Families of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan had asked him if he would come to lay a wreath, the Republican presidential candidate said at a campaign event in Potterville, Michigan.
“And when we were there, they said, ‘Could you take pictures at the grave of my son, my sister, my brother? Would you take pictures with us, sir?’ I said, ‘Absolutely,'” Trump described the situation. “I go there, they ask me for a photo, and then they say I was campaigning,” Trump complained, saying these accusations all came “from Washington.”
Employee insulted
After the wreath-laying ceremony, Trump’s team released a campaign video with footage of the event at the National Cemetery on the TikTok platform. The US broadcasting organization NPR had previously reported that two Trump employees had insulted and pushed aside a cemetery employee during the visit when she tried to prevent filming and photography in a certain part of the grounds.
The US military finally announced on Thursday that a cemetery employee had been “abruptly pushed aside” as she tried to ensure compliance with the cemetery rules. The rules also include that political activities are prohibited on the cemetery grounds and that photos are not allowed in certain areas of the cemetery. The military did not say who pushed the employee. The family of a killed US soldier had publicly complained after the event that their relative’s grave was visible in the pictures.
