Thank you President Bidne for visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France where World War One veterans are interred

Echo news reported by Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller

BELLEAU, France (AP) — President Joe Biden closed out his trip to France by paying his respects at an American military cemetery that Donald Trump notably skipped* visiting when he was president, hoping his final stop Sunday will draw the stakes of the November election in stark relief.

Before returning to the United States, Biden honored America’s war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery about an hour outside Paris. He placed a wreath at the cemetery chapel before an expanse of white headstones marking the final resting place of more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I.

It was a solemn end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil.

With headstones lying in a sweeping curve, the 42.5-acre Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918. The memorial chapel sits on a hillside, decorated with sculptured and stained-glass details of wartime personnel, equipment and insignia. Inscribed on its interior wall are 1,060 names of the missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. In 1940, during World War II the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery chapel was damaged due to heavy fighting in the vicinity. All damage was repaired except for one shell hole in the chapel, left as a reminder of what took place.

Belleau Wood adjoins the cemetery and contains many vestiges of World War I. A monument at the flagpole commemorates the valor of the U.S. Marines who captured much of this ground in 1918.

Presiddnt Biden capped off a five-day trip to France paying his respects with a wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial before returning to Washington. 

President Biden spent much of the trip to France honoring American veterans – but the subtext of Sunday’s expedition is also aimed at Trump, who scrapped his 2018, journey to the World War I memorial and later faced criticism for denigrating US veterans.

*In 2018, Trump, at the time, was in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I with other world leaders, blamed weather and safety issues for eschewing the cemetery visit. The president’s Marine One helicopter cannot fly in low cloud cover, a decision that is made by military and security officials. But there did not appear to be a backup plan, and Trump did not make any statements of regret over not being able to visit the cemetery.

CNN later reported that Trump referred to the fallen US service members at Aisne-Marne in crude and derogatory terms. A former senior Trump administration official, who declined to be named, confirmed reporting from The Atlantic magazine, which cited sources who said Trump rejected the idea of a cemetery visit and proceeded to refer to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”