Tom Cotton Is Unconcerned About Trump’s Exploitation of Arlington Cemetery

Sen. Tom Cotton, who served in The Old Guard at Arlington Cemetery for 16 months starting in 2007, has no problem with Donald Trump using veterans’ graves to promote his campaign. He even parroted Trump’s response to the controversy, blaming Gold Star families for the controversial photo.

“He didn’t take campaign photos there,” Cotton said on Meet the Press of the image that later appeared on Trump’s TikTok. “These families, Gold Star families, whose children died because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s incompetence, invited him to the cemetery. And they asked him to take those photos, because… this is their one chance to have a memory of their children to commemorate their service and honor their sacrifice. They wanted President Trump there. They wanted to take those photos.”

Last week, Trump visited Section 60 of the cemetery, where many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. His campaign took photos of Trump posing and giving a thumbs-up beside family members of Staff Sergeant Darin Hoover at his grave and later published them on Trump’s social media. When a cemetery employee tried to stop Trump’s team from taking photos because only cemetery staff are allowed to take photos or film in that area, a member of Trump’s campaign staff “abruptly pushed” the employee aside. According to the Army, Trump’s staff were “made aware of federal laws … which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”

”I gave my permission,” Hoover’s mother told NBC News. “My son was murdered under the Biden-Harris administration.”

Even with the Hoover’s permission, the photo violated cemetery rules, especially when it was used for campaign purposes as the Trump campaign did when they posted it on social media.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker asked Cotton about another Gold Star family who spoke out against Trump’s photo in Section 60, where their relative is buried and whose headstone was depicted in Trump’s photo with the Hoovers.

“Let me ask you about what we’re hearing from another family, the family of Master Sergeant Andrew Marckesano. He was a Green Beret. His family was concerned that his grave was actually shown in a photo that was posted on social media. A statement from the Marckesanos’ sister Michelle said, quote, ‘We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly.’ Did the Trump campaign fail to honor her wishes, their wishes?”

“No, Kristen, they honored the wishes of the 13 families whose children died at Abbey Gate. Those families wanted the photos,” Cotton replied. “They told me yesterday that they specifically asked President Trump for the photos. Obviously, headstones at Arlington are close to each other. When you take a photo of your loved one then other headstones are going to be present as well.”

The senator went on to attack The New York Times for reaching out to the Marckesanos. “Frankly, I think it’s pretty disappointing that The New York Times went and found a family whose headstone was featured in that photograph of another Gold Star family and then went to them to try to embarrass the Gold Star families who wanted President Trump there,” he said.

Again, the issue is not that Trump visited the cemetery with Gold Star families. It’s that he leveraged images of it for his presidential campaign. Even Cotton himself wrote about the sacred ground and “proper… conduct” there in his 2019 memoir.

“Over the years, I have noticed something about Arlington. Although a sign welcomes visitors to ‘our nation’s most sacred shrine,’ no rules are posted. Yet visitors somehow understand a proper code of conduct,” Cotton wrote, according to The Daily Beast. “Arlington elicits instinctive reverence from citizen and soldier alike because this land is more than a cemetery… Arlington truly is sacred ground for our nation.”

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