Former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton flagged what GOP nominee Donald Trump did “wrong” after his controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery this week.
Bolton appeared on CNN, where host Phil Mattingly described Trump as “close” to relatives of soldiers killed in Kabul during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He noted that he was surprised that the U.S. military had made a statement about a Trump campaign staffer “abruptly overruling” an Arlington official before Bolton agreed that it was an “unusual” move by the military to do something to say.
“And just to be clear, what Trump did to the families in Arlington, whatever he said to them, photos that were taken. There is nothing wrong with that,” Bolton said.
He continued, “What was wrong was what he did after they left the cemetery. By taking the films and so on and turning it into a political advertisement, that’s what’s banned and that’s what he did. And I think that’s why people are right to be angry.”
Arlington, a national cemetery with more than 400,000 people buried on 639 acres, bans political campaigning/election-related activities at the site — rules officials said they warned the Trump campaign about.
The former president claimed Thursday in comments about the Arlington episode that he “didn’t need the publicity” and blamed the case on “bad people” in Washington.
Mattingly later referenced Trump’s co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who shared footage of Trump at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier earlier this week, adding that he could have shot the video, but when he shared it, he said he hoped that this would give rise to “the hacks” with the Secretary of the Army.
“I have tremendous respect for his services, but they are aggressively attacking this issue. And I guess I don’t really understand why,” said Mattingly, who noted that LaCivita is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a Purple Heart recipient.
Bolton, who said he wished the Army chief of staff made a statement about the visit, said the campaign thinks it will help them but that the Trump campaign is proving to be making a point of “using the whole thing for political purposes’.
“That is expressly what Congress was trying to prevent. And in the regulations that make it clear that that is not what Arlington National Cemetery is intended for,” Bolton said.
“I can’t predict what the political outcome will be, but I just think it’s shameful behavior.”