said aloud.” — Mark Schmitz, Father of Lance Corporal Jared M. Schmitz
Media coverage of the video messages has been muted at best, proving yet again that a story’s newsworthiness depends largely on the party affiliations of those involved. The press has instead responded with more vileness, while Democrats across social media are attacking the Gold Star families.
I’m an Army veteran. But I chose not to frame this post from that perspective because I don’t think it should matter; I think this kind of shameful bullshit — how these families have been ignored by the Biden administration, and how the American media is protecting Harris from the fallout — should disgust Americans of all political persuasions and walks of life.
Were it not for X, which reroutes the lines of global communication directly to the people and provides a way to bypass official news providers entirely, these videos would not have been circulated widely enough to have an impact. But I believe that in reminding voters of the human cost associated with this administration’s incompetence, a blow has been dealt to the Democratic Party’s self-professed claim to competent, managerial governance. And it serves to highlight something that Auron MacIntyre recently pointed out: “Mass managerial regimes rely on narrative hegemony for power. Social media threatens that monopoly by allowing dissident voices to gain an audience at a moment’s notice which is why every modern government is scrambling to regain control.”
Eleven of whom were still in preschool on 9/11.
Much has been made of one photo in particular. It shows Trump and the Barnett family posing with their thumbs up, which is the pose Trump always uses. But Kelly Barnett, whose son, Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, was killed at Abbey Gate, says she requested the photo. People may disagree with the thumbs up gesture. The only opinions that matters are the families of the fallen, who are also making this gesture. No one gets to tell these people how to grieve or celebrate their loved ones.
And why Trump has had a relationship with these families for years, but Biden and Harris have mistreated them.
"If I were a father and I had a daughter who had been seduced, I would not despair over her; I would hope for salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist and continued as a journalist for 5 years, I would give him up. It is possible that in a given circumstance I could be mistaken, that the daughter could be the one who was lost and the son the one who was recovered but viewed as an idea, my remarks are correct: to serve politics with the help of the daily press is too much for a human being."
Soren Kierkegaard
I can’t imagine how any current service member, veteran, or any family member would vote for the Harris-Walz ticket. It would be hard to come up with two people who have been so blatantly disrespectful of military members and their families, or would be less deserving of being CIC.