Don of the Dead
Trump's team uses force to get into ANOTHER government facility
Aug. 28: Trump’s grave situation … New Taliban law … Trump re-indictment … RFK, JR. sold blow …
Three years ago, then-Pres. Donald Trump sent his followers to take over a government facility. On Monday, he did it again. Only this time, he was there, too.
National Public Radio reported yesterday that Trump’s squad of insurgents used physical force to commandeer Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery, site of graves of recent combat fatalities.
Trump was there to mark the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. military members and about 170 Afghan civilians. And obviously to use those deaths against Pres. Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Federal law and cemetery guidelines prohibit taking video or pictures for partisan political purposes in Section 60, and the cemetery told the Trump campaign that campaign staff would not be permitted to accompany Trump inside.
So, according to NPR, “campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the [cemetery] official aside.”
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said there was “no physical altercation as described.” And then, in the same statement, hilariously confirmed that there was and that he’s a dirty dirty liar:
“[F]or whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony."
Campaign adviser Chris LaCivita also confirmed the altercation and also confirmed the campaign’s dump-taking on the cemetery staffer, while brilliantly, perfectly misspelling “hallowed”:
“For a despicable individual to physically prevent President Trump’s team from accompanying him to this solemn event is a disgrace and does not deserve to represent the hollowed [sic] grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”
As the Washington Post notes, LaCivita led efforts to smear the service of two living veterans: Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and then-Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
The Trump campaign told media yesterday that they’ll release video of the incident to prove they’re not lying. But still haven’t.
Five family members of the suicide bombing’s victims — and by family members I’m including an aunt and a mother-in-law — thanked Trump for attending the event, saying he conducted himself with respect and dignity and that the pictures were for family members to cherish the memory forever.
The images were almost immediately cherished online by Republicans and Trump himself used the sacred moment to bash his political rivals. His campaign put out a statement contrasting Trump’s visit with Harris’s schedule.
Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) Tweeted out a picture from Section 60 of Trump straddling the gravestone of Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover (USMC), honoring him with perhaps the highest form of respectful and dignified military tribute: The time-honored Thumbs Up with Cheesy Grin.
Literally one minute after Cox’s Tweet, Trump posted a video about the 2021 attack, calling it “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.” He added, respectfully and dignified:
“Kamala and Crooked Joe’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan has just been horrible for all of us. Three years ago, Kamala and Biden’s incompetence left 13 dead warriors, hundreds of civilians killed and grievously wounded and $85 billionThe Taliban actually got $7 billion in military equipment, which they took from the Afghan National Army. of the finest military equipment on the planet abandoned to the Taliban.
“We vow to never forget the supreme sacrifice they made for our country. America cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris in the White House. She’s a disaster. She’s a radical Marxist. She destroyed San Francisblah blah what troops? blah blah…”
The U.S. Army determined that a lone attacker carried out the bombing, saying it “could not have been preventable at the tactical level.”
The bomber, Abdul Rahman al-Logari, had been released from prison by the Taliban as they took power. This violated the deal that Trump struck with the Taliban, accepting their word that they would not let ISIS or al Qaeda attack Americans.
Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster on Monday told CNN he blamed the withdrawal that Trump called “catastrophic” on Trump.
Monday’s incident at Arlington is actually Trump’s second known attempt at physically commandeering a federal facility. With Trump present for this one, his team took on a weaker target this time: Dead people protected only by a cemetery’s skeleton (ha!) staff.
Trump’s first such takeover attempt, on Jan. 6, 2021, was directed at people who were only almost dead, the U.S. Congress. Trump has a long history of physically domineering people weaker than himself, specifically women, due to his low odds of consensual sexual activity.
The cemetery violation is the first (known) instance of Trump forcing himself on dead people and was widely viewed with horror.
It’s not a popular opinion to hold that it’s impossible to dishonor the dead, that there’s no inherent sanctity to a dead body or a grave. But the dead are dead. They no longer exist and can therefore not be desecrated.
That doesn’t mean Monday’s incident wasn’t a desecration. But it was a violation of the living.
These sites derive their meaning and stature from the living, from the importance Americans through our government choose to ascribe to them. Far more legitimately than any “holiness” deriving from religious beliefs, these sites are holy to democracy. They are secularly, civically sacred; a status without meaning to Trump.
MEANWHILE, IN AFGHANISTAN The Taliban have implemented new laws against women. They may no longer speak in public. They may not show their faces in public. (h/t)
In fact, their entire bodies must be covered in thick clothing to help the men who run Afghanistan not do rapes. Which might also be helped by stoning rapists rather than adulterous women to death!1 Some other new measures in the law:
Women cannot speak or sing even in their own home if it’s loud enough to be heard outside.
Women may not look directly at men who aren’t family.
Taxi drivers cannot take unaccompanied women as passengers.
Laws already in effect banned girls from secondary school, women from working, and women from going to public parks or gyms.
When Trump struck his deal with the Taliban, activists warned that women would suffer, as is historically the case whenever Trump is involved.
Under the new law, men must wear clothing that covers them between their knees and their belly buttons. Now that’s harsh!
Trump Re-Indicted for That Other Assault on Government
While former Pres. Donald Trump was using the dead as political props, the Justice Department was resurrecting federal charges against him.
A new grand jury re-indicted Trump on the same four charges Special Counsel Jack Smith had already filed, but with tweaks and changes to account for the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents can do anything as long as their criminal to-do list is printed on presidential stationery.
The bizarre ruling held that presidents can be prosecuted for crimes unless they use the government to carry out those crimes and call the crimes are part of their job. In Normal Land, it’s considered more criminal to abuse your office and exploit the power with which you’ve been entrusted to achieve your own, criminal ends, but that’s the partisan Supreme Court for ya.
So Trump is being charged again with illegally trying to steal the election, but not this time with using the Department of Justice to do so. That’s because now turning the entire federal agency charged with upholding the law into your own personal safe-cracking kit is perfectly legal. (It’s actually not, and the ruling is sufficiently vague that the DOJ aspects could have remained, according to the opinion of I, an uninformed non-lawyer.)
Smith is, however, going to try to prove that Trump’s pressuring of then-Vice President Mike Pence does not enjoy the vague immunity protections the Supreme Court issued. In hearings starting next week, Judge Tanya Chutkan will determine which of Smith’s charges should be allowed based on the Supreme Court’s lazy, sloppy, bullshit immunity ruling.
COVID Still Happening, as Is COVID Denial
I haven’t written a lot about American institutions effectively deciding to ignore COVID, because what’s the fucking point. But now Politico — who the powers-that-be do listen to — is pointing out the crisis that still be.
According to Politico, both political conventions this summer were COVID spreaders, if not superspreader events. And both parties have decided that shutting the fuck up about COVID is better for their health, if not for yours.
Politico reports that some of Vice Pres. Kamala Harris’s campaign staff have contracted COVID, as did reporters after the Democratic convention, as did convention-goers. Masks were scarcely to be seen in crowd shots of the crowd.
Former Pres. Donald Trump, of course, would love to trumpet the fact that the vaccines were developed on his watch with unprecedented speed. He did little to facilitate vaccine development, of course, instead benefiting yet again from the work of people who preceded him. But he’d still love to trumpet it!
Except he can’t.
Because a big part of his base is anti-science. And he just injected his campaign with leading anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Harris has praised Pres. Joe Biden for getting COVID “under control,” whatever that means, but seldom mentioned it since. Far more people have died of COVID under Biden than under Trump. In fairness, of course, more of those folks have been Republicans who apparently believed Trump’s downplaying of COVID, rejecting government guidance.
But COVID is not over and in fact has spiked this summer. According to Politico, during one week last month, thousands of people contracted it and more than 700 people died. COVID remains one of America’s top-ten killers, just below lack of personal meaning due to complications of capitalism. That’s despite the availability of new vaccines, which the vast majority of people are not taking because COVID is so over.
Speaking of Vaccines and Existential Horror
European Union Foreign Minister Josep Borrell is calling for a three-day cease-fire in Gaza that he won’t get. Borrell wants the cease-fire so that health workers can safely administer vaccines there.
For polio.
That’s right. It may be hard to get food and water and medical supplies into Gaza, but polio managed to get in. The AP reports that a ten-month-old baby boy stopped moving his left leg and doctors confirmed it was paralyzed from polio.
The boy’s family has been forced to live in a tent encampment strewn with uncollected garbage and standing wastewater that provide a safe, healthy environment in which diseases such as polio can thrive. Two other children reportedly are suffering paralysis, as well.
The UN has 1.2 million doses of polio vaccine on hand and plans to vaccinate at least 95% of Gaza’s 640,000 children starting this weekend. The UN says the vaccination work will go much more efficiently if medical workers are not simultaneously being bombed and killed by Israel.
Two Quickies
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) will give their first joint interview this week, to CNN’s Dana Bash. It’s airing tomorrow, but I haven’t seen whether it’ll be live or pretaped. It’s Harris’s first substantive, sit-down interview with corporate media since she became the presidential nominee. The importance of Harris giving such an interview was hammered by corporate media, who will quickly refute themselves by almost instantly ignoring anything substantial Harris says in it.
Former Pres. Donald Trump’s big new backer was a drug dealer! Journalist Kurt Andersen writes that he bought coke from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., when they were both freshmen in college Harvard, of course. Because apparently Kennedy needed the money? Kennedy’s brother Joe was there, too, and Andersen gives an amusing, detailed account of the episode, during which Kennedy was an asshole. As Andersen notes, Trump has called for executing drug dealers.
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids.
NB: The death penalty for anything is wrong. Advocacy for the death penalty is offered here for comedic purposes only and should not be attempted by amateurs.
Thank you for reminding people that COVID is still a threat. The CDC just approved an updated vaccine, which offers protection against the newer variants, which are surging this summer. We are still learning about this novel virus, but new evidence indicates that risks for long term sequelae increase with each additional COVID infection. Vaccinate, at a minimum, annually. If you get COVID and have any risk factors, get a prescription for Paxlovid. Waste water monitoring shows COVID is at high rates nationwide.
"Far more legitimately than any “holiness” deriving from religious beliefs, these sites are holy to democracy. They are secularly, civically sacred; a status without meaning to Trump."
The thumbs-up while standing in the middle of graves. If this were in a movie it would be an over-the-top scene.