As political tensions rose in the 2024 election year, Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance garnered much attention by referring to the Democratic presidential candidate. At one of the campaign events in Erie, Pennsylvania, Vance was questioned on the issue that involved former President Donald Trump’s campaign team getting blocked at Arlington National Cemetery. The scuffle happened on the same day Trump came to the cemetery to observe the third anniversary of the Islamic State bombing that led to the death of 13 members of the US armed forces as the nation was evacuating Afghanistan.
As it appears in the newspapers, one of the cemetery workers tried to catch the woman there at the burial ground as she was violating the federal law that does not allow any election-related actions to take place in the military cemetery. This led to an explosion when a Trump campaign aide wanted to bring cameras to the graves of the U. S service members as opposed to the opinion of its employees. I had named the employee and a campaign staffer who, sources said, told the worker to get out of the way during a row.
When asked about this episode, Vance outright denied it, saying, ‘ There is a story here, but there isn’t as the story here as what the media portrays it to be.’ He campaigned for Trump despite Trump visiting the cemetery, saying that the families of the service members buried there invited Trump to pay his respects. Thus, at the same time, Vance quickly switched to blaming Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, linking it to the death of service members.
“Kamala Harris is disgraceful. We’re going to talk about the story of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives. It’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened,” Vance said. He escalated it to the level where he ordered Harris to ‘go to hell,’ which he believed was her criticizing Trump over his visitation to the cemetery even though Harris had not made any comments on it.
In this respect, it would be pertinent to point out that Vance’s remarks are consistent with the practices observed during the Trump campaign, which put much emphasis on bending the rules as far as possible. I believe Vance’s language when describing a political opponent is highly provocative, especially in the current age of competition. Although Trump and his allies have often used this rhetoric, Vance has taken this approach to a new level.
The action at Arlington National Cemetery has been received in different ways. The regional defense officials supported the cemetery employee, who was just performing her duty by insisting on the rules. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, trying to downplay the assault attempt, baselessly claimed that the employee had a “mental health episode” and that she touched him first. Thus, although the campaign has frequently vowed to make such footage available to back up these assertions, it has not.
On the other hand, Harris’s campaign has refrained from direct interaction with the controversy to a large extent. Harris, who kicked off a two-day bus tour in Georgia, has yet to mention the incident on the campaign trail. Her spokesperson, Michael Tyler, said that the incident in the cemetery was quite pathetic but not shocking, especially coming from Trump’s team.
Vance’s comments come when Trump escalates daily between Harris and other political rivals. Some bile about Trump after he announced his 2024 campaign included several vulgar and conspiratorial posts on Truth Social, an element that exacerbated the tensions of the 2024 elections. The simultaneity of these events shows that the political polarization in America is continuing to intensify, and personal attacks are continuing to ramp up in this election year.
