At a rally in Michigan on Thursday, Donald Trump unleashed an extended
rant about the confrontation this week between his campaign staff and
Arlington National Cemetery officials. Shockingly, he offered a highly
distorted account of the scandal and painted himself as one of its
victims. Trump even linked this to a bigger lie about the Deep State
being out to get him, backhandedly illustrating a big reason why all this
matters in the first place: It reveals a level of contempt for the law
and public service that�s incompatible with democracy.

Now that Trump has offered this rant�his most extensive public
explanation for this scandal yet�it should prompt Senate Democrats to
exercise oversight responsibility and get to the bottom of this saga once
and for all. It would be derelict not to, as a matter of basic public
service. We deserve a full accounting.

In his Michigan rant, Trump claimed he�d been invited to Arlington by the
relatives of soldiers killed in the 2021 bombing at Abbey Gate outside
Afghanistan�s Kabul Airport. He then lashed out at the Arlington staffers
who�d tried to prevent the Trump campaign from filming in a restricted
area of the cemetery�in apparent violation of the law�which reportedly
led a Trump aide to push aside one of those cemetery officials. In his
speech, Trump linked the staffers�federal employees simply doing their
jobs of guarding ground most Americans revere�to law enforcement
prosecuting him for his various alleged crimes.

�These are bad people we�re dealing with,� Trump seethed. �They say I was
campaigning,� he continued. �I don�t need the publicity.� Trump flatly
dismissed the idea that he was at Arlington to �politick� in any way, and
insisted he�d only been asked by relatives of the fallen to pose for
pictures at a gravesite. Watch it courtesy of Aaron Rupar:

This account is baloney. The suggestion that Trump was only invited to
pose for pictures by relatives leaves out the fact that Trump�s aides
themselves took video of the event, which was subsequently posted to his
Tik Tok account. That video is slickly produced. It sharply contrasts the
Trump and Biden administrations on their handling of Afghanistan,
criticizing the latter over the final withdrawal and falsely suggesting
no deaths occurred during �18 months� (Trump doesn�t say which) of his
presidency. It�s a campaign video, full stop.

What�s more, even if Trump were invited to Arlington by families, that
account also omits key facts. The Washington Post reports that earlier
this month, his campaign officials contacted Arlington about the upcoming
visit. During these exchanges, Army officials informed the Trump campaign
in advance that any political activity in the relevant section of the
cemetery would be unlawful. That�s also confirmed by an unusually blunt
statement from the Army itself.

Which is precisely what led to the confrontation. When a woman who works
at the cemetery tried to enforce those rules, she was �abruptly pushed
aside,� as the Army statement puts it. The New York Times reports that
the woman�whose name hasn�t been released�contemplated pressing charges,
but refrained out of fear of retaliation from Trump supporters.

All this raises some questions: How violently was she pushed aside? It�s
reasonable to speculate that she wouldn�t entertain charges unless some
measure of violence�or at least inappropriate manhandling�was exercised.
Who on Trump�s campaign staff did this? What exactly did cemetery
officials initially tell the Trump campaign in warning against such
activities? Did these activities at Arlington break the law, or not?
Cemetery officials clearly believed they did. Why did they conclude that?

These questions are answerable. The woman reportedly filed an incident
report with military authorities before declining to press charges.
Arlington is managed by the Army via the Office of Military Cemeteries.
The Senate and House Armed Services committees have oversight
jurisdiction here. Senator Tim Kaine and Representative Gerry Connolly,
both Democrats of Virginia and respective members of those committees,
have called on the Army to provide the report and release more
information.

What�s more, Senate Armed Services Committee staff have been directly
communicating with Army officials about the incident, and are in the
process of seeking and receiving the information in the report and about
what happened, a congressional aide tells me. Meanwhile, senior House
Democrats are privately pushing Army officials to say more clearly what
laws or regulations they think may have been broken, and to reveal more
details about what happened, another aide says, noting that Democratic
staffers are encountering resistance, leaving them frustrated.

Some Democrats might be skittish about taking this on, given that Trump
is pretending the episode was only about honoring the wishes of relatives
of the fallen. It�s clearly true that these relatives wanted Trump there,
and because of these very real sensitivities, you can see why the Army is
trying to deescalate this standoff.

But another family whose loved one is buried at an adjacent grave is
unhappy about what Trump did. And regardless, nothing gives the Trump
campaign license to use Arlington as a staging ground for political
activities, or to physically abuse a member of staff for doing her job.
Establishing what happened at a minimum is perfectly reasonable: If the
Trump campaign broke the law and violence was exercised against this
official simply because she sought to ensure that rules were followed, we
should know about it.

Trump campaign officials treated this woman horrifically, deriding her as
unpatriotic and mentally unstable. And so, as Talking Points Memo�s David
Kurtz notes, a big question is at issue here: Whether Team Trump will get
away with employing thuggery and intimidation to bully an official in
furtherance of this scheme�and to avoid facing consequences for it. Now
that Trump has obliquely attacked her during a rally, that could draw an
even more vivid target on her back.

The constant threat of thuggish and violent retribution is ever present
with the MAGA movement, and its targets are often people who serve the
public but have suddenly been designated as inimical to Trump and MAGA�s
interests. It�s no accident that Trump lumped in this woman with his
prosecutors. Those who seek to apply rules and laws to Trump and his
followers�whether it�s a cemetery official enforcing the prohibition
against using Arlington as a political backdrop, or prosecutors holding
Trump and his mob of insurrectionists accountable for criminally and
violently sabotaging our elections�belong to the enemy class by
definition. The laws and rules they are flouting are discarded as
inherently illegitimate.

Trump has also sought to erode the ideal of insulating the military from
politics�not subjecting it to political manipulation or using it to
manufacture propaganda�on other fronts. As president he routinely talked
about �my generals��but they are not his. Trump tried to enlist generals
as political props at the end of his presidency, leading his former
Defense Secretary to call on the military to reaffirm its commitment to
the Constitution, not Trump. These days Trump talks explicitly about
sending the military into blue states to carry out his domestic
agenda�against their will.

Democrats should get to the bottom of the Arlington fiasco. At issue is
the casual designation of public servants as the enemy, the blithe
treatment of public procedures as thoroughly dispensable, and the
contempt for the ideal of an independent military�all hitched to the
passing whims and needs of Trump and his movement. They�re all
incompatible with maintaining a healthy democratic public sphere, and the
question once again is whether Trump will be allowed to get away with all
of it.