Former President Trump did something breathtakingly cynical, certainly immoral and probably illegal the other day.

In other words, it was Monday.

Trump used an appearance on the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, a resting place for many who honorably served their country, to make a campaign video.

Trump was ostensibly at Arlington to commemorate the third anniversary of the killing of 13 American service members by a suicide bomber during the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan. He said the solidiers’ family members, some of whom disparaged President Biden at the Republican National Convention, invited him.

I have no doubt that’s true. But even the grieving families of fallen soldiers do not have a right to trash Arlington‘s protocols.

The Army, which oversees the cemetery, forbids any sort of political activities on the grounds. It is, as the Trump campaign was informed, against federal law and Defense Department policy. The Washington Post reported that Pentagon officials were “deeply concerned” that Trump would turn the visit into a campaign stop but also wanted to accommodate him.

During the visit, a cemetery official tried to enforce the rules against outside cameras in Section 60, the area devoted chiefly to soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two Trump staffers physically pushed her out of the way, according to news reports.

The official declined to press charges because she feared retaliation from Trump supporters, according to an Army statement. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung promptly slimed her as “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”

Trump had smiled broadly and given a jarring thumbs-up as he stood at the grave of Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, one of those killed in the bombing. He wasn’t there just to pay his respects; he was there to exploit the tragedy that occurred at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in 2021 by blaming it on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has soared in recent polls.

The frenzied withdrawal and terrible loss of life occurred on Biden’s watch — as did the abandonment of at least 78,000 Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and continue to live there precariously.

@robinkabcarian

Vice President Kamala Harris is standing by her previous comments defending President Joe Biden’s mental acuity — even now as she’s running to replace him.

The vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate was asked by CNN whether she has any regrets about defending Biden’s mental acuity amid a firestorm of skepticism following the first presidential debate.

“No, not at all,” Harris told CNN reporter Dana Bash.

TOP 5 MOMENTS FROM KAMALA HARRIS’ FIRST INTERVIEW AS DEM NOMINEE: ‘I WILL NOT BAN FRACKING’

Harris rose to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped out of the race last month following his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump in June. 

The debate, which included Biden repeatedly tripping over his words and losing his train of thought, opened the floodgates to traditional Democratic allies of the president joining conservatives in sounding the alarm over Biden’s mental acuity and age. 

The vice president publicly supported Biden throughout the media circus and secured his endorsement just minutes after his own campaign came to close.

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Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris listens to her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, speak during a visit with members of the marching band at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Harris dodged the question of whether Biden initially endorsed her to run in his place when he called to announce his withdrawal from the election amid mounting concern over his mental faculties. 

“What about the endorsement? Did you ask for it?” Bash asked Harris. 

“He was very clear that he was gonna support me,” Harris responded. 

“So, when he called to tell you, he said, ‘I’m pulling out of the race, and I’m gonna support you?,’” Bash pressed Harris. 

“Well, my first thought was not about me, to be honest with you. My first thought was about him, to be honest. I think history is gonna show a number of things about Joe Biden’s presidency. I think history is gonna show that in so many ways, it was transformative, be it on what we have accomplished around finally investing in America’s infrastructure, investing in new economics, in new industries, what we have done to bring our allies back together, and have confidence in who we are as America, and grow that alliance, what we have done to stand true to our principles including the — the — one of the most important international rules and norms, which is the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said. 

President Biden sits on the beach in Cape Henlopen State Park, in Lewes, Delaware. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

The highly anticipated sit-down marked the first interview Harris has held in 39 days, since she became the presumptive nominee. She was joined by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for the pre-taped CNN interview that aired Thursday evening. 

Harris has largely avoided the media since ascending the Democratic ticket, only rarely answering media questions while on the campaign trail and holding no press conferences. 

Biden has spent the majority of the last two weeks on vacation at beach properties in California and Delaware.

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Matteo Cina contributed to this report.

He’s called her Laffin’ Kamala and Lyin’ Kamala. Crazy Kamala and Comrade Kamala.

He’s described the vice president as lazy, dumb and antisemitic. (Even though her husband is Jewish, so maybe Donald Trump should throw in masochistic as well?)

Ever since Kamala Harris became his opponent, an obviously flummoxed Trump has grappled with how to run against a Democrat who doesn’t share his gender, flesh tone or senior status.

Test marketing, he’s fastened onto one line of attack that is particularly noteworthy. Not because it hasn’t sprung from a sandbox, but because it’s such a facile and specious argument: Why, Trump demands, hasn’t Harris already accomplished all that she is promising on the campaign trail?

“She says she’s going to lower the cost of food and housing, starting on Day 1,” he said at a recent swing-state rally in Pennsylvania. “But Day 1 for Kamala was 3½ years ago. So why didn’t she do it then?”

Here’s why: Because she’s serving as vice president of these United States.

Go ahead, criticize the Biden administration and assail its record. Call it, if you’d like, the worst and most incompetent in the whole history of humankind.

But don’t pretend that Harris is the one in charge.

As vice president, “you’re in the room, but you’re not the decision-maker,” said Joel Goldstein, an emeritus law professor at St. Louis University who has written two books on the vice presidency. “You have a voice, but ultimately there’s one vote that counts, and you don’t have it.”

If the question is, “Why didn’t she do it?” Goldstein went on, “the answer is, ‘It wasn’t her administration.’”

The vice presidency has often served as the punch line in a long-running joke — that is, when the office and its occupant have gotten any attention at all. In the corpus of our political system, a vice president is like an appendix; it does some good, but you could easily live without one.

John Adams — the first to hold the position, under President Washington — once called the vice presidency the “most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

Walter Mondale, who was President Carter’s understudy, described the vice presidency as “an awkward office.” It falls under two branches of government, the executive and legislative, where the vice president serves as tiebreaker in the Senate. (Last December, Harris set a record by casting the most tiebreaking votes ever.)

“Over most of its history,” Mondale noted, “neither branch wanted to see” the vice president.

But the nature of the job changed dramatically under Mondale, who worked out an arrangement with Carter to function as more than a potted plant. Mondale became the first vice president to have an office in the White House, met regularly with the president and carved out a meaningful advisory role in Carter’s administration, a precedent that has been followed in Washington ever since.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the inherently subordinate nature of the vice presidency.

“You step into a role where, by definition, you’re not supposed to lead,” said Christopher Devine, an associate political science professor at the University of Dayton and the author of books on vice presidential candidates. “You’re supposed to take a step back and serve in the shadow of the president.”

That led to a huge expectation gap for Harris — who made history as America’s first female, Black and Asian American vice president — which, in turn, led to a lot of whatever-happened-to questions as she settled into semi-anonymity and the customary role of deferring to the president and carrying out his vision.

It was only a few weeks ago that Harris began fully emerging in her own right, after President Biden stepped aside and the vice president stepped up to replace him as the Democratic nominee.

Since then, polls suggest most voters have little clue what exactly Harris has been up to these last 3½ years, which, from a political standpoint, is one of those good-and-bad things.

Blueprint, a Democratic polling and research organization, said a recent survey found “the general public does not give Harris credit for many of the Biden administration’s popular policies — but that she also won’t have to carry the president’s baggage on issues like inflation.”

In a Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll, nearly 6 in 10 respondents said they believe Harris had “just some” or “very little” influence on the administration’s immigration policies, and more than 6 in 10 said she had limited influence on Biden’s economic policies.

(Both surveys were completed before last week’s Democratic National Convention, which devoted four days to wreathing Harris’ in Biden’s successes while ignoring the administration’s failings.)

There are legitimate questions about the counsel Harris has given the president, which would speak to the judgment she’d exercise in the Oval Office. Harris said, for instance, she was “the last person in the room” before Biden launched the deadly and chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. (Trump, of course, can’t help but exaggerate, asserting the vice president had “the final vote … the final say” in the matter.)

Exactly what kind of counsel Harris has offered Biden — and the extent to which the president has paid heed — is unknowable for now.

“It’s always confidential, always behind closed doors,” Goldstein noted. “The vice president can’t say, ‘The president was about to screw up and I told him don’t do that and the sun came out the next day.’”

If only.

What can be said is that it’s absurd to suggest that Harris wielded the power to stem inflation, secure the border, fix the country’s housing shortage and solve the myriad other problems Trump lays at her feet.

There’s a reason President Truman famously kept on his desk — and not the vice president’s — a sign reading “The Buck Stops Here.”

Surely Trump appreciates that pecking order, even if the alpha-obsessed ex-president doesn’t let on.