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WASHINGTON (CN) — As Donald Trump’s campaign came under fire this week over an incident at a ceremony honoring the victims of a 2021 terrorist attack in Afghanistan, Republican lawmakers worked to shift focus away from the former president and onto the White House.
Monday marked the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing, an ISIS-claimed attack near Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport which killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and as many as 170 Afghan civilians. Republicans have long held up the Abbey Gate attack as the defining moment in a botched military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which they blame squarely on President Joe Biden.
To mark the date, and presumably to position himself against the Biden administration, Trump on Monday attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. He then visited the cemetery’s Section 60, where many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are buried.
But things took a turn when cemetery staff got into an altercation with members of Trump’s campaign team. NPR first reported Tuesday that a national cemetery official tried to stop the former president’s staff from filming and taking photographs inside Section 60.
The Trump campaign on Tuesday posted a TikTok video featuring scenes from the wreath-laying ceremony at the cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as well as a clip of the candidate standing in front of the gravesite of an Abbey Gate victim.
Federal law prohibits political candidates or politicians from using Arlington National Cemetery for campaign purposes.
In a statement provided to Courthouse News on Thursday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army said that participants in Monday’s ceremony had been made aware of federal law, Army regulations and Defense Department policy which “clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”
The cemetery employee who tried to keep the Trump campaign from producing campaign content was “abruptly pushed aside,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incident was reported to police at the nearby Joint Base Myer Henderson-Hall — but that the employee did not press charges and the Army considers the matter closed.
“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the [Arlington National Cemetery] employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” the Army spokesperson added. This appeared to be a response to comments from at least one Trump campaign surrogate who told NPR this week that the cemetery official was “suffering from a mental health episode.”
Democrats have pounced on the incident. Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly has called on Arlington National Cemetery to release a full report and California Representative Eric Swalwell wrote on X on Thursday afternoon that he was “siding with the Army.”
But Republicans have been largely dismissive, seeking to push the conversation back to the original purpose of Trump’s Arlington visit — to call attention to the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The media is spending more time and energy attacking President Trump for being at Arlington National Cemetery with Gold Star families than attacking the two nitwit politicians … who made them Gold Star families in the first place,” said Florida Representative Brian Mast, referring to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a video message posted to X Thursday, Mast added that the former president had been at Arlington to memorialize “the most avoidable deaths” of the Afghan war.
“Donald Trump could have been anywhere in the country, anywhere on the globe,” said the Florida Republican. “He chose to be at Arlington National Cemetery with veterans and Gold Star families memorializing those that we lost.”
Mast questioned why Biden and Harris hadn’t been at the memorial. It’s unclear whether they were invited to attend — Trump was the only president, current or former, who was at Monday’s wreath-laying ceremony.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a former Army officer, argued that the altercation between Trump staffers and cemetery officials shouldn’t rank as a scandal.
“The scandal is Biden and Kamala sent those heroes into a needlessly dangerous situation,” Cotton wrote on X of the servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate. “And Kamala doesn’t have the decency to call their families and thank them for their sacrifice.”
Other Republican lawmakers were mum on the incident. Michigan Representative John James, a West Point graduate and Army veteran, did not return a request for comment.
Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde, a 28-year Navy veteran, also did not return a request for comment.
The Gold Star families present at this week’s ceremony also defended Trump, writing in a statement Tuesday that they had given the campaign’s official videographer and photographer permission to attend.
And the Trump campaign remained unrepentant Thursday, even as the Army chimed in on behalf of the Arlington cemetery official who’d been manhandled by campaign staffers.
“This is so obvious,” wrote Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance. “This entire scandal is so fake. Fake Kamala attacking [Trump] for honoring those who died instead of firing the people responsible for their deaths.”
Senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, meanwhile, took a shot at the Army on Thursday, reposting to X a clip he took of the former president at Monday’s wreath-laying ceremony. LaCivita joked that he was “hoping to trigger the hacks” at the Department of the Army, tagging Secretary Christine Wormuth.
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