It was a memorial service that made the news for all the wrong reasons.
Former President Donald Trump was invited to lay a wreath at a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery for those who lost their lives during the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
Neither President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris attended the event.
Harris was quick to make the Trump visit political, posting on social media that Arlington National Cemetery is “not a place for politics.” She accused Trump of “disrespect[ing] sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt.”
She ended her post, “I will always honor the service and sacrifice of all of America’s fallen heroes, who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our beloved nation and our cherished freedoms. I mourn them and salute them. And I will never politicize them.”
What Harris may not have realized is that the families invited Trump to be there. Many of those families have since slammed her on social media for politicizing the event.
One of the Gold Star family members who posted a video criticizing Harris was Mark Schmitz, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz. In a heartfelt condemnation of Harris, he called her post “heinous, vile, and disgusting” for suggesting that Trump was “in Arlington as a political stunt.”
@tophertownmusic Kamala Harris spent more time making this political statement than she did with Mark Schmitz and the other Gold Star families of the 13 slain service heroes while serving as Vice President. Her and the current administration are guilty for these deaths, but they can find a way to blame Trump.
He further said, “Shows you how much you know about the 13 families. We invited him to be there. … Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign. We wanted a leader. That explains why you and Joe didn’t get a call.”
Schmitz explained that Trump was willing to take the families “under his wing” and listen to them, noting that the same was not the case with Biden or Harris.
“You have 13 families who have been waiting over three years to so much as get a phone call, to so much as hear our kids’ names said aloud in the Halls of Congress at a State of the Union, hell anything. The irony behind your post that you give a rat’s ass about our military or our veterans … is an outright lie. We’re living proof of that.”
“You’re despicable. You have zero business running this country, and I pray to God Americans wake the hell up and get your ass out of office. You have spit in our face for the last f**king time,” he concluded.
Fox News reports on the Gold Star families slamming Harris for politicizing Trump’s appearance in Arlington. Here’s the start of the story:
Gold Star families who lost loved ones in the botched Afghanistan withdrawal blasted Vice President Kamala Harris over her attack on former President Trump for his controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery last week.
Harris accused Trump of playing politics with the Monday visit, but in a series of short videos, eight families said they had invited Trump, and bitterly blasted the Biden-Harris administration over the disastrous pullout that left 13 U.S. service members dead three years ago.
The messages, each featuring different parents of service members killed by ISIS-K terrorists amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021, were posted on former President Trump’s Instagram account on Saturday night.
Earlier on Saturday, the vice president criticized Trump’s team for taking photographs and videos at a wreath-laying ceremony event on Monday. The Army said that an Arlington National Cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” while making sure that Trump’s team was “made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”