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Oct. 27, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
01:03:35
Honor or Politics? The Controversy Surrounding Trump's Arlington Visit
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Do you remember Abbey Gate?
The event in which we lost 13 service members.
We lost way more than 100 Afghanis in our cowardly pullout from Afghanistan.
Hundreds of soldiers doing what they were ordered to do.
If I had to try to pinpoint one of the biggest gaffes in United States military history, of recent history, I'm guessing that the pullout from Afghanistan, if not at the top of the list, is two or three.
In my mind, it's the top.
Do you remember?
Today's discussion, we are going to talk about Abbey Gate, but not the event, not the day, not the pull-out in general, because we already know about that.
What we're going to talk about is Abbey Gate plus three years.
To this last August, When President Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery for a remembrance ceremony.
A remembrance of the 13 service members that we lost that day.
And the controversy swirling around because now there's new.
There's new things.
New things that are pretty interesting.
As far as it pertains to Donald Trump and his attendance at this ceremony.
So, don't go away.
Stick with us.
We start now.
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Okay.
Excuse me.
So...
Wow.
Attacked.
I just got attacked.
Abbeygate.
Real quick.
If you don't know what it is, you should.
Real quickly, if you don't know, as I said in the intro, this was the culmination of a pullout, our pullout from Afghanistan.
Joe Biden, in his infinite wisdom, with all of his amazing information gathering by all of his people and all of his advisors advised him to, apparently, Advised him to conduct a pullout the way in which it was done.
And I have to say, as a former member of the United States Army, I was not proud.
I would have not been proud to be a part of it.
In fact, I would have been pissed as hell.
And after being pissed as hell, Like all those soldiers had to do, I would have fought for my life.
And I would have fought for the life of the man or woman to my right or left, and to my front and back.
Because that's what they had to do.
And we lost 13 soldiers that day.
All in one shot.
And since then, These soldiers who are buried in Arlington National Cemetery, they hold a remembrance ceremony for these soldiers and this last August was the third year, the third year they've held said ceremony.
And Donald Trump was in attendance.
Now, they say that, and I haven't confirmed this, I believe it to be true, they say that a presidential nominee or any nominee for any elected office is not allowed under federal law to conduct any campaign activity, create any campaign material at a national cemetery.
The mainstream media will tell you that Donald Trump has a very specific history of politicizing military and veterans and trying to leverage military and veterans to further his narrative and therefore get elected into office.
And that's why he was there.
Was to do those things, which, as we just stated, are against federal law.
The truth is that Donald Trump was at Arlington National Cemetery.
He did attend this event, but he did so at the invitation of the Gold Star families He did so at the invitation of the families of the soldiers that were killed that day.
And allegedly, as the story was told, cemetery workers, whatever that means, physically blocked members of Donald Trump's media team.
From attending the ceremony, in some way they blocked them.
So they were not able to capture videos or still images of Donald Trump at the ceremony or with the families.
Now in doing some research, I learned that the families invited him there And the offer allegedly that he made to the families after accepting their invitation was that I will be there and I will bring my media people so that you will have quality pictures and video of this event with me
and you to have forever.
You will be the one to get these pictures, to receive these videos, They are for you.
The way I understood it was this was his gift to these families.
It's the least he could do.
And so that's what happened.
And so now here we sit in late October, election right around the corner.
I can't recall seeing any campaign footage Or any campaign material, any pictures, any videos, anything of Donald Trump at a national cemetery with veteran headstones.
We all know what they look like.
Soldiers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
I don't see any of those.
I don't see any of that stuff in any of his campaign materials.
Now, I will say, I don't watch a whole lot of network television.
So maybe I wouldn't see them if they are out there.
But to the best of my knowledge, I haven't seen any of it.
I did a little bit of asking around of people I know.
They've said they haven't seen any of it.
So that leads me to believe that to the best of my knowledge, there isn't any of this out there.
And so if you're watching or listening to this, and you are a person that has seen Donald Trump at any campaign material, At a national cemetery, politicizing veterans or military members, let us know.
Maybe we haven't seen it.
That's cool, let us know.
And if I gotta eat some crow, then I'll eat some crow.
I'm cool with that.
But the question is, if these people were told, these workers at the cemetery, And the media, the United States Army, or whoever, is the one that's supposed to pass judgment on whether or not this is acceptable.
If they were told by families, Gold Star families, which if you don't know what a Gold Star family is, a Gold Star family is a family that has lost a family member who was in the service in combat.
What motivation Would a Gold Star family have to lie?
Especially on a day like the one in question.
If I'm the father of a soldier who was killed in the most embarrassing, disastrous military action of my life, and my son was killed, and there is one person That I think would have prevented it or done it differently and my son would still be alive today and I chose to invite that person and that person just happens to be Donald
Trump who is the candidate on the Republican ticket for president.
What motivation would I have to lie about that?
Are we expected to believe That even gold star families are a bunch of liars?
Haven't these families, isn't it possible that these mothers and these fathers, is it possible they've been through enough?
Is it possible that they genuinely Cared about having Donald Trump at the ceremony?
Is that possible?
I think the answer to that is yes.
Anything's possible.
But also let me ask you this.
Is it plausible?
I think it's plausible for sure.
You see, we are in a state now in this country where we're, as we've talked about multiple times, We are so divided and so easy to call the other side liars or criminals or racist.
Insert insult here.
Whatever it is you want to put there.
But we're real quick about throwing these terms around.
That we stop seeing The humanity in any of it.
Because I'll tell you what, if I'm going to Arlington National Cemetery to a ceremony to remember my son who died serving this country,
doing what he was supposed to do, taking the orders faithfully In living up to the oath in which he spoke the day he joined the military, the last thing I want to do is make a mockery out of it.
The last thing I want to do is have it be tainted by some bullshit.
What motivation do these people have to lie?
And so, if we can honestly say that these folks, they're probably not lying, which is what I believe.
I don't believe that they're lying.
lying, I believe they genuinely invited Donald Trump to be a part of this ceremony.
And I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility In fact, I think that we have seen over the years...
President Trump do things for members of the community that folks never would have ever given him credit for if we never saw it on film or didn't have eyewitness account of it.
And so when the information is put out that, especially right from Donald Trump's mouth, I brought my media team to take pictures and videos to give to these families.
I believe that.
At the end of the day, what is it costing him?
Next to nothing?
Yeah, these people are getting paid, but they're going to get paid anyway.
So I can a thousand percent believe That he told his people, hey, we're going to go here.
I want you to take pictures and videos, make sure they're good.
We're going to give them to all these families, and we're going to take pictures with every one of these families, individually, together.
We're going to get videos of the ceremony, and we're going to package it up, and we're going to give it to all of them.
I can for sure see him doing that.
I think that anybody...
Would do that, that has the means to do it.
I mean, just because he's Donald Trump, I don't think makes him an exception to the rule.
I think that anybody would do that.
So here's what happens.
I found a news clip.
And so just to be fair and for full clarity, this news clip is from CNN. I didn't want anybody to say, well, you know, you always pick news clips from your side of the aisle.
No, no, I don't.
This one that we're about to see, it's a couple minutes long, is from CNN. It was from about a month and a half ago when all this...
All this bullshit was swirling around the media and they were making a big deal about him being there.
And don't worry, we'll tie it all back into this week.
But this is important, I think, for the story.
So let's check this out.
So a lot of back and forth from both sides, the Arlington National Cemetery, but also the Trump campaign on what exactly did happen.
But what we know is that some people who worked at the cemetery had blocked members of Donald Trump's team, members of his campaign, on Monday from attending and participating in some of the wreath ceremony when Donald Trump was laying some of the wreaths on Monday to honor the 13 fallen U.S. service members who were at I'm going to break down some of this for you.
So the big question here is about whether or not Donald Trump was able to participate in partisan events, as the cemetery calls it, while at that visit, particularly in this area called Section 30.
We did hear from Donald Trump.
He posted, as you mentioned, Sarah, on Truth Social.
And as you said, he did seem to argue that perhaps this was because of photography.
This is what he wrote on Truth Social.
And they also included a post or a letter from the families who said that they had supported this effort.
He had said, quote, We've given our approval for President Trump's official videographer and photographer to attend the event, ensuring these sacred moments of remembrance were respectfully captured, and so we can cherish these memories forever.
And that is from the families of some of the service members who were killed during that Afghanistan withdrawal a couple years ago.
Now, I will also add that the cemetery, for their part, had said in a statement to CNN that federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities at Arlington National—at Army National Military Cemeteries, excuse me.
So that's where some of the dispute is here.
Now, I will say NPR was the first to report some of this.
They had said that they had heard from someone at Arlington National Cemetery who said that there was a physical altercation between members of the cemetery staff and Donald Trump's campaign.
Trump's campaign has pushed back on that.
They said that there was no physical altercation.
However, a member did block them from participating in this.
Now, we also did hear from Chris LaCivita.
This is Donald Trump's co-campaign manager.
He's also someone who is a veteran.
He said, quote, So, again, Sarah, A lot of back and forth here.
I do think the big takeaway is that this was a moment that, of course, Donald Trump's team, they recognized was a solemn moment.
This was something to honor the family members of the fallen soldiers and has been a bit tainted now by this dispute over whether or not Donald Trump had violated federal law by making this a political event.
Sarah?
Okay, so from there they go into some other crap trying to villainize Donald Trump About something else, and that's CNN for you.
But for this story, oops, excuse me, for this story in general, they said the same thing Trump said.
He was there at the invitation of Gold Star families.
The families even came out publicly and said, we wanted these pictures and videos to cherish forever.
And how can you blame them?
How can you blame them for wanting that?
This is...
Their soldiers are dead.
They're gone.
So having one more thing to put on the wall or on a shelf, wherever they have the things that remind them of their soldier that is gone.
Clearly they're supporters of Donald Trump.
Why would they not want to have that on that shelf or on that wall or in that room?
What's the problem?
But here we go.
This is like we were talking about last week.
This is a way for...
And I don't even know that I would say that this is a way for the left...
To screw with the right.
I think this is just an example of techniques used in politics to try to sway the minds of voters.
If we can honestly say that the man didn't break any laws.
In fact, in my opinion, it seemed that he was doing Something nice and charitable.
And something, quite honestly, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris should have been doing without invitation any dang way.
Where the hell were they?
Now maybe they were asked to not come, which I would believe that also.
Because if it was my son, And they showed up, I'd ask them to leave.
I don't know if I could demand the president leave, but I'd ask him to.
Where the hell do any of us get off telling the families of dead soldiers who can be at a remembrance for their loved one?
And why would we make a big deal about this as if he broke some federal law until he does it?
Do you think that a guy who has spent months and months and still has more time to spend in court, do you think that he would openly Just violate federal law?
Just to put himself back into a courtroom?
Or does it make more sense that someone asked him to be there and he showed up and as a gift to the families he recorded it and took pictures to give to them.
I mean, I just, I don't, what I have trouble with, folks, is understanding how we got to this place.
How did we get to the place in this country that anybody is automatically guilty before they're proven guilty?
That's not how Lady Justice explained it.
That's not how the scales of justice work.
And it's not just Donald Trump, right?
He's an easy example because he's quite arguably the most, I don't know if I want to say famous, but he's quite honestly the most well-known person.
The most household name, if you will, in all of the world.
So it's probably easy, if you're not a fan of him, to talk about how big of a piece of shit he is.
But when did we lose the ability...
Even if we strongly dislike somebody or can say that we hate somebody, which I don't know that we should say that we hate.
I mean, hate's a pretty strong word.
Where did we get to the point where we automatically just assume their guilt?
And it happens all the time, everywhere in this country.
Just think about it.
When you're driving through your neighborhood and you see a political sign that is not the side that you agree with, you automatically make negative judgments.
I think we're all guilty of that.
When you see people that you don't agree with or that may represent a demographic That you don't like or you believe was gonna cause crime or is gonna do something stupid or gonna say something stupid, we automatically pass judgment.
And I think we're probably all guilty of that too.
And so I'm not sitting here saying that I'm a perfect person or that there's anybody, any one demographic of people or there's any one person that is perfect.
The question is, how and when did we get there?
And if you ask me, it seems to me like it all started when the man came down the escalator and announced that he was initially going to run for president.
And that's when it all started.
And so then the insults, and then the lawsuits, and then the deflamatory comments, and the this and the that all started.
And it started on one side, and then the other side in defense started tossing back, and ever since we've been back and forth, back and forth.
And if you ask me, we haven't really gotten anywhere in this country when it comes to getting together.
In fact, we have gotten so divided that some say we may never be united ever again.
And if you ask me, that's a scary thought.
Because part of what I believe made this country a superpower, what made this country so great, Was that even though we had a whole country full of people that didn't necessarily always agree on everything, we still were a country of people that could come together for one common goal.
And we've lost that.
We've lost it.
Or at least it seems that way.
Maybe it's just where I live.
Maybe it's just in the circles of people in which I associate.
Maybe it's just in the media sources I watch and I read and I'm a part of.
Maybe it's just there.
Maybe I don't see where everyone is united.
I don't know.
*sniff* But I think that everyone can agree that we've really come off the rails.
We've come off the rails so much that Gold Star families can't even invite a former president to a ceremony.
Well, a former president who just so happens to be running for president again, to your ceremony Because it's important to them that he's there without it being politicized or tainted.
And for some, this may seem insignificant.
Like, what's the big deal?
He was there.
Everyone will kind of get over it.
No one will ever hear about it again.
But for these families, it will forever be a memory that when they go to this ceremony and they have a remembrance for their son or their daughter that lost their lives in the biggest military disaster of our era, that it was tainted.
It was tainted and it was politicized, not by Donald Trump, But by the other side.
So if anything, if you ask me, that says a lot about the other side.
Why would we not wait?
Why would we not remind him, hey sir, you know, if any of these pictures or videos end up on a campaign ad, you're in big trouble.
You're going to be in big trouble.
Why would nobody say that to him?
Instead, they just go to these big media outlets and talk about how they're going to block and they blocked him and how he's breaking federal law when he didn't do any of that.
He didn't break any law.
He went where he was invited to go with honor.
I don't know, man.
It's...
It's a frustrating thing.
I have a hard time processing in my mind how we got to where we're at just because a man who wasn't a politician, who really didn't have a whole lot to gain.
In fact, he had a whole lot more to lose by running for president than he had to gain.
How him running for president threw everybody into a tizzy, and now we have what we have now.
We've got to take a break.
Don't go away.
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Hey, folks.
Welcome back here.
We had talked about the CNN clip that they tried to villainize Donald Trump for going to this event.
We all saw that, we all heard about it, we all know.
Now, earlier this week, I want to say it was on Tuesday of this last week, An article came out that said, I got it right here, titled, The Army is Ordered to Release Records on Trump's Arlington Cemetery Visit.
There is a non-profit by the name of American Oversight, a non-partisan, non-profit group dedicated to getting the government to release records.
So these people want the cemetery to release all the records they have regarding President Trump's visit this last August to the Abbey Gate Remembrance Ceremony.
So what also happened that day is President Trump participated in the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Since it's at Arlington, he was there.
Why would he not?
And to be quite honest with you, if it was me, I would consider that an absolutely astonishing, astonishing honor to do such a thing.
And so if I'm a person that's running for president, or running for any elected office, or anybody that has any kind of clout and was asked, Hey, would you like to participate in laying the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?
I would probably get emotional.
It would be very important to me.
I'll just leave it at that.
But let's go through this quick because it's absolutely insane that this is even happening.
So, American Oversight is a nonpartisan bullshit A non-partisan, non-profit group dedicated to getting government to release records.
Now, they explain it this way.
With the election just two weeks away, the American people have a clear and compelling interest in knowing how the government responded to an alleged incident involving a major presidential candidate who has a history of politicizing the military.
And God knows how to pronounce that name.
But this is the group's interim executive director, Whoa.
What evidence do they have of Trump politicizing the military?
I don't know that I agree with that.
I think that Trump talks about the military.
He talks about veterans' issues.
I would say that I don't think that anybody talks about it enough.
So I certainly don't agree that he has a history of politicizing any topics that have anything to do with veterans or military.
I don't buy it at all.
It's astounding to me because when you hear people.
So...
Yes.
So, When you hear these people bring up veterans in their campaign speeches or in their town halls or whatever it is, They always have amazing things to say, right?
Like our veterans are so important.
They have secured democracy and they've secured the American way of life and they carried the weight of the country on their shoulders and this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's where it stops.
Many times that's where it stops.
And I'll say that I believe that Donald Trump did some pretty good things for the military community in this country.
But I don't think that he went way the hell out of his way.
And the other part of it, too, is maybe we as veterans in general have expectations that are too high.
Maybe we expect too much out of the government, out of the men and women who came up with the plan, who assigned us a place to go, a destination, assigned us a mission to perform at said destination, and then told us to execute the plan.
And also doing it knowing full well that there will be casualties.
And I don't think anybody can be pissed about that.
I mean, war is hell.
It would be very naive for anybody to think that we're going to send our soldiers into war and nobody's going to get hurt.
That just doesn't happen.
That's not how war works.
You're bound to lose people.
And in fact, in the military planning process, that is a metric that is put into play.
When creating scenarios and different options For mission accomplishment.
Friendly losses is part of that equation.
Now I'm not an ex-military officer.
I was never a military officer.
I was never one of these people that put together a battle plan.
I never constructed one.
But I took part in a lot of battle plans.
And at one point in my military career, I sat in the talk in the Tactical Operations Center where these battle plans were tracked.
And you hear the conversations of the battles and the missions being thought up and constructed and the details around them.
And friendly losses is certainly part of that conversation.
And I'll say this also.
That part of being an officer or that part of being in the job that puts these plans together is something I wouldn't want to do.
I don't envy that part of the job at all.
I would not want to be part of the planning process that has to pick how many soldiers are going to die.
But it's a real thing.
And I think that those are things that average Americans, they don't think about.
They don't know about it.
And I think that they don't want to.
And maybe that's okay.
You see, I have this opinion that there's a lot of things about war.
There's a lot of things that we send our soldiers to do that probably don't belong here.
They don't belong at home.
They don't belong in the minds of the American people.
Because they're hard.
They're hard.
They're ugly.
They're gruesome.
They're savage.
But at the end of the day, what needs to be understood, even if you don't know the details, at the end of the day, what needs to be understood is that we're gonna lose people.
Soldiers are gonna die.
Collateral damage is going to die, or is going to happen.
Innocent people most likely are going to die.
That's just the way it is.
Is it right?
Maybe not.
I guess I don't know.
I'm not the judge of that.
But I think that we've gotten way off topic.
Let's go back.
To be honest, I don't remember where we left off.
We got off on a goat trail.
But let's go back to the article.
The legal fight stems from Trump's visits to the storied military ceremony on August 26th.
The former Commander-in-Chief of the Republican nominee, President And the Republican nominee for president visited the site as part of an event commemorating the anniversary of the death of 13 service members in a terrorist bombing at Abbey Gate in 2021.
We knew that.
At the invitation of some of those survivors' family members, Trump took part in the wreath-laying ceremony of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, then visited Section 60 of the cemetery, where many troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.
Shots of Trump smiling and giving a thumbs up alongside service members' tombstone were later used in campaign spots.
This has not been corroborated.
I wasn't able to find them.
Army officials said an employee who attempted to stop campaign workers from filming the area was abruptly pushed aside by a Trump campaign staffer.
The individual who has not been publicly identified opted not to press charges.
Army officials decreed the incident since Trump was warned that federal laws, army regulations, and DOD policies clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.
Okay, so here's the thing.
Like we talked about earlier in the show, does anybody really believe that Donald Trump and or his team don't know that?
They don't know that campaign activities are prohibited in national cemeteries?
The dude already ran for president once, twice, now a third time.
Do you think he doesn't know that this is not acceptable?
I wasn't able to find any of these campaign spots that these pictures and photos were used in.
Maybe I missed them.
Like I said, if they're out there and you guys have seen them or have them or know where they're at, please let us know.
Leave it in the comments below.
But it's really hard for me to believe that the man who's running for president for a third time Wouldn't know that this is against the law.
And of course, it's probably always possible that he knows, and some people are gonna say, yeah, he knows, he just doesn't give a shit.
He's gonna do what he wants because he's Donald Trump.
Well, I don't buy that either.
Anybody, anybody who knows that beyond the shadow of a doubt That every single person that opposes them is looking to put them in jail, tie them up in court, find a way to take all of their money, all of their property, all of their assets.
I find it hard to believe that anybody that has all that to lose is going to just knowingly walk into a situation to put themselves through more of that and knowingly be guilty.
When you're already wrapped up in court, when you've already been ordered to pay millions and millions of dollars, they're trying to take your property, and people expect us to believe that he's going to knowingly break the law and also do it at an event where Gold Star families invited him.
Where he knows that it'll taint the memory of these soldiers for a long time to come, if not forever.
I just don't buy that.
I just don't buy it.
And this kind of plays on what we were talking about before the break.
We have, as a population of people, we have lost the ability To even think clearly.
I promise you that there's people reading this bullshit and going, yep, he did that, he's guilty.
For sure, nope, there's no way around it.
For sure he's guilty.
Of course he did that, he's Donald Trump, he's an animal.
And again, like many times before on this show, this isn't an ad for Donald Trump.
But we have to call a spade a spade, folks.
This is bullshit.
I don't understand.
Let's continue.
They also said they would not pursue any further reprimands or punishments and did not disclose any further details of the incident.
Several Democratic lawmakers have called for a full release of the Army's report on the visit.
Of course they have.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and his staff has released several statements from families of fallen troops involved in the visit who praised the former president for his kindness and attention to their struggles.
Trump campaign officials also initially promised to release video proving that they followed all appropriate cemetery rules but have thus far declined to provide any such proof.
Why would they need to?
Why would they have to?
I don't think they should.
Yeah, go ahead and tell them you're going to.
Screw them.
Don't ever.
Why would they?
Why?
They already said.
They're not going to.
Where does it say up here?
They would not pursue any further reprimands or punishments.
Okay, so if they, whoever they is, which I'm assuming is the cemetery, if they're not going to pursue it any further, why are Democratic lawmakers pursuing it any further?
Why are they going to make a big deal out of it?
Because they want to tie him up in court?
They want to make him look like the villain again?
I don't know.
I think that everyone's on to your games, folks.
I think everyone's on to their games.
Well...
The unreleased Army records could provide more insight into the level of confrontation between Trump staffers and cemetery staff on the day, and whether the former president helped calm or inflame the situation.
Tuesday's court order calls for Army officials to make public Responsive non-exempt records, which could allow service officials to continue shielding the identity of the employee who claimed to have been assaulted.
Army officials did not provide an immediate timeline of how the information may be released to the public.
So, this is just an example of The opponent, the political opponent of Donald Trump going out of its way to try to make him a villain again.
And they want to know, they want to know, did he, where is it here?
Did he fuel the flames or did he try to calm the situation?
How about he probably didn't even really realize it was happening because he was focused on the ceremony.
He was focused on talking to the families.
He was focused on paying attention to what's going on around him, not his staff.
I'll tell you what.
I used to work for a member of Congress for a couple of years.
And when we as a staff would be out with a congressman at a public event or something like that, the last thing that he was worried about was any of us.
He was worried about the speech he was giving.
He was worried about the conversations he was having with constituents or anybody that was there to speak with him.
He wasn't worried about what his staffers were doing, because we were worried about doing our jobs, making sure that he had the information that he needed, that he had his coffee, that the people in the venue, if it was a venue or if it was a room, had the things that they needed.
He wasn't concerned about what we were doing.
If there was an issue with the press, Or cameras or whatever.
That it got pushed out to another room as to not cause a scene where the congressman was speaking with his constituents or whatever the case may be.
Donald Trump isn't watching his camera guy.
He's not looking to see who the photographer's talking to.
He's not checking to see who's getting shoved out of the way or who's getting blocked.
He's not there for that.
He hires a staff of people and travels with an entourage because they have a job that needs to be done.
He's there to do what he's there to do.
And so maybe these people who are writing these articles and who are making these accusations probably should talk to some other folks that have worked in these situations or have a little bit more knowledge about what really happens.
The last thing Donald Trump was concerned about was his photographer pushing somebody out of the way or getting blocked by a cemetery staff.
He has every confidence that his staff can handle situations like that.
That's why he put them in the places he put them.
But I think that this is just another way for us to understand how divided we actually are.
Because in the grand scheme of things, if you ask me, this is a pretty minute situation.
These questions could have been asked, of course.
Donald Trump could have been reminded, of course.
Hey man, you can't shoot campaign footage here.
Roger that, no problem.
The rebuttal could have been, the Gold Star family has invited me, I'm just here to take part.
That's all I'm doing.
We're filming and taking pictures to give to the families at their request.
It's the least I could do for them.
So if you don't mind, get the hell out of my face so we can continue.
And that's it.
But the opponents of Donald Trump want to make it a bigger deal than it needs to be.
And why?
To make him the villain once again.
When and where does this shit end?
Where does it end?
I encourage you folks to have these conversations, talk about this stuff, and think deeper.
If folks who are writing this stuff, if folks that are having these altercations, if folks that are pissed off about these menial things would think a little deeper.
Things like this probably wouldn't even make national news.
Why would this even be on CNN? Why would the Military Times have a full spread on it?
In my opinion, it's a waste of their time as a media outlet.
It's a waste of our time to have to read it other than to point out that this is just another example of how this divisiveness is pushed upon us.
So I urge you to fight back.
Fight back against this division.
And fight back by thinking deeper and having conversations and asking questions.
Even if it means having those conversations and asking those questions of people that you disagree with.
Whatever happened to having a cordial conversation and disagreeing?
Maybe you roll your eyes and you agree to disagree and then you wait until you can disagree the next time the conversation comes up.
But why do we have to turn everyone into a villain?
That I don't understand.
And the only reason it really bothers me this much is because I believe that this is just another way for us to stay divided and keep us from becoming united once again.
So think about that.
Have the talks.
Ask the questions.
I believe it's worth it.
I think that our survival in the long term as a country, as a democracy, depends on it.
If we keep living in this cycle of hate, we're really screwed.
I hate to end there because I feel like there's much more to talk about.
But we are out of time for this week.
I really appreciate you joining us.
I hope that you have an amazing week ahead.
Take care of yourselves, and we'll see you next week.
Good night.
There's a whole bunch of stories that have to be dug into, rethought, reconsidered, and in some cases completely discarded.
As modern Americans, we've been spoon-fed this dumbed-down, cartoonish, simplified version of history.
It's all fake.
It's all bullshit.
Everything that we have been taught is part of a self-serving narrative written by the people who will say and do anything to keep us on a leash.
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