Unpacking Trump claim 'we didn't lose one person in 18 months' in Arlington video with Gold Star families

WASHINGTON, DC: A fact check has debunked a key claim made in Donald Trump's now-infamous TikTok video with Gold Star families at Arlington National Cemetery. In the video, Trump congratulated himself, stating that no US troops were killed in Afghanistan under his presidency for 18 months.

“We didn’t lose one person in 18 months,” he says in a voiceover that appears to be taken from an old television appearance, per The Daily Beast. "And then they took over that disaster."

The actual truth behind Donald Trump's assertion

According to The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, a fact checker who has long been a thorn in Donald Trump's side, there was indeed a year-and-a-half period in Afghanistan during which no US service members were killed. However, that time period coincided with both Trump's and Joe Biden's presidential terms.

That period covered the final 11 months of Trump's administration, including the post-election period when he spent most of his time lying about widespread voter fraud, as well as the first seven months of Biden's presidency. 

The Post reported that it looked into every other possible 18-month period during Trump's presidency and found none that would support Trump's assertion.

Trump did, in fact, attend the repatriation ceremony for two soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan in February 2020, which marked the start of th 18-month period with no deaths.

He saluted the coffins of posthumously promoted Army Sgts 1st Class Javier Jaguar Gutierrez and Antonio Rey Rodriguez, both from the 7th Special Forces Battalion, who were slain by an Afghan National Army soldier in an insider attack in February 2020.

Donald Trump has continuously claimed credit for the fatality-free period

The 77-year-old has repeatedly claimed credit for the 18-month period with no fatalities.

“We had no soldiers killed for 18 months while I was there because they knew - don’t play around with our soldiers,” Trump said in North Carolina on August 21. 

Trump had said something similar at a gathering in Pennsylvania only four days before.

“For 18 months, we didn’t have one American soldier killed in Afghanistan,” he said. “And then I left—and then I left—and there’s a bunch of incompetent people took over and it all started up again.”

Based on how blatant a lie is, Kessler assigns "Pinocchios" on his fact-checking ratings. Trump's bogus statements regarding troop deaths received a two out of a potential four Pinocchios from him.

Scrutiny over Donald Trump's visit to Arlington

After Trump was charged with politicizing a visit to Arlington Cemetery, the largest resting site for American veterans and troops killed in combat, scrutiny of his equation with the military intensified toward the end of last month.

Photos of Trump grinning and giving the thumbs up while standing with gold star families next to the graves of their departed loved ones quickly went viral, sparking criticism of the August 26 visit. Even while other people in the pictures smiled and replicated Trump's hand motion, some well-known veterans criticized Trump for his graveside manners.

Trump's headache from the encounter worsened later that evening when he shared the politicized TikTok from his visit, in which he made a subtly critical comment about the current government.

Soon Trump's visit to Arlington had descended into scandal. A story claimed that a member of Trump's entourage physically attacked a cemetery staff member for attempting to prevent a photographer from taking pictures inside Section 60 of the cemetery, a 14-acre plot used to bury US service men who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump's campaign maintains they had permission to have cameras there, despite the fact that only cemetery employees are permitted to take pictures or videos in the area.

The US Army acknowledged in a statement that a Trump staffer did push a woman who approached the group, despite the campaign's initial claims that no one in the group engaged in physical contact with the employee.

Trump's camp has retaliated by accusing Biden alone of being responsible for the deaths of thirteen US soldiers during the tumultuous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The plan to remove all American forces from Afghanistan had been arranged by Trump the year before, but the tragedy happened during Biden's first months in office.