SPOT THE REAL PRESIDENT.

The beach-going Joe Biden's election as president was certified by Congress on January 6, 2021.

When the sitting president is unable to carry out his duties, those are temporarily undertaken by the vice-president.

In fact, the sitting vice president is doing everything she can to run for president as a candidate of change, implicitly confirming precisely that picture's message.

Meanwhile, the former president is doing presidential things.

Merely doing presidential things, these days, quickly leads to a political food-fight, although one that the certified president brought on himself.

Predictably, Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media found a way to find fault with a former president, whose presence at those ceremonies was requested by the families.  Former Member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard, still a commissioned officer, was also at that ceremony and is having none of the fault-finding.

“What is more outrageous to me is that there wasn’t universal coverage of the momentous day of the third anniversary of the loss of these 13 Gold Star families."

Tulsi Gabbard slams CNN's Dana Bash for attacking Trump over his visit to Arlington.

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— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 3, 2024

It's possible that the families who organized the wreath-laying invited the Commander in Chief or his deputy.  Andrea Widburg wasn't sure.

The Gold Star families invited Donald Trump to a service at Arlington being held to honor their dead. I’m unclear whether the families invited Biden or Harris. If they were not invited, it’s because the families are still angry over the incompetence that led to their loved ones’ deaths, as well as the administration’s ignoring them in the years since. If they were invited, they chose not to go. While Kamala stayed home, Joe was lounging on the beach.

Byron York has perhaps the most thoughtful reaction to the day's events.

Hasn't anyone ever been to a wake? People can be sad and crying at one point and telling jokes and laughing at another. It's all entirely normal for people experiencing an intense range of emotions. That is perhaps particularly true in Section 60. Those buried there would still be young today had they not died in service to the United States. Theirs were lives cut short. They deserve every honor the nation bestows on them. But to their families, they were also real, individual people with all sorts of memories associated with them. Many of the survivors deeply desire to see something positive in their loss. They want to know that it means something. Trump's thumbs-up and demeanor at Arlington may have helped those particular families feel that.

So what happened in Section 60 was entirely human. It is also entirely human for other families to be angry about his appearance there, because it is entirely human for people to disagree. But now, it is a campaign issue.

Indeed so, and one of the wonders of the digital age is the way anybody can do opposition research, and numerous clips of the very politicians who were Shocked!  Appalled!  Offended! that Donald Trump would pose for photographs with family members who later shared them on their social media accounts have themselves recorded campaign advertisements somewhere in Arlington National Cemetery, if not necessarily in Section 60.  That manufactured outrage has provoked the families of the Abbey Gate dead, some of whom might have otherwise stayed clear of the political fray, and the Trump social media operation is alert to the opportunities.

40 years ago, this would have ended a presidential campaign because patriotism was a shared value.

Now, it will hardly have an effect because love for country & respect for those who serve it are partisan.
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— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) September 2, 2024

The Jarrett regency, so obsessed with winning over the faculty lounge, probably awakened Riley Gaines.  But for the administration's redefinition of "equity and inclusion" to include dudes in woman-face competing in collegiate swimming, she would be well on her way to hanging a shingle in some dental practice.  Now she's one of the fresh faces for the Militant Normals.