How much does it cost to bury a nation?

Story #1,737 that would have ended a presidential candidate’s election hopes in the Before Time:

In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.

In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

Natalie Khawam, the family’s attorney, responded, “I think the military will be paying—taking care of it.” Trump replied, “Good. They’ll do a military. That’s good. If you need help, I’ll help you out.” Later, a reporter covering the meeting asked Trump, “Have you offered to do that for other families before?” Trump responded, “I have. I have. Personally. I have to do it personally. I can’t do it through government.” The reporter then asked: “So you’ve written checks to help for other families before this?” Trump turned to the family, still present, and said, “I have, I have, because some families need help … Maybe you don’t need help, from a financial standpoint. I have no idea what—I just think it’s a horrific thing that happened. And if you did need help, I’m going to—I’ll be there to help you.” . . .

In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

Jeffery Goldberg has a bunch of people leaking to him, because this story is exceptionally well sourced. It includes this vignette:

The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”)

Of course he said this: it’s exactly the kind of thing he would say, and again, Goldberg has multiple sources.

Hurricane Man Steve:

Incomprehensible that this is just another thing that people will ignore. Along with “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” Along with this entire Atlantic article.

For the rest of my life, win or lose next month, I’m going to be gobsmacked at the phenomenon. What did you people ever really believe if this guy’s OK with you?

I just don’t understand it.

Michael from Atlanta (this is the guy who told me two years ago that Fani Willis’s Trump case was going to be a disaster):

Maybe Hitler needs to watch that scene in Downfall:

Adolf Hitler: That was an order! Steiner’s assault was an order! Who do you think you are to dare disobey an order I give? So this is what it has come to! The military has been lying to me. Everybody has been lying to me, even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards.

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: I can’t permit you to insult the soldiers.

Adolf Hitler: They are cowards, traitors and failures!

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: My fuhrer, this is outrageous!

Adolf Hitler: Our generals are the scum of the German people! Not a shred of honour! They call themselves generals. Years at military academy just to learn how to hold a knife and fork! For years, the military has hindered my plans! They’ve put every kind of obstacle in my way! What I should have done… was liquidate all the high-ranking officers, as Stalin did!

***

Hitler also decided that his generals didn’t know shit relatively early in the war because they were opposed to some of his more aggressive moves that ended up working out. He formed OKW relatively early in his tenure so he would have complete control over the military apparatus and would not have to listen to the advice of his generals or deal with their pushback. They all wanted to go for Moscow in ’41 and then again in ’42 while Hitler wanted the Caucasus for oil and wheat. Neither panned out at all like he thought so maybe he should have listened to them? I guess what I’m saying is that the guy who muses about why the Civil War didn’t get resolved before the fighting started might also have a less-than-total grasp of the dynamic between Hitler and his generals.

As to your point, the best I have is that swing voters aren’t aware of stories like this or they just get lost in the fury of dozens of other stories about crazy, terrible shit that Trump has said or done. His supporters have been conditioned to ignore stories that come from outside of the right-wing media ecosystem. It’s nothing we haven’t discussed a million times over. It genuinely hurts to think about the fact that we are in a position of profound uncertainty as to the result of the election and it will be decided by uninformed voters who make their determinations for ridiculous reasons. Trial lawyers know that jurors made decisions that have nothing to do with the facts or the law. This election is like that, only with massively higher stakes.