Trump says Harris ‘killed’ US soldiers in Afghanistan as he tries to shake off Arlington National Cemetery scandal
‘Just as though they had a gun in their hand,’ he says of 2024 rival and current president Joe Biden
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Donald Trump has made the shocking claim that Vice President Kamala Harris "killed" US soldiers in Afghanistan, in an attempt to shake off the string of scandals he has been facing since visiting the Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.
Speaking at a Michigan campaign event on Thursday, Trump addressed accusations that he used a commemoration for the 13 soldiers killed outside Kabul Airport in 2021 as a campaign stunt and tried to turn the discourse on the Biden administration.
"Biden killed their children by incompetence – should've never happened," boomed the former president into the microphone.
"Kamala killed their children," he continued. "Just as though they had a gun in their hand, by gross incompetence.
"And not one general or incompetent bureaucrat was fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country."
Trump was referring to the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which Joe Biden and Harris took over from him when they won the 2020 presidential election.
He also claimed family members of those who died in the August 26, 2021 attack invited him to participate in a ceremony to mark the third anniversary and take photos with their loved one's gravestones, but made a major blunder while praising the "incredible parents and sisters and brothers," by saying he attended the event "yesterday", when in reality it was three days earlier.
"Last night I read that I was using the site to politic," he explained. "This all comes out of Washington, just like all of these prosecutors come out of Washington," he added.
"These are bad people we're dealing with."
This is seemingly Trump's latest attempt to brush off the controversies stemming from his visit, where two senior members of his campaign allegedly verbally abused and pushed aside a cemetery official.
The New York Times has since reported the two staffers to be Steven Cheung and Chris LaCivita, with the former denying there was any altercation and instead suggesting the official was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”
The former president was also photographed smiling and flashing a thumbs up to photographers while standing in front of gravestones at the cemetery, and came under fire for turning the anniversary of the deaths of fallen American servicemen into a campaign video.
Trump's actions have been branded "disgusting" by political figures over the past week.
His own former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN he believed the incident involving Trump’s campaign staff at Arlington “should be investigated”.
Republican running mate JD Vance rose to Trump’s defense in a similarly blistering speech at his own campaign event on Wednesday, saying Harris can “go to Hell.”
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