Well, luckily for the former president*‘s campaign, it wasn’t raining on Monday, when he grotesquely used Arlington National Cemetery as a campaign prop because, as we know, he gets a little nervous around soldiers’ graves in the rain, and he says things that require him to lie his ass off later. Most recently, of course, he devalued the Congressional Medal of Honor in favor of a bauble he draped on Rush Limbaugh and the wife of one of the sleaziest of his sleazy donors.
I think the question still stands. Who specifically let him in, because this was a failure of some sort of chain of command at the cemetery
Per the Arlington National Cemetery’s site (which is a .mil TLD) states:
The Office of Army Cemeteries (OAC), consisting of Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia and Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., is under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Army.
And when on guard duty, the greenest buck Private has full authority to stop the Secretary of the Army themselves if they refuse to provide identification and authorization for their presence at the posting said Private is guarding. So the correct and appropriate answer would have been to immediately restrain and arrest whoever was doing the pushing and intimidating, as well as any other shitass in the group who was trying to play fucky-fuck games like this.
Sure, but imagine being in that kid’s position. Not only would you be attempting to detain a man (the former Commander in Chief, believe it or not) with his own Secret Service detail, but you would likely end up with a bunch of unwanted attention and subsequent death and rape threats from Trump supporters.
How sad is it that this is what this man has done to American politics? That so many people still support this gutter trash, really showing their true faces.
I get what you’re saying, but the correct response is still “call it in, then arrest his bitch ass”. Not to mention, I’d be a bit surprised if the duty officers don’t have some sort of prep briefing about politicians doing stupid shit in/around the cemetery, and specific guidelines on how to handle such asshattery.
Oh no, if there was a military checkpoint there’d be a sergeant there too, and they do not give a fuck. Someone above them might fold and tell the sergeant to let them through but they will not back down. There’s a lot of stories of people getting shot trying to force a checkpoint, and only a couple of someone actually intimidating a guard to let them through. USSS avoids such situations by not trying to force military checkpoints.
Arlington National Cemetery does not have such a checkpoint.
do they have the authority to keep him out completely? they drew a line at the new section which is where the altercation was.
It’s a public cemetery, so I don’t take issue with him being there and acting respectfully. The problem comes when he uses it as a publicity stunt and gives the thumbs up when he’s placing the wreath.
It’s specifically against federal law to use military cemeteries for campaign purposes. Presidents often lay of wreath there on Memorial Day, but they’re already President and not campaigning.
We have enough issues in the US with glorifying the military for political purposes. Let’s not go backwards on this one.
