Vice Presidential hopeful J.D. Vance pointedly told Vice President Kamala Harris to ‘go to hell’ during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon.
Vance reacted to criticism after former President Donald Trump attended a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday in honor of the slain 13 Americans service members who lost their lives during the disastrous exit from Afghanistan.
Democrats criticized the Trump campaign for taking photos and video at the cemetery. And campaign staff reportedly clashed with a cemetery official who tried to stop them.
But Donald Trump and his team are hitting back at claims that his trip included an altercation.
An official with the cemetery tried to ‘physically block’ members of Trump’s team, according to Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman.
‘The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,’ Cheung said in the statement.
Trump supporters booed a reporter from CNN who asked Vance about the controversy on Wednesday at the campaign stop.
‘To have those 13 Americans lose their lives and not fire a single person is disgraceful…Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened but wants to yell at Donald Trump for showing up. She can go to hell!’ Vance said.
He then addressed the controversy around the alleged clash with the cemetery official.
‘The altercation at Arlington cemetery is the media creating a story where I don’t think there is one,’ Vance said.
Vance said the campaign had received approval to have a photographer on site and that the families of the slain service members invited President Trump to be there.
‘That’s not an insult to the memories of their loved ones, they wanted Donald Trump to be there and thank God we have a president who wants to stand with our veterans instead of one who wants to runaway from them,’ Vance concluded.
He added that veterans and their families probably cared more about former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris failing to hold the military accountable after those 13 service members lost their lives.
Trump supporters applauded and cheered Vance loudly, chanting ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!.’
The Harris campaign did not immediately react with a response.
Harris traveled to Georgia on Wednesday to launch a bus tour in rural areas to win over support from voters to make the state more competitive for Democrats.
She plans to record an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday afternoon while she is in Georgia with her running mate Gov. Tim Walz.