Donald Trump on Friday defended his decision to take photos and video at the graves of fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, a move his critics slammed as potentially illegal.
“I wasn’t doing it—I don’t need publicity,” he said. “I get a lot of publicity. I would like to get a lot less publicity.”
In fact, the former president whose career was built on publicity improbably claimed: “I would hire a public relations agent to get less publicity.”
The former president caught flack this week for taking photos and video in a section of the cemetery where campaign activity is prohibited. Members of Trump’s campaign staff reportedly “verbally abused and pushed” an employee of the cemetery who tried to enforce the rules after a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed during the Afghanistan War withdrawal.
The U.S. Army has rebuked the Trump campaign, which has insisted it did not break the law.
Speaking at an afternoon rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Trump said the families of troops killed at the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan asked him to join them in Section 60 at their children’s graves after the ceremony Monday morning.
“They said to me—I mean, I’m not surprised, I never even thought about—‘Sir, would it be possible for you to have a picture with us by the tombstone of my son?’” he said. “You know, the beautiful white tombstones, marble, beautiful, beautiful things.”
Without citing any evidence, Trump blamed the White House for spreading the allegation that he took the photos for political gain.
“Everything was nice,” he said. “And then later on that day, I heard that we were using the graves of those soldiers for public relations purposes, and that was all put out by the White House. Joe Biden killed those young people because he was incompetent.”
But Trump’s campaign had been warned not to take photographs ahead of the altercation, according to the Associated Press. And Trump was excoriated by a gold star father whose son was killed in Iraq for his perceived politicization of the somber event.
Speaking for more than an hour, Trump also used the rally to hit several of his favorite talking points, including slamming the “fake news.” (Of The New Times, he said, “They truly are the enemy of the people.”) He criticized Kamala Harris’ performance during her CNN interview Thursday night and reiterated his praise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who he recently welcomed to the MAGA fold, as well as his calls to punish people who burn the American flag with a year of jail time.
The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, put up billboards in Johnstown accusing the former president of threatening in-vitro fertilization, The Hill reported.
