After Skipping Events Honoring Fallen Soldiers, Trump Visits Arlington Cemetery

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/trump-veterans-arlington-cemetery.html

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WASHINGTON — President Trump walked on the muddy, rain-drenched grounds of Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, finding himself in an unusual position for a voluble man: a solitary figure, as he attended a ceremony to lay wreaths for the fallen.

It was a studied contrast, and an implicit atonement, to his decisions last month to forgo a ceremony in France and the traditional visit to Arlington on Veterans Day.

The president, holding a black umbrella, made his way on Saturday among the headstones of the military veterans who are buried at Arlington. He chatted with a guide as he viewed some of the thousands of wreaths that had been laid for an event called Wreaths Across America.

During a two-day trip to Paris in November, as part of ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Mr. Trump scrapped a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited rain, saying that the weather could have caused difficulty for the president’s helicopter.

The president later took to Twitter to offer an explanation. “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.”

The next day, the president visited the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris, and spoke in the rain.

After he returned to the United States, Mr. Trump then opted not to commemorate Veterans Day at Arlington Cemetery.

The decision elicited a rare apology from the president, who later acknowledged in an interview with Fox News that he had made a mistake in not attending.

“I should have done that,” he said. “I was extremely busy on calls for the country.” The president’s schedule for that day listed no public events.

“In retrospect, I should have and I did last year and will virtually every year,” he added.

On Saturday, as Mr. Trump started back toward his vehicle, he addressed the ruling on Friday by a federal judge in Texas striking down the entire Affordable Care Act.

“We’ll sit down with the Democrats, if the Supreme Court upholds, we’ll be sitting down with the Democrats and we will get great health care for our people,” he said.

He added, “It was a big, big victory by a highly respected judge, highly, highly respected in Texas, and on the assumption that the Supreme Court upholds, we will get great, great health care for our people, we’ll have to sit down with the Democrats to do it, but I’m sure they want to do it also.”

He then said that he would ask Republicans and Democrats to fashion an alternative as millions of Americans could find themselves without coverage. “We will get great, great health care for our people,” he said, offering no details.

The wreath-laying ceremony on Saturday was not listed on the president’s public schedule. Volunteers at the event were expected to place more than 250,000 wreaths at 1,400 cemeteries across the country.

Last year at Arlington alone, more than 93,000 volunteers and visitors participated, said Barbara Lewandrowski, director of public affairs at Arlington National Cemetery. She estimated that about 60,000 people attended on Saturday.