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      Mark Milley fears being court-martialed if Trump wins, Woodward book says

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      Mark Milley, a retired US army general who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues”, the veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward writes in an upcoming book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”Woodward cites Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist now jailed for contempt of Congress, as saying of Milley: “We’re gonna hold him accountable.”Trump’s wish to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who criticized him in print has been reported before, including by Mark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shouted” about William McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, and Stanley McChrystal, the retired special forces general whose men killed another al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Iraq in 2006.Milley was able to persuade Trump to back down, Woodward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elected.Woodward also describes Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since his retirement last year, and quotes the former general as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.”Milley spoke to Woodward for his previous reporting. Woodward now reports the former general as saying: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.“A fascist to the core.”Woodward, 81, made his name in the 1970s with Carl Bernstein during Watergate, the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Woodward’s new blockbuster, War, will be published on Tuesday. His fourth book at least in part about Trump – after Fear, Rage, and Peril – stoked uproar this week with the release of revelations including that Trump sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin early in the coronavirus pandemic, and that Trump has had as many as seven phone calls with the Russian president since leaving office.Milley was chair of the joint chiefs of staff from 2019 to 2023. His attempts to cope with Trump have been widely reported – particularly in relation to Trump’s demands for military action against protesters for racial justice in the summer of 2020 and, later that year, Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the election to Biden.Last year, marking his retirement, Milley appeared to take a direct swipe at Trump, then a candidate for a third successive Republican presidential nomination.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley told a military audience at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Since then, Trump has brushed aside Republican rivals to seize the nomination, campaigned against first Biden then Harris, and survived two assassination attempts. Less than a month from election day, he and Harris are locked in a tight race.In office, Trump memorably insisted senior military officers owed their loyalty to him, even reportedly telling his second chief of staff, the retired marine general John Kelly, US generals should “be like the German generals” who Trump insisted were “totally loyal” to Adolf Hitler during the second world war. Kelly mentioned military assassination plots against Hitler but Trump was not convinced.As told by Woodward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Washington Post and the New York Times – writing in the Post that “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil” – and comments McChrystal made on CNN, calling Trump “immoral” and “dishonest”.“As commander-in-chief” of US armed forces, Woodward writes, “Trump had extraordinary power over retired commissioned officers. It was within his authority to recall them to active duty and court-martial them. But it had only been done a few times in American history and for very serious crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [general] was charged in 2017 with six counts of raping a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”So Trump summoned Milley and Esper. The president demanded action but the two men told him not to seek to punish McRaven and McChrystal, because they had a right to voice their opinions and because it would backfire, drawing attention to their words.“The president didn’t want to hear it,” Woodward writes.So Milley switched tack.“‘Mr President,’ Milley said. ‘I’m the senior military officer responsible for the good order and discipline of general officers and I’ll take care of this.’“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You really will?’ he asked skeptically.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“‘Absolutely,’ Milley assured him.“‘OK, you take care of it,’ President Trump said.”Such dramatic Oval Office scenes are familiar from previous books by Woodward and legions of competing reporters and former Trump officials. According to Woodward’s new reporting, Milley did take action after fending Trump off, calling McRaven and McChrystal and warning them to “step off the public stage”.“‘Pull it back,’ Milley said. If Trump actually used his authority to recall them to duty, there was little Milley could do.”Woodward then quotes Milley speaking this year about his fear that Trump will seek to punish his military critics if he returns to power.McRaven, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Milley’s fear of retribution and whether he shared it.Trump has given such figures plenty of reason to worry. Among proliferating campaign-trail controversies, the former president has frequently voiced his desire for revenge on opponents and critics, including by using the FBI and Department of Justice to mount politically motivated investigations. At rallies, Trump has frequently told crowds: “I am your retribution.”The Utah senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was recently asked about possible consequences of his own opposition to Trump including votes to convict in both his impeachment trials.“I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word,” a “suddenly subdued” Romney told the Atlantic. “So I would take him at his word.”Woodward also reports Milley’s harrowing experiences since stepping down as chair of the joint chiefs.“Since retiring, Milley had received a non-stop barrage of death threats that he, at least in part, attributed to Trump’s repeated attempts to discredit him.“‘He is inciting people to violence with violent rhetoric,’ Milley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the power of suggestion, which is exactly what he did on 6 January” 2021, the day Trump incited supporters to attack Congress, in hope of overturning his election defeat.“As a former chairman, Milley was provided round-the-clock government security for two years. But he had taken additional precautions at significant personal expense, installing bullet-proof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home.” More

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      Biden reaffirms US support for Israel amid Iran’s missile attack

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      Joe Biden has reaffirmed US support for Israel after Iran’s ballistic missile attacks, describing the barrage as “defeated and ineffective” and ordering the US military to aid Israel’s defense against any future assaults.“The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, and this is a testament to Israeli military capability and the US military,” the US president told reporters on Tuesday after Tehran launched an unprecedented salvo of 180 high-speed ballistic missiles.US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea destroyed several Iranian missiles, US defense officials said. Vessels currently in the region include the USS Arleigh Burke, USS Cole and USS Bulkeley. Additional destroyers are in the Red Sea.“Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” Biden said.Initial reports suggested that Israeli air defenses intercepted many of the incoming missiles, although some landed in central and southern Israel, and at least one man was killed in the West Bank by a missile that fell near the town of Jericho.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the missile attack was conducted in retaliation for Israel’s killings of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan.The White House National Security Council said that Biden and Kamala Harris were monitoring the Iranian attack on Israel from the White House situation room and were receiving regular updates from their national security team.Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan hailed the response to the attack, which he described as “defeated and ineffective”.But before the missile barrage had even ended, Donald Trump, on his own social media platform, Truth Social, described the current conflict in the Middle East as “totally preventable” and claimed it would never have happened if he were president.In a lengthy statement, the former president and current Republican nominee attacked Biden and Harris, saying the world was “spiraling out of control” and asserting that the US had “no leadership” and “no one running the country”.“When I was President, Iran was in total check,” Trump added. “They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal.”It remains unclear how the escalating tensions in the Middle East will play into the US election on 5 November.Iran’s attack on Israel comes just hours before the highly anticipated US vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, 38 days from the US presidential election, and as the conflict in the Middle East appears to continue to escalate.A poll conducted by CNN shortly after the presidential debate between Harris and Trump in September found that more voters who watched the debate viewed Trump as a stronger candidate when it came to handling the role of commander in chief.Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, wrote in a statement that the missile attacks against Israel on Tuesday “should be the breaking point and I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil.“These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime to perpetrate their terror,” he added.In another statement, Graham said that he had spoken with Trump, who he described as “determined and resolved to protect Israel from the threats of terrorism emanating from Iran.“While I appreciate the Biden administration’s statement, we cannot forget that when President Trump left office, Iran was weak economically, and he sent the regime the ultimate message with the elimination of Soleimani,” Graham said.Graham continued: “The only thing the Iranian regime understands is strength. Now is the time to show unified resolve against Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism.“We need decisive action, not just statements,” he added.On Twitter/X, Marco Rubio, also a Republican senator, described the attack as a “large scale (not symbolic) missile attack from Iranian regime against Israel” and added that “a large scale Israeli retaliatory response inside Iran is certain to follow”.Bob Casey, a Democrat senator for Pennsylvania, wrote in response to the attacks that he stands “with Israel and unequivocally condemn Iran’s missile strikes”.“The United States must continue doing everything it can to intercept Iran’s missiles and help our ally defend itself,” Casey added.Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative, condemned the attack in a post on X, adding that his thoughts were “with the Israeli people at this time”. More

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      More than 700 national security officials endorse Kamala Harris for president

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      More than 700 national security leaders and former military officials publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a letter released on Sunday, calling her a candidate who “defends America’s democratic ideals”.They also said her Republican rival, Donald Trump, was “unfit” for the job.The letter, signed by retired US navy R Adm Michael Smith and hundreds of others, criticized the former president’s remarks about “terminating” the US constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and his suggestion of becoming a “dictator” if re-elected.The group also condemned Trump’s lack of remorse for the January 6 Capitol attack.The letter is a further boost to the vice-president and her bid for the White House. Since Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election in July, Harris has opened up a narrow lead over Trump and performed more strongly in the crucial swing states needed for victory. She has also secured the endorsement of some key anti-Trump Republicans.The security and military officials wrote in the latter that Harris “grasps the reality of American military deterrence, promising to preserve the American military’s status as the most ‘lethal’ force in the world”.“The contrast with Mr Trump is clear: where Vice President Harris is prepared and strategic, he is impulsive and ill-informed,” the letter reads.Among those signing the letter is the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bleich, who served as the US ambassador to Australia under Barack Obama, and the former CIA director John Deutch.In her new book, Clinton expressed her excitement of the prospect of a woman becoming president.“When I imagine Kamala standing before the Capitol next January, taking the oath of office as our first woman president, my heart leaps,” she said. “After hard years of division, it will prove that our best days are still ahead and that we are making progress on our long journey toward a more perfect union.”The letter made public also criticized Trump’s relationship with leaders overseas, including China’s president, Xi Jinping, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe national security leaders also slammed Trump’s decision to criticize leaders in the UK, Israel, Australia, Canada and Germany.“Mr Trump denigrates our great country and does not believe in the American ideal that our leaders should reflect the will of the people,” says the letter. “Mr Trump is the first president in American history to actively undermine the peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of American democracy.”The pro-Harris letter comes on the heels of another endorsement earlier this month by a group of 10 retired top US military officials, including retired Gen Larry Ellis, condemning Trump’s comments disparaging members of the military.Last month, Trump was pictured giving a thumbs up with family members at a ceremony to mark the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan. The army accused two campaign officials of pushing aside a worker at the cemetery who told them that it was not permitted to take photographs at the graves of recently deceased soldiers. More

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      Trump shares posts of Gold Star families praising cemetery visit and criticizing Harris

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      Donald Trump shared statements from the relatives of 13 soldiers killed during the chaotic US evacuation from Kabul as they hit out at Kamala Harris after she criticized the former president’s involvement in a ceremony honoring the service members.The dispute over the ceremony at Arlington national cemetery, during which Trump campaign aides allegedly shoved a cemetery worker so they could film Trump laying a wreath, contravening rules against political activity at the site, escalated after the vice-president said Saturday that Trump “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.But eight members of the “Gold Star” families who lost relatives posted messages on Trump’s Truth Social platform Saturday saying they had invited Trump to the ceremony and criticized the Biden-Harris administration for the Afghanistan pull-out three years ago.“Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign,” Mark Schmitz, father of Marine lance corporal Jared Schmitz, said in one video. “We wanted a leader. That explains why you and Joe didn’t get a call.”Darren Hoover, the father of Marine staff Sgt Taylor Hoover, said Harris lacks “empathy and basic understanding” about the event, and emphasized that Trump’s appearance was respectful.The army said this week that a cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” while interacting with Trump’s staff.On Saturday, congressional Democrats called on the army to deliver a report on what had taken place at the cemetery on Monday. Harris later posted on Twitter/X that the military burial site is “not a place for politics”.“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris added, and said she would “never politicize” such an event.The dispute continued on Sunday, when former Democratic congresswoman and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard, now a member of Trump’s transition team, told CNN’s State of the Union that she was at the ceremony and saw “a very grave and somber remembrance and honoring of those lives that were lost”.Gabbard said she saw Trump “spending time at the invitation of these Gold Star families with them” and did “not see or hear about any kind of altercation until something came out in the news later on”.Gabbard rejected Harris’s statement saying she stood with the veteran’s families. Gabbard told CNN: “President Biden and Harris, I heard, were invited by some of these family members. They not only didn’t come – they didn’t even respond to that invitation.”Senator Tom Cotton continued the Republican pushback, telling NBC’s Meet the Press that the Gold Star families had invited Trump, but also Joe Biden and Harris, and he disputed that photos and video were meant for political purposes.“Joe Biden was sitting on a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting in her mansion in DC … She was four miles away. Ten minutes. She could have gone to the cemetery and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women,” Cotton said.A White House official and a Harris aide disputed Cotton and Gabbard’s account that the president and Harris had been invited to the ceremony, according to NBC News.As the political fallout from the Arlington ceremony continues, it has drawn in Utah governor Spencer Cox, a moderate Republican who kept his political distance from the Republican presidential candidate until the attempted assassination on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.Cox, a Latter-day Saint, later said he believes God had a hand in saving Trump’s life, even calling it a miracle.Cox attended the controversial ceremony and published photos from the event on his official account. Cox’s re-election campaign later issued an apology.“Honoring those who serve should never be ‘political’,” it read, adding that the campaign was committed “to ensure that we run the best campaign possible and we’ll accomplish that by not politicizing things that shouldn’t be politicized”. More

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      Kamala Harris says Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ on cemetery visit

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      Kamala Harris – the Democratic nominee for November’s White House race – has accused Donald Trump of “disrespecting sacred ground” on his recent visit to Arlington national cemetery, as the controversy over an apparent altercation between workers of his campaign and cemetery staff continued to build.The vice-president on Saturday accused the former president and Republican nominee of staging a “political stunt” after the US army accused the Trump campaign of turning a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday to mark the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan into a photo opportunity. The army also accused two campaign workers representing Trump – who said he was invited to the ceremony by the family of one of the honored soldiers – of pushing aside an official who told them it was forbidden to take pictures at the graves of military members who had recently died.Harris wrote in a lengthy statement on X that the cemetery – the resting place of more than 400,000 military veterans and their eligible dependents, dating back to the revolutionary war – was “not a place for politics”.She said: “Donald Trump’s team chose to film a video there, resulting in an altercation with cemetery staff. Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt.”Meanwhile, Democrats have called for a US army report into an apparent altercation between campaign staff and cemetery officials.In her statement, Harris said: “If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude.“And it is my belief that someone who cannot meet this simple, sacred duty should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America.”At a rally on Friday, Trump said he only posed for photographs at the invitation of the families – even though they did not have the authority to approve such pictures.He said in Johnstown, Pennsylvania: “I don’t need publicity. I get a lot of publicity. I would like to get a lot less publicity … I would hire a public relations agent to get less publicity.”In a final rebuke of Trump, Harris wrote of fallen soldiers: “I mourn them and salute them. And I will never politicize them.”In a letter to the US army secretary, Christine Wormuth, Democrats with the House oversight committee requested a report by Monday into the reported showdown, including whether the Republican nominee’s “campaign staff violated federal law or cemetery rules and whether the Trump campaign informed the families of service members buried at the cemetery that their gravestones would be used in Mr Trump’s political campaign ads”, as CBS reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe cemetery is considered a politics-free zone. But on Monday, on the invitation of relatives of the soldiers killed in Kabul, Trump brought campaign photographers to document the visit.An army spokesperson said on Thursday that a female Arlington national cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” during an argument with Trump aides over photos and filming on the grounds for partisan, political or fundraising purposes.A spokesperson for the military said the episode was “unfortunate”, and it was “also unfortunate” that the cemetery “employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked”. The employee is not pressing charges.The army said Arlington national cemetery conducts nearly 3,000 such public ceremonies annually “without incident”, and visitors to the ceremony Trump attended had been made aware of laws that prohibit political activity.The Trump campaign said it had been granted explicit permission to bring “campaign-designated media” to the section of the cemetery for the slain soldiers’ – or Gold Star – families. The campaign denied an altercation had taken place and said: “There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.”View image in fullscreenDemocratic congressman Jamie Raskin said in the letter that “it appears that the Trump campaign – which arrived at the cemetery with a photographer and videographer – completely flouted the laws and rules they were informed of and filmed footage in the restricted area for use in a political TikTok video”.Raskin also cited an apology issued by the Utah governor, Spencer Cox, who had attended the ceremony with Trump and posted photos of the event to his official social media accounts.“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” Cox wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”Republicans have trying to make the US withdrawal from Afghanistan a campaign issue through which to attack Harris.In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Harris confirmed she was the last person in the room before Joe Biden made the decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan. Asked if she felt comfortable with the president’s decision, Harris responded: “I do.” More

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      ‘Not a place for photo ops’: Democrats turn Trump’s Arlington incident into election issue

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      Democrats are trying to turn Donald Trump’s clash with staff at Arlington National Cemetery, the hallowed final resting place of America’s war dead, into a broader election issue by highlighting it as an example of his history of disrespecting military veterans.Congressional Democrats with military records and liberal-leaning veterans groups say the episode is consistent with past instances of the Republican presidential nominee flagrantly denigrating service in the armed forces.They also see it as an opportunity to turn the tables on Republican efforts to undermine the record of Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, who has come under fire for a series of supposedly misleading statements about aspects of his 24 years of military service in the national guard.The US army rebuked Trump’s campaign this week after members of the former president’s entourage “abruptly pushed aside” a female cemetery staff member who was trying to prevent them taking pictures of Trump at a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of a soldier who was killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.The cemetery worker was acting in line with the facility’s rules, which prohibits pictures or film being shot in section 60, the burial area for personnel killed serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.Pictures later appeared of Trump posing alongside members of the soldier’s family smiling and giving the thumbs-up sign – a gesture denounced by some as inappropriate and crass.Trump’s campaign also posted video footage on TikTok with the former president claiming – falsely – that “we didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then [the Biden administration] took over, that disaster of leaving Afghanistan.” In fact, 11 US soldiers were killed in Trump’s last year in Afghanistan.Trump was invited to Arlington by several of the families of those killed to mark the third anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal – the botched handling of which stands as one of the most damaging episodes of Joe Biden’s presidency.Now Democrats are accusing him of exploiting a revered site for narrow campaign purposes, in breach of the cemetery’s regulations. The former president did not attend the previous two anniversaries marking the withdrawal.“Arlington National Cemetery isn’t a place for campaign photo-ops. It’s a sacred resting place for American patriots,” Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic House member from New Jersey and former navy helicopter pilot, posted on X. “But for Donald Trump, disrespecting military veterans is just par for the course. It’s an absolute disgrace.”Gerry Connolly, a congressman from Virginia, demanded the release of footage and paperwork from the incident. He said it was “sad but all too expected that Donald Trump would desecrate this hallowed ground and put campaign politics ahead of honouring our heroes”.Jared Golden, a Democratic Congress member from Maine and an ex-marine, called Arlington “sacred ground and all visitors should take the time to learn the rules of decorum that ensure the proper respect is given to the fallen and their families”.Although surveys have shown that roughly six in 10 retired service members voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election, some left-leaning veterans groups have added their voice to the criticism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJon Stoltz, a former army veteran and co-founder of VoteVets, a veterans group that is supporting Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, accused Trump of using the cemetery “for a political ceremony” and predicted that it could turn previously sympathetic ex-servicemen against him.“They don’t have a right to do that with other veterans who are there,” Stoltz told the Associated Press. “I know there’s veterans who support Trump. He’s just motivated people against him.”In a statement, Allison Jaslow, chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, added to the condemnation, saying: “There are plenty of places appropriate for politics – Arlington is not one of them. Any aspiring elected official, especially one who hopes to be Commander in Chief, should not be confused about that fact.”The cemetery’s rules state: “Partisan activities are inappropriate in Arlington National Cemetery, due to its role as a shrine to all the honoured dead of the Armed Forces of the United States and out of respect for the men and women buried there and for their families.”Trump’s attitude to military service has come under scrutiny because of a track record of dismissive statements, both public and private. This month, he appeared to disparage the Congressional Medal of Honor – saying it was inferior to the medal of freedom, which he bestowed as president – because most of its recipients had “been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead”.According to his former White House chief of staff John Kelly, he refused to visit a first world war cemetery during a 2018 visit to France, calling the American servicemen buried there “suckers” and “losers” for getting killed.He also ridiculed the late Republican senator John McCain, saying he was only considered a war hero because he had been captured. According to separate reports, Trump voiced objections to having disabled veterans at a military ceremony which ultimately never occurred, saying “it doesn’t look good for me”. More

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      The Trump campaign’s conduct at Arlington is shocking but not surprising | Kevin Carroll

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      The tranquil majesty of Arlington national cemetery tends to bring forth civic virtues in Americans and eloquence in their leaders. Speaking there in 1985 above the graves of the fallen, Ronald Reagan observed that while we may imagine the deceased as old men, most “were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives – the one they were living and the one they would have lived … they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers … They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.”Nowhere in that vast cemetery is Reagan’s point driven home as poignantly as in section 60, which embraces those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice at painfully young ages since 9/11. Here the dates on the simple headstones are within memory, the grief of loved ones is raw and visitors may witness acts of tenderness in response.Good manners, Jane Austen observed, hold a society together. George Washington copied longhand in boyhood and preserved into adulthood a list of 110 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior”. Another general turned president, Dwight Eisenhower, cautioned in his Guildhall address after VE Day that “humility must always be the portion” of any man who receives acclaim earned by others’ sacrifices.Donald Trump and his staff knew – and were reminded of – federal regulations specifically prohibiting the misconduct their campaign engaged in at Arlington’s section 60 this week. But the law aside, only a gross lack of manners, decency and humility could incline a person to film a fundraising appeal over the resting places of dead men and women who cannot decline to participate in the coarse spectacle. The photo of a grinning Trump giving a jaunty thumbs-up over these patriots’ graves is an indelible image of narcissism risen to the point of sociopathy.Worse is the allegation that two Trump staff members assaulted a small, middle-aged female Department of the Army employee who attempted to enforce the regulation and preserve the cemetery’s dignity. The victim reportedly refrained from filing charges due to a reasonable fear of violence or harassment from Trump’s supporters. Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign defamed this woman as mentally ill. His running mate, JD Vance, said Kamala Harris could “go to hell” for her campaign’s suggestion that the unauthorized footage was intended for use as political footage – just before Trump used it for exactly that.This ugly incident would have derailed the candidacy of any presidential nominee before Trump’s crude emergence on the American political scene in 2016. In 2024 it is already, probably intentionally on Trump’s part, being replaced in the news by reaction to his social media posts making lewd innuendos about Harris, and QAnon threats to imprison Democratic party leaders. But it is part of a pattern of disrespect for and misuse of the United States military that bears upon Trump’s fitness to serve again as president.Trump infamously described America’s dead from the first world war as “suckers” and “losers”. Trump also asked my former boss, White House chief of staff John Kelly – on Memorial Day and over the section 60 grave of his Marine son killed in Afghanistan – “What was in it for them?” I walked up to a visibly shocked Kelly moments after that exchange, the details of which he later confirmed.Trump demanded military equipment parades in Washington of the kind Soviet leaders held on May Day in Moscow’s Red Square, but disdained appearing with wounded service members. He called America’s service chiefs “dopes and babies” and needled them about their public sector pay – God only knows what he thinks of enlisted troops who make a fraction of a general’s salary.Trump began his run for the presidency in 2016 by mocking the late senator John McCain for being a prisoner of war; he followed this by feuding with the bereaved parents of Muslim American and African American soldiers; recently, he belittled Medal of Honor recipients shot during the brave actions that led to their awards.More serious than Trump’s words are his actions and plans regarding the armed forces. In 2018 Trump discussed having troops shoot civilian migrants, including women and children, as they tried to cross America’s south-west border – a patently illegal order. In 2020 he unlawfully used national guardsmen to clear protesters from Lafayette Park for yet another campaign photo opportunity. In 2021 Trump and his advisors planned to invoke the Insurrection Act to misuse the military to put down protests anticipated if Mike Pence and Congress refused to certify Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Trump’s Project 2025 envisions using the national guard for internal immigration investigations, a vast and ill-advised expansion of the American military’s limited role in domestic law enforcement.Trump sees the armed services as yet another entity to be misused for his personal benefit, damaged and then discarded just as he has with his bankrupt businesses, the evangelical Christian churches and the Republican party. Beyond that, his boorish statements and bad behavior regarding the military almost certainly come from a place of self-loathing. Trump dodged the Vietnam war draft by claiming – probably falsely – to suffer from bone spurs. A gnawingly insecure man, Trump is self-conscious of his lack of the virtues towards which the military strives: as the US army puts it, loyalty to the constitution, dutiful fulfillment of responsibilities, respect for others, selfless service to both the country and subordinates, honor, integrity and personal courage.His poor form at Arlington this week therefore shocks but does not surprise, as the idea of serving others, much less giving one’s life for others, is anathema to Trump. This attitude would be a sad commentary about any man, but ought to disqualify someone seeking to serve as commander-in-chief.

      Kevin Carroll served as a senior counselor to US secretary of homeland security John Kelly, and as a CIA and US army officer More

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      US army confirms Arlington cemetery worker ‘pushed aside’ by Trump staff

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      US army officials issued a strongly worded rebuke of Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday as they confirmed a worker at Arlington national cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with members of the former president’s staff.The statement was the strongest official criticism yet of Trump’s controversial visit in which he gave a thumbs-up over graves as a photo opportunity and there was an alleged physical assault by two of his staffers on the army official. It came as outrage continued to mount from veterans and families of some of the service members buried there.Adding to pressure on the election campaign of the Republican presidential nominee was the army’s revelation that Trump’s team was explicitly told in advance by a defense department official that taking photographs and video footage at the cemetery breached federal law.The campaign ignored the warning and filmed anyway, sparking a confrontation, during the visit on Monday that one Democrat called “abhorrent and shameful”. And on Thursday the Trump campaign continued to aggressively insult the unnamed cemetery staff member caught up in the altercation, who was shoved when trying to enforce rules, after learning she had declined to press charges for fear of retribution from Trump’s supporters.“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [defense department] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the army statement said.“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”Steven Cheung, the former president’s communication director, said the employee was experiencing something he termed “Trump derangement syndrome”. A day earlier he claimed the person was mentally ill, while Chris LaCivita, Trump’s senior adviser, called the employee “despicable”.The ramping up of rhetoric by the Trump campaign was widely seen as an effort to deflect from growing condemnation of the candidate’s efforts to seize political capital by staging a photo opportunity at the Virginia cemetery on the third anniversary of a suicide bomb attack outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan that killed 13 US servicemen and women.According to reports, the Arlington employee was “pushed and verbally abused” by two Trump campaign staffers after trying to prevent them entering the cemetery’s heavily restricted section 60, where recent US casualties, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, are buried.Federal law “prohibits political campaign or election-related activities” within military cemeteries, Arlington officials said in a statement, noting that a report of the incident was filed with military authorities.But Trump, who has blamed Joe Biden as well as Kamala Harris, his opponent in November’s election, for the US military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, posted to social media on Wednesday footage of himself laying a wreath and talking with the family of one of the deceased veterans at his grave.The fallout from the episode was gathering pace on Thursday after the family of a fallen special forces Green Beret soldier reportedly said footage of his adjacent grave was taken without their permission, and politicians and other military families stepped up to offer condemnation.“According to our conversation with Arlington national cemetery, the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit to Staff Sergeant [Darin] Hoover’s gravesite in Section 60, which lays directly next to my brother’s grave,” Michele Marckesano, sister of Master Sgt Andrew Marckesano, who died in 2020, told the New York Times.“We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly.”Khizr Khan, father of the 27-year-old army captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 and is buried in section 60, questioned why Trump made the visit.Khan, who has previously criticized the former president for calling deceased veterans “suckers” and “losers”, told the Daily Beast: “He has proven his disrespect. Somebody needs to ask him, ‘You have shown that contempt multiple times and yet again, you go there.’”Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democratic congressman, said: “It’s sad but all too expected that Donald Trump would desecrate this hallowed ground and put campaign politics ahead of honoring our heroes.“His behavior and that of his campaign is abhorrent and shameful. I urge Arlington cemetery to publicly release all that transpired so the American people can ensure the ground in which our nation’s heroes are buried is not being debased by a man who has no concept of service and sacrifice,” he added in a statement.Cheung said on Wednesday that the campaign had footage of the Arlington altercation that it was willing to release, but by Thursday morning it had not done so.JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate, attempted to defend his running mate on Wednesday during a campaign stop in Erie, Pennsylvania.Harris, he said during a speech critical of Biden and the vice-president’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, “can go to hell”, insisting falsely that Trump had not “filmed a TV commercial at a grave site”.

      The Associated Press contributed reporting More