Trump at Arlington
His repeated contempt for US troops, and his dangerous contempt for the rule of law.
I was going to write about the history of parties and the nomination process today, but I guess I hit my breaking point, so it’s gonna be Donald Trump.
Specifically, his wildly inappropriate visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, including another example of his threat to the rule of law.
Look: I do see that there’s some blowback from veterans. That’s no surprise, but I’d be very careful about having any expectations about electoral consequences here. There are lots of veterans, many of whom are Democrats and already had no intention of voting for Trump, and so it’s not surprising that reporters can find plenty of veterans who are angry about this. Given that Trump has a long history of insulting and degrading US troops, my best guess would be that very few who were still willing to vote for him up to this point would give up on him now.1
Speaking of insulting US troops, my first reaction to this wasn’t so much that he was using Arlington to campaign, or that his photo op produced a weird smiling, thumbs up picture, or even that his staff apparently bullied a cemetery staffer. As bad as all that is. No, what really bothers me is that Trump continues to harp on the 13 US troops who died in Afghanistan in August 2021 while disrespecting the 64 US troops who died there while he was president (plus 62 in Iraq) by ignoring them and in some cases claiming they didn't exist.
Should the media make a bigger deal of it? Should Kamala Harris? Who knows. It’s Trump; there are far more negative stories than either the media or the opposing campaign can possibly give full attention to.2 The job of the campaign is to do what they think is best to win, not to dump the opposition research file willy-nilly. As for the media…yeah, I think this deserves more coverage. But so do a lot of things, and it’s hard to say where it should fit. At any rate: The point here is about Trump, not how people should or should react to him.
There is one more key point to make here about the Arlington incident. From the New York Times story:
A woman who works at the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities over the altercation. But the official, who has not been identified, later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.
To be blunt: This is evidence of the deterioration of the rule of law. And it’s not an isolated incident of Trump and his campaign using threats — of violence or job loss or more — to get their way; indeed, it’s so well known that over-the-top retaliation is likely for defying Trump that no direct threat was needed beyond the initial confrontation (although two Trump campaign people did harshly insult the anonymous employee on the record).
Whether it’s defaming poll workers in Georgia and elsewhere, or rank-and-file campaign staff and volunteers getting run off the road by Trumpers, or threats of violence against elected officials or efforts to summarily fire people with civil service protections not sufficiently obedient to Republicans: All of it is not only bad in itself, but it sets up a context in which ordinary people hesitate to participate in public life or to carry out their responsibilities. And what makes it much worse is that the leader of the Republican Party consistently takes the side of violence and vengeance.3
I have generally emphasized both that US democracy is resilient and that the current Trump attack on the rule of law is hardly the first such threat in US history. But US history also demonstrates that such attacks can succeed, and for a long time, as they did for example in the Jim Crow South. We shouldn’t despair, and we shouldn’t conclude democracy is over even if Trump does win in November. We also shouldn’t underestimate just how far Trump and his allies would take this if he’s allowed.
And it’s August, so people may not be tuned in. Still, Trump’s popularity has never been quite as fixed as people think, and it’s certainly possible that a bad story could remind some people of what they don’t like about him and therefore cost him some votes. Not a lot, but in a close enough contest, everything can matter.
This would be true even if many media outlets did not appear to limit how many negative Trump stories they tell or how they tell them in order to “both-sides” their coverage, assigning both major-party candidates roughly equal space for negative stories in order to be “neutral.” (Or perhaps giving the sexual assaulting fraudster indicted for a variety of crimes who also appear to have no clue about most major policy areas — and that’s just the obvious stuff — only somewhat more space for negative stories).
This is why occasional counterexamples of Democrats acting badly are relatively unimportant. It’s true that there are unfortunate or worse actions by low-level party actors or by unattached partisans from every political party in every nation. But it becomes a serious threat to the system when the most visible party leaders make excuses for it, tolerate it, or even celebrate it. Which is exactly what Trump and many other Republicans do, repeatedly.
It's not just that Trump's henchmen (and women) are thugs, they want to be seen as thugs.
I’ll just add that saying the woman who defied them had a mental episode is because the campaign really believes tfg is above the law. She didn’t/doesn't. So sad: thugs in plain sight (GG).