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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman go over the events that led to Donald Trump's political photo op on one of the most sacred places in the United States - Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery. They then turn to listener questions which sparked an incredible discussion based on the smart observations of the audience.
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I'm not gonna say what I remember now, having thought about Oasis again, having refreshed my memory of what I thought about them back then, but you enjoy your reunion.
Maybe.
I don't really want to know how your garden grows.
I didn't even do the full Liam Nasal.
I'm so happy, Nick.
I'm happy that you're happy, Jerry.
I woke up in the middle of the night.
I opened myself to possibilities.
I opened myself for joy and to be pleasantly surprised, and I was rewarded.
That's great.
I mean, I have maybe a different opinion as a musician, but still, again, nothing makes me happier than to see you happy.
It is one of the best things to happen to me in a while.
Just needed to start off with that.
By the way, welcome to The Weekender, everybody.
I'm Joe Gietse.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
It is so good to be back on a regular recording schedule.
Wish we were hanging out, but we are hanging out.
This is a special episode.
We're going to talk a little bit about this absolute disaster.
It took place at the Arlington National Cemetery with the Trump campaign.
And then we have a big old mailbag, Nick.
Big old mailbag that gets into everything.
We are going to have so many conversations that I'm so glad people sent questions because it opens up new avenues of inquiry and I'm looking forward to it.
Oh, absolutely.
Mailbags are always awesome.
Hearing from everybody with their awesome questions.
I am looking forward to it, but we can't get there yet.
Unfortunately, we have something to talk about.
It's even more important maybe than that.
Well, we do.
And before we even get to that, We will need to go over to patreon.com slash montcraigpodcast in order to become patrons to listen to The Weekender, not just this week, but all weeks, including our exclusive coverage, such as our exclusive coverage of the Democratic National Convention.
Our support is growing.
We are growing.
We're getting better.
patreon.com slash montcraigpodcast.
I think people want to do it.
They do, they do.
And then again, you'd be part of the mailbag and you'd be part of our discussion on Discord and everywhere else.
And you would have been part of our live coverage after every night of the DNC, which was terrific.
Absolutely.
And Nick, I get people reaching out constantly.
They say, Jared, I've wanted to do this for a while.
I drug my feet.
I did it.
What took me so long?
Patreon.com slash Ron Craig Podcast.
Real fast, Nick, there is going to be a story that we are going to cover when we get around to the Tuesday episode.
We're recording this on Thursday, which means that Diana Bash of CNN is going to be interviewing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for their first joint interview.
I'm going to be watching that.
I assume you're going to be watching that.
We will cover it on Tuesday's episode.
Yeah, when is it again?
When are they doing it?
I think it's tonight, which is Thursday night, which is, doesn't matter anything to anybody listening to this.
Right.
They'll have already heard it.
Okay, great.
People have already heard it.
Yes.
Yes.
I will stand by.
Stand by.
Wait, what was he said?
Stand by and... Stand by and... Stand down and stand by?
Yeah.
Whew, what a piece of shit that guy is.
Speaking of Donald Trump, Nick, this is a, you know, if Donald Trump wasn't Donald Trump and he hadn't done everything that he'd already done, this story would be massive and gigantic, but he is Donald Trump and he has done what he's done.
The Donald Trump campaign crew took a little detour over to Arlington National Cemetery this week, which for people who aren't paying attention or don't know anything, Arlington is hallowed ground.
You should not be going there to film campaign content.
It's disgusting.
But someone tried, matter of fact, a couple of people tried to get Trump and his little lackeys to not film content there.
There was apparently an altercation.
It depends on who you listen to.
It was either one or two employees who felt like they were assaulted by members of Trump's crew.
Since then, Nick, the content has been released.
And on top of that, the people who were assaulted here and violated here trying to defend hallowed ground, those people have come out and said, I would press charges.
But it would literally put me in the crosshairs and put me and my family in danger.
This is as about as gross of a story in all of its different ways as you can possibly get.
And you're describing the people that tried to stop them from taking the video and the photos.
You're talking about military members, I believe, right?
Well, it's unclear if the staff who intervened, they like eventually Trump filmed himself in front of like a Green Berets cemetery spot in Arlington without permission from the family.
Because, of course, you've got to do that.
You've got to violate someone's dignity.
But I'm not sure.
We're not sure if the people who were involved, if the staff members were actually military members.
I thought maybe it was really something like that.
So I'm trying to picture the whole thing, because remember what's come out so far is that they made it clear way ahead of time.
First of all, apparently the families wanted to invite Trump, and I think that they were sort of pushing back on that, knowing what would happen in terms of granting permission for him to go.
And they finally, oh, did you see that Mike Johnson had to intervene to make that happen?
No, I did not.
This was a Daily Beast article I think I read where, well I guess it's still piecing it together, but it was legitimate reporting that I had seen that they had pushed back knowing weeks ahead of time that they weren't going to allow Trump to do this.
And the families were getting upset and so somebody went to Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, and he intervened and got them to be allowed to be there.
That was A.
Now, B, you can do this, it's a special thing, we'll allow this to happen, but again, you cannot film, you cannot take pictures, yadda yadda.
So, you can imagine that the Trump administration, or whoever is behind this, said, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem.
Yeah, whatever.
And then he hangs up, and then what do you think the conversation is right immediately after that with Trump in the office?
I think someone said, hey, we're not supposed to film there, but screw it.
Okay.
Was that short?
If there was even a conversation.
You know what I mean?
That's how bad this thing is.
Yeah and you know and again I've been to like even when you're talking about the JFK grave or you know there it's like it is a solemn place you can feel what that means when you're there and for them to take a piss all over everybody like this basically on the graves is unconscionable.
Why doesn't this there is outrage we've seen some people report some videos and be upset on Twitter but I don't get it maybe there isn't maybe the outrage is there but because it's so a long list of things it just doesn't even feel like it's an outrage anymore.
Well, I want to say a few obvious things before we get into the actual analysis here, because there are a couple of things to learn from this that I think we should hold and remember.
First things first, this is only happening because we have heard a deluge of people who have over and over at different times said that Donald Trump has insulted military members and military members who have died.
We've heard it from the people who were there, but we don't even need to hear it from the people who were there.
We heard what he said about John McCain.
Like, we know how Donald Trump feels about these people.
We understand that he doesn't give a shit about anybody besides himself, and that also includes the troops.
And for the record, I am of the opinion that the way this country talks about veterans is really repugnant.
And especially, like, how politicians talk about them.
Like, they talk about the thing, you know, God protect them, take care of them.
We've seen through their actions how they feel about people who, you know, join the service and serve.
Which is they don't take care of them, they do not give them their just benefits, and if there are benefits, they go ahead and squeeze it because they don't care about these people.
They've already juiced all of the usage out of these people.
We've also heard multiple politicians who have said, hey, if we take away the economic incentives, no one's going to join the military, which tells us the people in power literally want to use poor people as cannon fodder.
So let's, you know, go ahead and make sure that we know that.
The next thing about this, Nick, this for any normal political candidate would be a major scandal.
It would be disqualifying to an extent.
There would be conversations all over the place about whether or not Donald Trump's campaign could survive something like this.
On top of it, what would a normal campaign do if something like this would have happened?
They would have apologized.
What have they done?
They've called into question the mental health of the people that they assaulted.
Which is what we need to realize here.
One, is he doesn't care about anybody.
Second of all, like, the Republican Party doesn't care about veterans or troops.
Some of the Democratic Party doesn't either, for that matter.
Like, it's all a bunch of rhetoric.
The next thing that we need to understand is that this is part of the gradual movement that we have been watching, and you and I have particularly spent the last few years documenting.
Which is that something like this can happen, but it's not even that big of a deal anymore.
It is a worsening of the political ecosystem that allows it to continue to slide, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes in huge ways such as this.
You know, and I'm trying to actually think, that was really well phrased, and the context is important, especially with what he's done in the past.
Because it's a nice, interesting confluence of things.
It's not just that he has disparaged the military and people who serve our country, but it's also that he doesn't follow any rules.
Like, if you tell him not to do something, he will do it.
Yeah.
And so, uh, and I, and a part of the thing was I, I'm looking at, I don't think Biden has weighed in on this.
And if we're talking about condemnation and across the board, like I was like, the president should say something about this.
So wouldn't you say.
Can I ask you a quick question?
And I don't mean to be flip about this and this, you've just brought up a really important topic.
Have you heard Joe Biden say anything about anything?
You know, I saw him at the DNC spoke.
Yeah, he sure did.
He came out of whatever cave that he's been in to speak and then immediately returned to that cave.
And I just want to point out.
What you and I talked about after that really terrible debate, which is, hey, everybody's talking about the reelection.
Let's also have a little bit of perspective.
Should Joe Biden be president right now?
I know he's a lame duck, right?
He's been turned into the lamest of lame ducks.
You're right.
Biden should condemn this thing, but also Biden should be doing a whole lot of things and nothing is happening.
And that is actually very troubling.
I absolutely agree.
And you know, the other thing was, so I'm looking for Kamala Harris.
Did she respond to this?
Now, I can't find exactly what she said, but I did see a response that J.D.
Vance tells her she can go to hell.
Go to hell.
And again, this is someone who is trying to do some massive cleanup on aisle 6 because he is actually a military member.
He knows full well and good that there's no way he should have been anywhere near there with the camera.
He shouldn't have been anywhere near there.
So the people that ran the cemetery that run Arlington understand this from the beginning.
They knew that they were not going to allow him to do this and it required, you know, a special circumstance that was pressure that they didn't, you know.
They didn't necessarily think they were going to get.
So it is, it is so disgusting to me.
And you know, the thing I often think about this is, you know, I think I'd said this last time or a couple of times before, like, I don't blame Trump for wanting to get out of fighting in Vietnam.
I don't blame anybody who wouldn't want to get out of fighting for Vietnam.
And honestly, like for me personally, I don't think I would be able to volunteer for the armed services because of the risk of having to be sent to war, which would be too great.
I really don't know, but I mean, I don't think I would, I don't, I don't think I'd tell my son to do it or my daughter.
I don't, I just don't know.
And I guess that makes it seem like I don't care about the country enough to be willing to sacrifice my life.
So I, it makes me kind of reflect on all this, which is maybe a good thing.
Maybe we should all reflect a little bit on really where we are and how much we do care about what this country is about and what we're willing to sacrifice.
Um, but certainly someone who has done that and taken that oath and done that for years.
Uh, we need, they need to be called out more.
We need to have even, you know, hired top generals.
They should be condemning this.
And that, that would probably begin the process of, of actually having some effects, I suppose.
I'll start by saying that I don't hold it against anybody who didn't go to Vietnam.
It was an unjust, illegal war that was exercised by capital and imperialism, and it shouldn't have happened.
I don't hold that against anybody.
What I hold against Donald Trump is the way that he has spoken about that, to be so glib about it and also show such little care for the people who went and died in his place.
That's the problem with that.
I would also go another step further, and I would say the larger issue is that we shouldn't have wars.
Wars just shouldn't happen, especially the way that they do, and especially the way that capitalism leads through these wars.
Do I think that I could fight in a war?
Yeah, I think under the right circumstances I could, I could do that.
But that being said, I hate how this country does this rhetorical thing where we talk about how much we appreciate these people.
Same way we say that we appreciate teachers, the same way we say we appreciate service workers, all of that.
You know, there was a lot of performance of it during the pandemic and look how we treat these people.
You know, it literally is a matter of, it's We treat it like people who are engaging in these service positions that, like, it's saving us time and it's saving us our safety, you know?
And I think that Donald Trump, like a lot of things that he does, Nick, he has brought a clarity to the situation.
Which is he doesn't really worry about hiding these things.
And so he makes it obvious what a lot of people feel about it.
And the fact this isn't going to change any votes.
It just isn't.
It's not, it's not going to necessarily hurt his numbers.
Those things are mostly baked in at this point.
And I think that that reveals something very true and very disturbing about America.
Absolutely.
And then the one other thing that I wanted the context would be that the reason why we had such a terrible pullout in Afghanistan was because of the deal that Trump had made.
And I would argue he did it on purpose because he did it after the election after he lost the election.
And he was like in an F you to Biden who he knew was going to take over.
He set up the ground, the situation for it to happen the way it did by removing a lot of troops early that he didn't have to do and by acceding to the Taliban's demands and releasing a whole bunch of their prisoners.
You know, and the list is long of things that he did after he lost, you know, in that lame duck situation where you probably shouldn't be doing any kind of troop manipulation.
And he did it, and all signs point to he did it on purpose to have this moment where he can now criticize Biden for it, and then to do this, to try and clean up his own image on the military.
We're beyond whatever we need to be beyond in terms of condemnation, and I think you're right, the country is just unwell.
And for the record, before we move on to the mailbag, just for context, those troops should have been out of Afghanistan before.
Barack Obama failed in that regard in the same way that many presidents failed in that regard simply because it was an uncomfortable, awful situation.
We can argue about whether or not they should have been in Afghanistan in the first place, but there are a lot of things that led to Donald Trump, again, not giving a shit In the way that normal people give a shit that then led to a larger problem that then got exacerbated.
And now, what's he do?
The same thing he's doing in this Arlington debacle.
He's blaming it on them.
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