Trump's Arlington Fiasco, a Reality Check, and Why It Matters
Don't hand wave Trump's actions at Arlington National Cemetery as simply another episode of "Trump being Trump."
In July 1941, members of the 3rd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, were sent to the South Pacific to support US military operations against the Japanese. The 3rd had one job, to secure landing spots for the “first wave” of American fighters. These were not the guys who “stormed the beaches of…”, but men who made sure that those doing the storming had a “safe beach” to storm.
Have you seen Terrance Malick’s great WWII movie The Thin Red Line? It’s about the “first wave” stormers and it is as brutal a war movie as there is. Well, the 3rd Battalion hit those beaches before Malick’s warriors.
The 3rd’s deployment was supposed to be short, six months to a year. Supposed to be… Reality: They fought in the Pacific Theater for two years and ten months, supporting five Marine divisions and plenty of Army units. They secured the “beaches” of Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima. They were bad asses.
The battery units that made up the 3rd are not featured in the famous statue honoring Americans who took Iwa Jima. There’s no feature film about them. The books documenting their contribution to the war are mainly self-published histories by family members and historians who work between the cracks.
Because these men were pretty much dumped on Japanese-occupied islands and left alone until they completed their mission, and, because they disappeared in the history of WWII, they are known as the Forgotten Battalion.
My late father-in-law, Arnold Meads, was a member of the Forgotten Battalion. A boy from rural Minnesota, where he grew up in a family of trappers, Arnold enlisted in the Marines, trained as a radio operator, and wound up living in holes, eating bugs and worms, fighting to control the thousand feet American invading forces needed for a land-hold.
The brutality that Arnold endured kept him from sharing his experiences until his life was half over. When he did acknowledge his time as a warrior, he was modest about it. There was no chest puffing or claims to be the “greatest” of all generations. Arnold was very matter of fact about the war and solemn about his duty. In his later life, he participated in Lost Battalion reunions but even those were lowkey, very much for the veterans themselves and the family they had in tow. Every few years towards the end of his life, the local paper would do a story on Arnold and his service, and, while Arnold was okay with talking about his service, he never bragged, never romanticized, and certainly never centered it on himself.
Arnold and I got along great. Part of the reason we clicked is because I had served in the US Coast Guard, mostly as a reservist. Though Arnold’s service was far more consequential than mine, he never treated me as less than equal. The important thing to Arnold was that I served, service none of his other son-in-laws could claim. Though many generations apart, with far different experiences in the armed forces, Arnold and I understood some things that those who didn’t serve are clueless about.
When Trump entered the 2016 Republican primaries, Arnold was a mild supporter. Arnold wasn’t MAGA, but a conservative, like many others of his generation and like those who lived in Southern Oregon, where he and his wife Beverly raised their four daughters. Arnold’s conservatism was the crusty bootstraps variety that embraced the ethos of minding your own business, something that Trump, at the time, was selling.
Trump was also selling himself as the anti-“forever wars” candidate. Trump avoided language of the peacenik for what sounded like common sense patriotism that respected the military. As Arnold had absolutely no romantic feelings for war, he was also attracted to Trump’s “anti-interventionism,” so much so that he was willing to ignore Trump’s bone spurs.
All that changed when, after a visit to France, Trump decided that he wanted a military parade. Not the relatively modest inclusion of marching soldiers and veterans that we see at Memorial Day or July 4th parades. Trump wanted every bell, whistle, gun, tank, missile, hell, if it could be done, aircraft carrier – all rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, sky full of fighter jets and helicopters, with Donald J. Trump, doing his best Kim Jung Un impression, stands above it all and surveys the troops. Trump wanted a parade for a strong man, a military parade for himself. That pissed Arnold off.
Trump was no military man, Arnold complained. He was a draft dodger, something that Arnold would allow, but only if Trump kept his head down. Arnold thought – correctly – that if we are to have military parades, they should focus only on those who served and their families. They should not celebrate war or weapons or wanna-be strongmen. Whatever misgivings Arnold had for Trump before he was elected were now center place; whatever support Arnold gave the man was more than gone. Arnold was now a firm Trump critic.
If Arnold was alive today, I am certain that he would not be pleased with Trump’s Arlington fiasco. Arnold would grumble about the Trump campaign’s insistence that everything that went down on their end was 100%. Arnold would have pegged Trump and his people as liars, knowing what every veteran knows about Arlington National Cemetery, that it is a “sacred place,” subject to nearly as many rules and traditions as Mecca is.
Whether he knew each individual rule or not, Arnold wouldn’t have to be told that Trump and his tiny thumbs posing for campaign photographers in front of fallen soldier’s graves is wrong. No one would have to inform Arnold that politicians should not use Arlington for a campaign event, as Trump was trying to do.
Had Arnold known that House Speaker Mike Johnson greased the skids to allow Trump to visit Arlington as a candidate, he would have been pissed. Had Arnold learned of how Trump’s people stampeded an Arlington employee who was just doing her job – preventing politicians from exploiting the war dead – pissed would turn to pure anger. Watching the Trump campaign defame the employee as crazy with lie after lie after lie would have made Arnold furious. Hearing that the employee refused to hold Trump accountable because she feared for her safety would have sent Arnold into a quiet but concerning rage. Learning that Trump is trying to blame his actions on the family of the soldier’s grave he visited, man, would steam be pouring from Arnold’s ears.
The insane thing about the Arlington fiasco and nearly all of Trump’s dealings with/opinions on the armed forces are aimed at securing the active military and veteran vote is that Trump thinks that he’s scoring political points. Trump actually believes that a strong man military parade is going to endear him to active military, none of whom like marching for politicians. Trump and his people think that using “America’s most sacred space” for a campaign event will thrill veterans. The man has no fucking clue.
Trump’s cluelessness is not a surprise. You don’t rip John McCain or other war heroes if you understand the military, especially when you used your wealth to get a bone spurs diagnosis so you could avoid service. You don’t compare sleeping around Manhattan and not contracting STDs (doubtful) as “your Vietnam” if you understand what real war is like.
You don’t demand a narcissistic parade of weaponry and soldiers if you had once simply listened to soldiers talk about daily life. You don’t say, “[The Presidential Medal of Freedom is] the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor — that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead" if you have any firsthand experience with sacrificing for others, second or third-hand knowledge of war, a sense of decency, common sense, or appreciation of anything other than yourself.
Ever since Trump descended from his gold-plated escalator, cheered by actors he paid to greet him, we’ve been subjected to the media narrative that Trump doesn’t just feel what regular folk live, but he is one and the same. We’ve been told that the guy who shits among gold is a man of the people. Those outside the MAGA bubble have been defamed for living in a bubble simple because we refuse to allow that any part of this everyman Trump narrative is remotely true.
And, no matter how clear a fraud Trump is, no matter how transparently fucked-up the Arlington fiasco is, and how obvious Trump’s role in all this is, there are still members of the press that are not only reluctant to report on Arlington, but are waving the episode off as “Trump being Trump.”
As I wrote elsewhere, “’Dahmer being Dahmer’ doesn’t excuse Dahmer. ‘Epstein being Epstein’ doesn’t excuse Epstein. Trump is responsible for being Trump and what he says reflects his being. And this especially matters because he wants to be president of the United States, again. Every time we allow that Trump’s racist and sexist attacks [or any of his failings] are ‘just’ a Trump thing, we err twice. First, we cover up the long history, nay, tradition of hate that lives in this country. Second, we lower the bar so that hate is acceptable as long as it’s personalized.” We also passively endorse his vanity, dishonesty, cruelty, and lack of connection or interest in the people he claims to represent.
Trump’s Arlington fiasco is important, not just because of the rancid behavior of Trump and his people or because it shows his lack of respect for services and sacrifice. Arlington is a perfect encapsulation of everything that Trump is: The selfishness, the narcissism, the dishonesty, the total disregard for rules and laws, the meanness, the pettiness, the abuse of power, the ineptitude, the cluelessness, the total detachment from reality, the refusal to meet people where they are, the elitism, the use of patriotism as a prop, and the plain idiocy of all of it. In short, the Arlington fiasco is an excellent representation of everything Trump has to offer America.