In a Sunday-aired interview with President Trump, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace confronted the president regarding his absence at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, as well as his failure to appear at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau Wood in France:
WALLACE: You’ve talked a lot already about the cemetery and the fact that you didn’t go because it was security concern and you did go the next day. Here’s the thing –
TRUMP: Excuse me. Not security concern, they wouldn’t allow me to go. They said, sir – Secret Service said, sir, you cannot go. We are not prepared. You cannot go. Because it was supposed to be helicopter, but the helicopter couldn’t fly because of zero visibility.
WALLACE: OK.
TRUMP: They said, sir, you cannot go.
WALLACE: But here’s the question, you’re back in Washington on Monday, Veterans Day. Why don’t you go across the river to Arlington for that ceremony? Barack Obama went every year he was here in D.C.
TRUMP: I should have done that, I was extremely busy on calls for the country. We did a lot of calling as you know.
WALLACE: But this is Veterans Day.
TRUMP: I probably – you know, in retrospect, I should have and I did last year and I will virtually every year. But we had come in very late at night, and I had just left, literally, the American Cemetery in Paris and I really probably assumed that was fine and I was extremely busy because of affairs of state – doing other things. But I would have – I would have done it.
After MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin shared the video of Wallace and Trump’s exchange regarding Veterans Day, Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council (NSC) spokesman under President Obama, wrote:
This is a lie. Secret Service doesn’t say, Mr. President you can’t drive somewhere. The President does what he wants and they facilitate. And @FoxNewsSunday also let him lie and say he went to Arlington last year. He did not.
Regarding Vietor’s first point, it’s difficult to know with any degree of certainty how the Secret Service handled this particular situation. Several days after the decision was made to ground Marine One and cancel the trip to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, President Trump tweeted:
By the way, when the helicopter couldn’t fly to the first cemetery in France because of almost zero visibility, I suggested driving. Secret Service said NO, too far from airport & big Paris shutdown. Speech next day at American Cemetery in pouring rain!
According to the Associated Press:
The determination to ground Marine One, the president’s helicopter, due to bad weather is made by the Marine Corps and the White House Military Office, which then presents the recommendation to the White House in collaboration with the Secret Service, according to a Secret Service official.
While other world leaders were present at the event, it’s possible that the president’s account is accurate. A fallback plan in which Trump was taken to the ceremony via motorcade may not have been safe or practical.
However, Vietor is correct when he says the president wasn’t at Arlington last year on Veterans Day.
ABC News reports that Trump spent Veterans Day 2017 in Da Nang, Vietnam. During his time there, the president gave a speech commending seven Vietnam War veterans who stood with him. Following the president’s remarks, four of the seven veterans also spoke.