Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on August 26, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia.
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One of the two staffers involved in the altercation at Arlington National Cemetery was Donald Trump’s deputy re-election campaign manager, NPR has learned. This week, the former president insisted the incident never happened, highlighting a growing disconnect between the candidate’s message and his campaign’s. NPR is identifying both staffers after the campaign’s conflicting responses to last week’s incident outside Section 60 of the cemetery, where many of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.
The two staffers were deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Caporale is a former aide to former first lady Melania Trump who left the White House to work for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before returning to the Trump campaign. He was also listed as the on-site contact and project manager for the Women for America First rally in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, where Trump called on the crowd to “stop the steal” before some of them stormed the U.S. Capitol.
After attending a wreath-laying ceremony to mark the third anniversary of the deadly Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 US service members, Trump visited Area 60 at the invitation of several family members and friends of the fallen soldiers.
ANC rules, which had been made clear to the Trump campaign beforehand, state that only the official Arlington photographer may take photos or film in Section 60. When an ANC staffer tried to enforce the rules, she was verbally abused by two Trump campaign staffers, according to a source familiar with the incident. Picard then pushed her out of the way, followed by two Pentagon officials.
Campaign’s mixed messages on the incident
After NPR first reported the brawl last week, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said they were “prepared to release footage” of the incident and criticized the Arlington staffer for “clearly suffering from a mental illness.” Cheung also said they were allowed to have a photographer present and pointed to a statement from Gold Star family members who invited Trump to attend the ceremony.
The campaign also released a TikTok The video includes video footage from Section 60, including a smiling Trump giving a thumbs-up to family members at the graves. But other gravestones are visible in the image, and at least a family of a fallen Green Beret confirmed they did not allow filming or use of his grave in campaign advertising.
The Army released a statement last Thursday acknowledging that a cemetery employee was “abruptly pushed aside” and that the campaign had been warned in advance about the photography ban and political activity at Arlington. The Army said the cemetery employee tried to defuse the situation after she was pushed, hoping not to upset the Gold Star families present.
The Army said the police had taken a report of the incident, but the officer had refused to prosecute and the Army considered the case closed, but added that “the ANC officer and her professionalism were unfairly attacked”.
When NPR emailed both Caporale and Picard, Cheung replied, “I see you emailed some members of our team… As the Army said, they consider this matter closed. President Trump was there to support the Gold Star families and honor the sacrifices their loved ones made.”
Cheung also included a social media post showing a Biden campaign ad from 2020 that used an image of the then-vice president at cemetery 2010.
Neither Cheung, Picard, nor Caporale responded to emails seeking comment by publication time. When reached by phone, Caporale referred questions to Cheung. The Trump campaign has yet to fulfill its pledge to release video of the incident, despite repeated requests from NPR.
This week, Trump contradicted his own campaign when he posted a post on Truth Social, falsely calling the confrontation a “fabrication by Comrade Kamala and her Disinformation Team” in an attempt to attack Harris and Biden for not attending the private ceremony.
In an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Tuesday, Trump repeated the false claim that nothing happened at the cemetery, questioned the motives of the unnamed employee and downplayed the allegations as attacks on “publicity.”
“Did you notice that the person who is being represented right now doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t want to talk or talk?” Trump asked, falsely labeling the staffer as male. “The wonderful thing, the wonderful thing, is that all the parents and relatives got together and they said, ‘That’s a false story, it’s totally false.’”
Former President Trump good opinion among veteransand has many staunch supporters with ties to the military. Several family members who invited him to Arlington also spoke at the Republican National Convention, criticizing Biden and voicing support for Trump.
“Joe Biden may have forgotten that our children died, but we haven’t forgotten — Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten,” Cheryl Juels said in Milwaukee at the RNC in July. Juels is the aunt of Sergeant Nicole Gee, one of the service members killed at Abbey Gate in 2021, during the chaotic withdrawal of US troops.
“Joe Biden owes the men and women who served in Afghanistan a debt of gratitude and an apology. Donald Trump loves this country and will never forget the sacrifice and courage of our service members,” she added. “Please join us in bringing him back to the White House.”
But those families have no power to suspend the rules at Arlington, where Section 60 is a new and under-construction memorial to hundreds of recently fallen soldiers that, like the rest of the cemetery, is supposed to be apolitical.
The family of Staff Sergeant Andrew Marckesano, a Green Beret who committed suicide after serving multiple combat tours and is buried at Section 60, said that according to their conversations with the cemetery, “Trump campaign staff did not follow the rules set for this visit.”
“We hope that those who visit this sacred site understand that real people made sacrifices for our freedom and that they are to be honored, respected and treated accordingly,” they said in a statement.
Jimmy McCain, a United States Marine whose father was the late Senator John McCain, also condemn the visit.
Trump has a history of making controversial statements about the military – he insulting Senator John McCain for being a prisoner of war. He is said to have called the dead soldiers ““idiot” and “loser”“and recently controversial for saying that civilians who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom are much better off than those who receive the Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest military award, which is usually awarded posthumously.
Trump’s conflicting messages on the campaign trail
Former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a town hall moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena in Harrisburg, Pa. on Wednesday.
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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The incident at Arlington National Cemetery is the latest example of the clash between the Trump campaign’s messaging efforts and the candidate himself since President Biden ended his re-election bid and Vice President Harris became the Democratic nominee.
The campaign’s efforts to use the anniversary of the bombing to attack Harris over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, accompanied by videos from Gold Star family members blaming the administration for the deaths of their loved ones, were overshadowed by the politicization of Arlington and its hallowed status.
Last week, both Trump and his campaign sought to clarify his stance on abortion rights and a ballot measure in his home state of Florida. Trump initially appeared to signal support for a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and tweeted that his second term would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”
After backlash from anti-abortion advocates and claims from the campaign that Trump had not made clear how he would vote on the referendum, Trump eventually told a Fox News reporter that he would vote against it.
Trump has also publicly questioned the rules, format and fairness of next week’s debate even as his campaign has accepted the terms and has quietly worked to iron out the details.
During a town hall conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump called the ABC News debate host “dishonest” and implied without evidence that Harris would be asked first.
The debate will be a key moment for Trump to try to regain momentum against Harris, who has erased Trump’s previous lead in polls in seven key battleground states.
In the six weeks since the Democratic shift in the race, a NPR Review Trump’s campaign speeches show the former president struggling to pivot from a campaign designed to defeat Biden to a focus on his new opponent.
