Playing Partisan Politics With A Tragedy
The Media Research Center wants you to believe that Donald Trump didn't exploit Gold Star families in his visit to Arlington National Cemetery and that he didn't violate any rules there.
It’s election season, so the Media Research Center made sure to play partisan politics with a tragedy, as demonstrated by Curtis Houck in an Aug. 26 post whining that some non-right-wing TV shows didn’t cover it to his satisfaction:
Former President Trump spent much of Monday in somber remembrance. Trump began his day at Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony with Americans directly impacted by that horrible day, walked the grounds of the cemetery to the grave sites of those buried there.
Hours later, he traveled to Michigan for the National Guard Association convention for a speech touching on the events August 26, 2021.
Nicholas Fondacaro joined the MRC audition process for Trump’s PR team the next day:
Monday marked the three-year anniversary of the suicide attack near the Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of 13 U.S. service members. As part of their coverage of the anniversary, CNN’s Phil Mattingly, filling in as host of The Lead, brought on White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby to press him on administration’s lack of a proper remembrance. But while Kirby issued poor explanations, Mattingly refused to demand better answers.
Mattingly’s first question was about how the Biden/Harris administration only published statements online while former President Trump was meeting with the families of the service members. “The visual this morning of the former president being at Arlington National Cemetery for the wreath laying. The current President, current Vice President both put out a paper statements, but I’m just wondering, is that — is that enough given what happened three years ago?” he wondered.
Kirby responded with a mealy-mouthed excuse about how, “Neither going to Arlington nor any individual paper statement is ever going to be enough to repay these families…” And he ridiculously claimed the PACT Act as the administration’s direct support for families torn apart by the incompetencies of the Biden/Harris administration[.] […]
A proper response by Mattingly would have been to agree that there’s nothing at could be done to make the families whole, but one camp’s actions were objectively more meaningful than the other’s.
We’re sure the Trump camp approves of Fondacaro’s description and have filed his resume for future use. Meanwhile, Jorge Bonilla made sure to note “Donald Trump’s observance of the grim anniversary at Arlington National Cemetery” in an Aug. 28 post.
But it turns out that Trump’s visit was not as “somber” as he wants us to think — and Houck is angry about that news getting out, ranting in another Aug. 28 post:
On Wednesday morning, CNN News Central (and MSNBC’s Morning Joe and shows on both networks since) went to the mat for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration by excusing their lack of public appearances on Monday’s third-anniversary of the deadly Islamic terror attack on Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan and instead attacked former President Trump for going to Arlington National Cemetery with some of the families of the 13 American soldiers killed.
No, instead of calling out the President or Vice President for refusing to say their names or call the grieving families, they disgustingly touted anonymous sources from Arlington National Cemetery that Trump desecrated and maimed the hallowed ground by going with his campaign staff.
The first hour of the show had not one, but four teases of something already reported at NPR!
[…]
Herein lies the issue with anonymous sources. We have no idea what their motivations were to coming forward to CNN and the outlet that originally broke this story, NPR.
Worse yet, no interview with even one family member from one of the 13 killed to explain their side of the story or talk about their loved one.
With liberal journalists, their anonymous sources are pure, government servants, not fellow liberal partisans seeking a particular outcome.
In response, Houck offered only claims that the soldiers’ families authorized the Trump campaign to shoot video of the event in an area where cameras are not permitted — though the cemetery, not the families, have the final word on such matters. Also, Houck is being a total hypocrite on the whole anonymous sources thing — after all, the MRC loves anonymous sources when they advance its right-wing narrative.
Jorge Bonilla insisted in a post that day that this was all a ” fake scandal”:
The Regime Media are now uniform in their conveyance of huffy disapproval over former President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, in commemoration of the ISIS attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. service members on August 26th, 2021.
[…]
But today those failures are secondary to presidential politics, and to the manufacture of outrage over the fact that the Bad Orange Man dared visit Arlington and Biden-Harris did not.
But Trump’s visit did not involve daring — it was solely about partisan political calculation.
As reports of an altercation between Trump staffers and cemetery officials surfaced, Houck — that unofficial Biden-Vance spokesperson — once again ran to the defense of his putative boss in an Aug. 29 post:
After one news cycle staying out of the left’s manufactured scandal of former President Trump’s Monday visit to Arlington National Cemetery with some of the families of the 13 Americans killed at the Kabul airport (as they were busy drooling over Vice President Harris’s bus tour), ABC joined the fake hubbub on Thursday’s Good Morning America about Trump “politiciz[ing] the military” and running mate JD Vance’s “charged language” telling Harris to “go to hell.”
After a piece celebrating Harris’s Georgia bus tour seeking “to expand the map”, unofficial Biden-Harris spokesperson Mary Bruce huffed about “video show[ing] [Trump] visiting some of the grave sites of some of the 13 service members who were killed in that attack on Afghanistan” in order “to highlight Harris and this administration’s handling of that chaotic troop withdrawal”, but that was beneath the dignity of all that is good.
“But filming is prohibited just for this reason, to not politicize the military. Now, some families like that of Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss said they gave Trump permission. They said it’s sad to restrict how the fallen are honored,” Bruce kvetched.
Of course, the liberal media went running and found a Gold Star family whose loved one is buried nearby the soldier whose grave Trump visited and took pictures at as a way of thumbing their noses at Trump:
For all his whining and ranting, Houck never explained why Trump should be allowed to break cemetery decorum for a partisan photo op.
Tim Graham spent his Aug. 30 column exploiting the controversy to further his employer’s war on NPR:
Taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio shouldn’t be a starting place for aggressively biased coverage against either Democrats or Republicans. But you can ask Clarence Thomas how the machine works.
On August 27, NPR veterans-affairs reporter Quil Lawrence lit into Donald Trump for bringing cameras to a section of Arlington National Cemetery with some families of soldiers killed during Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The entire manufactured controversy is perverse. It’s obvious NPR is exploiting Arlington Cemetery for a political goal, and it then spread to the rest of the national media. Trump is showing support for grieving Gold Star families, while President Biden and Vice President Harris would not appear. They were MIA. But Trump was singled out as the one with grotesque political optics, not the no-shows whose negligence cost American lives.
Graham misled his readers — the controversy is not about merely “bringing cameras to a section of Arlington National Cemetery,” it’s about bringing those cameras to a section where they are prohibited. And his whining that “It’s obvious NPR is exploiting Arlington Cemetery for a political goal” ignores the even more obvious fact that Trump is is exploiting Arlington Cemetery for a political goal. Still he continued to whine:
One of the most annoying problems with this story is using anonymous cemetery officials to attack Trump’s optics. This leads the public to assume only Trump is being political, that it’s impossible that the people seeking to block Trump and the Gold Star families are partisan Democrats doing damage control.
Democrat [sic] journalists should be accused of hiding Democrat activism with an undeserved veil of anonymity. Why grant anonymity here? They’re supposedly nonpartisan public officials.
Graham offered no actual defense of Trump — he just whined that Trump’s partisan activism exploitation was pointed out.
Houck was still on Trump PR patrol in an Aug. 30 post:
Between Thursday night and Friday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC added another few news cycles to the manufactured “controversy” and “firestorm” surrounding former President Trump’s Monday visit to Arlington National Cemetery with families of the 13 Americans killed in August 2021 in Afghanistan, declaring it “isn’t over yet”.
[…]
Thursday’s World News Tonight featured weekend anchor Whit Johnson boasting of “the growing controversy” and “new fallout from former President Trump’s stop at Arlington National Cemetery”, citing an Army statement trashing Trump.
“The Army says they consider the matter closed, but the controversy isn’t over yet,” Johnson declared with authority, illustrating the liberal media’s arrogance and dictatorial stranglehold on whether a storyline can fall off, be sustained, or ignored all together.
Becoming quite the unofficial Harris-Walz agent, senior Whiter House correspondent Selina Wang also declared there was “growing fallout” over Trump and his team tastelessly “defying Department of Defense policy” with their presence
She even kvetched that “Trump blaming President Biden and Vice President Harris for the botched withdrawal from America’s longest war” and returned to the well of finding a Gold Star family whose loved one’s gravestone was captured in photos because they were next to one of those killed at Abbey Gate.
Again, Houck didn’t actually offer any coherent defense of Trump’s breach of decorum on hallowed ground — he remained mad that his boy got caught. And he didn’t explain why this Gold Star family’s wishes must be ignored (again, for partisan politics).
The complaints continue
Clay Waters whined in an Aug. 31 post about the “hostile reporting on Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery controversy,” complaining that one outlet “didn’t mention that Trump was there at the request of the Gold Star families.” But that’s irrelevant, because the cemetery, not the families, have final say on where things get filmed. Alex Christy joined the rage parade in another post that day:
Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr and New York Times counterpart David Brooks agreed on Friday’s PBS News Hour that Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery was “really one of the lowest political moments” they could recall.
Host Geoff Bennett set the scene by recalling that “The Army said in a statement, a rare statement, ‘that the campaign was made aware of federal laws prohibiting political activity at the cemetery.’ And they confirmed the reporting that a campaign staff — Trump campaign staffer—abruptly pushed aside an employee of the cemetery. This was a female employee who, according to the Times, didn’t want to press charges because she was afraid of retaliation from Trump supporters.”
Bennett should have added that the campaign claims it had permission to bring a photographer and that Trump was invited by Gold Star families who lost loved ones during President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
With vital context missing, Stohr began, “You know, there was a time that being disrespectful in any way at Arlington National Cemetery, one of the most sacred places in our nation, would have put an end to a political career.”
Christy ignored the vital context that the cemetery has final say on filming there and it’s irrelevant whether the families invited Trump. He unironically concluded by huffing that “daily events might not matter as much as they used it is because voters don’t trust the media to give them the full picture, like PBS declined to do on Friday.” Christy didn’t either, which nobody should trust the MRC to give the full picture.
Tim Graham again falsely framed the controversy in a Sept. 1 post by claiming it was merely about “daring to visit Arlington National Cemetery when Biden and Harris wouldn’t,” whining instead that “an anonymous cemetery functionary tried to block Trump from any photography,” ignoring that the cemetery has guidelines and regulations on photography that Trump ignored.
Bonilla screeched “REGIME MEDIA” (as if the MRC isn’t auditioning to become regime media by actively campaigning for Trump) in antoher Sept. 1 post:
Across the Sunday TV dial, the political affairs shows sought to provide political cover for the Biden-Harris Administration’s neglect of the families of the 13 service members killed during the ISIS-K attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26th, 2021. The four major shows did this by continuing to scandalize former President Donald Trump’s visit to the Arlington National Cemetery.
[…]
The Regime Media tried, across their most prominent Sunday talk shows, to insist on this contrived “scandal”. But the real scandal remains the treatment accorded to the Abbey Gate families by the Biden-Harris administration subsequent to the gross negligence that led to the ISIS-K attack on Abbey Gate.
Bonilla made sure to bury the actual “scandal” by leaving references to Trump’s violations of cemetery decorum buried in transcripts.
Christy put on his comedy cop cap and firearm and whined that late-night TV talked about the incident in a Sept. 4 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel returned from his summer vacation on Tuesday by welcoming former GOP congressman-turned CNN talking head/Democratic National Convention speaker Adam Kinzinger to his show to discuss that experience as well as to omit the most vital detail of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery: that he was there at the invitation of Gold Star families.
Actually, the most vital detail — which Christy omitted once again — is that Trump was being filmed in an area of the cemetery where photography is permitted, which is irrelevant to whether the Gold Star families invited him. He continued censorship of that vital detail as he ranted about Kimmel and Kinzinger:
As it was, later in the interview, Kimmel turned to recent headlines, “This photo op situation that he concocted at Arlington National Cemetery, you’ve been there. You’re a veteran, you know, you’ve served. You’ve been in the — I mean, explain why that’s so — that’s such a vile thing to.”
Trump was there at the invitation of Gold Star families who lost loved ones during President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. They were also in the photo Kimmel referenced. Finally, the campaign insists they were allowed to have a photographer. Like Kimmel, Kinzinger ignored these vital details as he ranted:
To go there, to have one of his staff members push a worker, who probably was pretty angry because she saw what was happening. Which is, these people that she’s been committed, probably her life, to honoring, he’s going to go there and make a mockery of it. And he went in and turned it into a campaign event. Got his picture. Smiled with his thumbs up, for God’s sakes. And what — so what you can do is now, if you politicize Arlington National Cemetery, everybody running for Congress, everybody running for the Senate, is going to have to go there and get their picture taken at Arlington to show that they’re a good, solid American. You cannot politicize fallen American soldiers, come hell or high water. That is a red line you can’t cross. He crossed it happily, and he’s defending himself and not just defending himself. Going after the worker that one of his people shoved. And that is just so beneath the presidency.
Yes, he’s defending himself against people like Kimmel and Kinzinger who do not give their audience all the facts surrounding the visit.
You mean like Christy failed to give all the facts?
Graham tried to steer things toward his preferred narrative in his Sept. 4 column, whining that “the media attack Trump for having the chutzpah to show up at Arlington Cemetery at their invitation. The only scandals that aren’t Fake News are the Republican scandals.”
Fondacaro returned to playing partisan games over the incident in his Sept. 4 hate-watch of “The View”:
In a disgusting display of how vicious the left can be, Sara Haines, a co-host for ABC’s The View lashed out at the Gold Star families who posed with former President Trump in Arlington National Cemetery, on Wednesday. She instead that Trump should have ignored their requests for a photo and suggested listening to them was like swimming in the 9/11 Ground Zero Memorial. Additionally, co-host Joy Behar didn’t understand why outrage would be directed at President Biden over the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
For the second day in a row, The View cast fixated on the photo-op. This time however, one of the cast members couldn’t resist taking a swing at the Gold Star families that wanted to be around the former President.
According to Haines’s unrestrained hatred, Trump should have ignored the families because it was like a family of a 9/11 victim telling her to go swimming in the memorial fountain, an analogy for which she received back up from faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin:
Graham groused in a Sept. 6 column that CNN’s Jake Tapper and guest Jeffrey Goldberg “decried Trump visiting Arlington Cemetery with grieving Gold Star families and filming the visit. Neither man acknowledged uncomfortable truths, such as John McCain filming a campaign advertisement at Arlington, not to mention the professional photographs Joe Biden had taken there.” As usual, Graham is being dishonest; the question is over Trump making photographs in the cemetery’s Section 60, where photography is prohibited. Graham offered no evidence that either Biden or McCain had photos taken there.
The MRC has pretty much stayed way from talking about the incident ever since — a sign that even they understand that Trump was wrong.