The Art of Disparagement
When you disparage someone, you are making false and injurious statements about something. Usually it refers to comments made about a business or product rather than a person directly. Directing such false and injurious comments against a person is called defamation and most often takes the form of libel (written or visual) or slander (spoken or audible). All of this specificity is intended to get to the bottom of the comments being made by the Trump campaign and especially by J.D. Vance. The incident at issue involves the attempt by the Trump campaign to film a visit by Donald Trump to the area of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, called Section 60, of Arlington National Cemetary.
Trump has made a bad habit of disparaging the military in multiple ways. This goes back to 2018 when he was visiting Paris. He was supposed to make a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, but instead he blamed rain for the last-minute decision to not go. He went about making up several different excuses saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. I guess you could say that he disparaged the military, the Secret Service, and military equipment, all in one event. During that one rainy day, when he was concerned about his hairdo not holding up in the humidity, he had several other discussions with staff members that even further disparaged the military and veterans in general. His rambling search for excuses for his inappropriate actions caused him to question why he had to honor military dead since they were “losers”. As horrible as that sounds to say, Trump went on to suggest that anyone who dies or is injured for their country is a “sucker”. I cannot imagine a more central assault that could be made against the military. On one day he managed to raise disparagement to a new level. Thinking that is bad enough. Saying it is far worse. Doubling down and defending what you are saying is beyond the pale. But then, suggesting that what you said had nothing wrong with it is simply antisocial.
One would think that between the comments made about Gold Star families and these cemetery visit ramblings, that Trump would be smart enough to steer clear of military issues and especially military cemetery visits. But Donald Trump is nothing if not unconventional in his thinking and doing. So, it should not be so surprising that on Monday, seeking what? Retribution with the VA? The Trump campaign planned out a visit to Arlington National Cemetery with several Gold Star families of men who lost their lives during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. His intention was clearly to highlight what he considers to be a major weakness of the Biden Administration in the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the process, he violated a federal law which prohibits the use of photography in the national cemetery for campaign purposes. Since the Trump campaign immediately posted the visit on Tik Tok, this was a very clear violation of that law. But that’s not all. Apparently, during the visit, there was an altercation where a cemetery official was pushed by a Trump aide. The Army has taken the unusual step of issuing a statement calling the incident “unfortunate” in the disparagement of the hallowed ground of the cemetery and that it was also unfortunate that the Trump campaign has chosen to defame the cemetery employee, calling her mentally unstable. The Army came to her defense and described her actions as totally professional and saying that she was both doing her job and that she followed protocol perfectly by disengaging when the incident continued despite her attempt to intervene.
Its almost too convoluted to describe. Trump disparages the military by what he does and says. He then further defames anyone (in this case his own Chief of Staff John Kelly, an ex-Four-Star Marine Corps General) who outs him about his derogatory and disparaging comments. It is said Kelly was deeply offended not just on behalf of all the soldiers he had commanded, but also due to the fact that his own Marine Corps son was killed in action in Afghanistan and was thus falling under Trump’s rude and unpatriotic definition. Then, somewhere along in the 2024 campaign, Trump’s staff thinks that it might be important to the outcome of the election for Trump to show some loyalty to the troops. They seize upon the obvious choice of the exit from Afghanistan to get maximum positive benefit for him and maximum damage for Biden (and now, buy extension, Vice President Harris) and they choose to “honor” the thirteen soldiers who died in the less-than-perfect exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (something that Trump effectively “set-up” by virtue of his dealings with the Taliban). In doing that they decided to hold a faux ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery and to film it for use in online marketing and electioneering. The Army and Arlington National Cemetery have an expressed prohibition on such use of ANC for that purpose and Trump and his squad was duly reminded of that. They chose to ignore that prohibition and they went ahead and filmed their ceremony. When an ANC staffer tried to stop them, she was physically pushed away. ANC protocol requires staff to demure in such circumstances, which she then did. Trump’s public relations squad went on offense and declared that the incident was the result of inappropriate and aggressive tactics by the ANC staffer, going so far as to call her out and accuse her of a mental deficiency.
The Army, which generally stays out of such political altercations took the unusual step of issuing a press release in support of the staffer and described the Trump team actions as inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The staffer has not filed any assault charges and it is unclear if the Army will. However, J.D. Vance went ahead and denigrated Kamala Harris for making an issue of the incident (actually for NOT doing a full investigation of the event) and then said she could “go to hell”. So, here we have Trump disparaging the Armed Forces, then trying to ignore and circumvent their sanctity and rules about their cemetery and its use, further disparaging the Army and its personnel for doing their duty per those rules, defaming the very person that was assaulted by his team, only to have his top surrogate and running mate defame Kamala Harris despite the fact that she did nothing about or was involved with the incident.
Trump is to disparagement and defamation what Willie Mosconi was to trick pool shots. He somehow managed to combine every angle and every cushion to land multiple disparagements and defamatory comments on any and all of his opponents of enemies…or anyone else he happens upon. He does it effortlessly and with no concern or conscience whatsoever. He has perfected the artform and has somehow convinced his supporters that its one of the things for him to be admired for. I don’t know when or how, but there is no way this will not come home to roost for him at some point. The Universe simply does not allow such rudeness to go unchecked sooner or later.