The White House refuted claims made by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Tulsi Gabbard on Sunday suggesting that President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris turned down an invitation from Gold Star families to commemorate the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan.
On two separate shows Sunday, Cotton and Gabbard tried to deflect criticism from Donald Trump over his controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery by arguing that Biden and Harris were also invited but never showed up.
“These families, Gold Star families, whose children died because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ incompetence invited [Trump] to the cemetery and they asked him to take those photos,” Cotton said on Meet the Press. “You know who the families also invited? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Where were they? Joe Biden was sitting at a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, D.C.”
On CNN, Gabbard made a similar claim, telling host Dana Bash on State of the Union that, “President Biden and Harris, I heard, were invited by some of these family members. They not only didn’t come; they didn’t even respond to that invitation.”
But a White House official and an aide to Harris told NBC News that “Gold Star families did not invite President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to Arlington National Cemetery by last week.”
The Trump campaign and the candidate are being criticized for breaking federal law by filming and taking photos in Section 60 of the cemetery, where photos and videos are not allowed, and “abruptly push[ing] aside” a cemetery official who tried to stop them.
The photos and videos later appear in Trump campaign ads and on the campaign’s social media pages.
Trump has since tried to shift blame for the photos appearing on social media telling NBC News on Thursday: “We have a lot of people, you know, we have people, TikTok people, you know, we’re leading the internet.”
“I don’t know who did it. And it could have been them. It could have been the parents,” he added referring to the two Gold Star families who invited him to the ceremony.
