On Root Beer, Dogs, and an Illegal Photo Op?

Alrighty, it’s time for another Election Update! This time for the presidential election as usual!

This is the more-or-less weekly feature where I try to enumerate the stories dominating the presidential election news as we barrel toward November. If you want to know my opinions on Ohio news, I’m trying to keep up with that too, and I usually blog separately about what the pro-life movement is up to.

Because I am a Catholic blogger here on Patheos, please keep referring back to my boilerplate statement that there is no “Catholic” political party, and it’s immoral to tell people they have to vote for a certain candidate on pain of mortal sin. You may vote Republican, Democrat, American Solidarity, or just leave the ticket blank, if you’ve thought and prayed and applied right reason to the choice and decided that it really is the best one. I can disagree with you. You and I can think each other are stupid. We can get into a big fight about it. One of us can be objectively right and the other badly mistaken. But neither one of us is in sin. It’s only a sin if you vote for a certain candidate IN ORDER TO BRING ABOUT any intrinsic evils they support, and never if it’s your best guess as how to lessen evil or bring about good. I won’t even respond to assertions to the contrary because they are spiritual abuse. I’ll delete you from my Disqus comment box. And now, off to the races.

This week, we had another appearance by J. D. Vance at an establishment that sells junk food.

Is that really newsworthy? No, but I can’t help but bring it up. These appearances fascinate me. I hope somebody compiles all of them into a full-length found footage film when the election is over. Vance has a visceral aversion to treats that he absolutely cannot hide, and yet the Trump campaign keeps sending him to establishments that proffer treats in order to make him try and look personable for the average American voter. I’m beginning to think Trump’s doing it on purpose out of sadism. We’ve seen Vance react in anger to a pile of snacks left for him backstage at a place where he was giving a stump speech. We’ve seen him snatch chocolate milk from his daughter at a diner and chide her for sipping it. We’ve seen him attempt to order a box of doughnuts, with a look of revulsion on his face, and refer to the varieties behind the counter as “whatever makes sense.” This week, we got to watch him attempt to order root beer floats for all the diners at a crowded burger joint. I’ve watched the clip of Vance grimly carrying the tray of frosty brown mugs as if it’s a bomb about to detonate several times. After he finally sets it down, he takes a sip, makes a suffering face, and then wipes out his mouth with a paper napkin as if he gulped vinegar. I can’t stop laughing. It is comedy gold.

Furthering the week’s theme of pratfall comedy, was an attempt at a smear campaign of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Republican TV talking heads keep trying to paint Walz as dishonest, and it keeps not working out for them. This time, they attempted a bizarre conspiracy theory that Walz doesn’t actually own a dog, because he was photographed petting a brown dog when his usual dog is black. It was pointed out after about thirty seconds that the compromising photo was a photo of Walz greeting other people’s dogs at a dog park. He still owns the black dog; indeed, the black dog was present at the dog park and filmed during the appearance. This began a really hilarious X/Twitter pile-on with everybody tweeting other times Walz was caught in a lie. “Walz owns a tin labeled ‘butter cookies’ but it actually contains nails and screws for his workshop.” “Walz said he was going to teach the children to play Gray Duck, but he actually taught them to play Duck, Duck, Goose.” “Walz once stood up and said ‘welp I better be heading out!’ but instead stayed for another half hour.” I can’t possibly credit all the silly jokes; just go look at my X/Twitter page. I shared as many of my favorites as I could.

And then J. D. Vance stole the spotlight back from Walz’s dog, because he was caught in another unearthed video clip from all the way back in 2021. This time, the object of his anger wasn’t all childless people in general, but specifically childless school teachers.  He doesn’t like the idea of people trying to “brainwash” school children if they don’t have children of their own. “That really disorients me, and it really disturbs me,” said Vance, as if a childless school teacher was a tray of delicious root beer floats.

It’s already been pointed out by several people that this is an odd thing to say. Vance is supposed to be an extremist traditionalist Catholic. That means he ought to be in favor of childless schoolteachers, because the traditional teachers for Catholic children are usually nuns. Nuns have been teaching children their catechism and the Three R’s in this country since there have been Catholics in this country. He ought to know that. But then again, he’s only been Catholic for five years– roughly the same length of time he’s been in politics spouting his bizarre, dehumanizing, frankly anti-Catholic views on women and their fertility.  Maybe he hasn’t heard of nuns yet.

Unfortunately, that was the end of the comedy, because Donald Trump’s campaign team seems to have committed a federal crime at Arlington National Cemetery.

And they allegedly roughed up a cemetery employee to do it.

This actually happened on Monday, but the details keep trickling in bit by bit. Monday, Trump was filmed laying a wreath at a tomb in Arlington National Cemetery, and then awkwardly bending to drop a bouquet on a grave. He was photographed giving his goofy grin and thumbs up at the grave as well. People were confused as to why Arlington National Cemetery allowed this campaign appearance, because that sort of thing is usually against the rules there. Arlington is a cemetery for our veterans. It’s  solemn place, like a church, not a place for a photo op and a cheesy thumbs up.

And it turned out that Arlington National Cemetery did NOT allow this cynical use of a burial ground. In fact, they tried to stop it. On Tuesday evening, it was reported that a cemetery official tried to stop Trump’s team from filming and photographing Section 60, a plot where recent casualties were laid to rest. These are people who were killed violently in Afghanistan and Iraq, who usually have traumatized relatives still alive and in mourning. It’s been said that some of the families of the dead gave their permission for the photo opportunity, but not everyone with a relative in Section 60– and even then, Section 60 doesn’t belong to them and they can’t change the rules. Only cemetery personnel are allowed to take films or photos of that plot, with good reason. As he tried to stop the desecration, people from Trump’s campaign team “verbally abused and pushed the official aside.” The Trump team’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, vehemently denied that this happened and then admitted it had in the next breath, claiming they “had permission” and that the man who tried to stop them was “an unnamed person, clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”

Today, Arlington National Cemetery itself responded that there had indeed been “an incident.” The Trump team had been warned not to do this “more than once.”  They added, “Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”

A former Marine just told the Vice President of the United States of America to go to hell, on camera, to journalists, for the whole country to hear, because his running mate may have participate in a federal crime in Section 60 of Arlington Cemetery.

Allow me to express to J. D. Vance: have a root beer float, Sir. Have the whole tray of root beer and a box of doughnuts to go. Eat a giant, reeking, rancid bag of whatever delicious junk food you would find the most disgusting, because you are not only a disgrace to the United States Armed Forces but a disgraceful human being overall, and your running mate is worse.

And, provided I ever stop seething, we’ll have another Election Update next week!