The News
Former US President Donald Trump was accused of illegally using the country’s main military cemetery, where around 400,000 people are buried, as a campaign stunt.
Trump’s team visited Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the victims of a suicide bombing Monday, but a veteran’s family said the campaign filmed their relative’s grave without permission. A Trump staffer also apparently clashed with a cemetery worker who tried to stop the filming.
In letters to The Washington Post, veterans irked by the Republican nominee’s perceived politicking criticized him as a “pseudo-patriot” and said he wasn’t fit to serve again as commander-and-chief of the armed forces.
SIGNALS
Trump’s strained relationship with the armed forces
Trump has a strained relationship with the military. He mocked former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, and The Atlantic reported that he called fallen soldiers “suckers” and losers,” comments that Trump has emphatically denied making. It’s likely that Trump’s cemetery visit was to court the military vote, conservative political commentator Charles Sykes wrote in The Atlantic, but it “merely served to remind Americans of how little he understands about service, sacrifice, and heroism.” Trump’s “disrespect” toward veterans began long before he entered politics, an infantry veteran argued in The Guardian in 2016: Trump compared his sex life to fighting in the Vietnam War in the late 1990s.
Veterans remain a key demographic for presidential nominees
Younger veterans are increasingly leaning Democrat, perhaps due to the diversification of the military and the Biden administration’s focus on issues like spouse employment and support for caregivers, a columnist noted in USA Today. And despite military service no longer being a springboard for political leadership — in the late 1960s and 1970s, around 70% of Congressional lawmakers were veterans, down to less than 20% today — many Americans still perceive the military as a trusted institution. Successful leverage of that perception remains an “efficient” way to connect to voters, a political scientist told Al Jazeera. So-called “veteran density” in key battleground states, meaning they remain a “pivotal demographic” for presidential nominees, a veteran noted in The Hill.