America’s D-Day tribute this year was a national embarrassment

At 2:54 p.m. local time in Normandy, France, Pete Hegseth stood among the graves of thousands of American service members who never came home. He was there to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. But instead of focusing on the sacrifice, courage, and humanity of the young men who crossed an ocean to confront fascism, Hegseth transformed a solemn remembrance into yet another political rally. Standing on ground made sacred by those who fought and died for freedom, he compared modern immigration by sea to an invasion, bringing his anti-immigrant rhetoric into one of the most hallowed places in the Western world.Based on the events of 6-6-2026The Breakdown:Hegseth: "Different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"Why where he said it matters more than what he saidHow he used sacred ground to launder far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric, lifting the exact vocabulary of June 6, 1944, and reassigning it to migrantsThe men being honored had themselves crossed an ocean to liberate a continentThe contradiction of honoring past allies as heroes while lecturing their descendants about an alleged invasionHegseth claimed America saved Western civilization, but Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, and Canada on September 10, 1939, by its own choiceThe United States remained officially neutral until Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, more than two years after the war began in EuropeThe original America First Committee, founded in 1940, fought to keep the United States out of the war against HitlerAmerica First grew to more than 800,000 members, and its most famous voice, Charles Lindbergh, accepted a medal from Hermann Göring in 1938The ADL urged Trump to reconsider the slogan because of its history of antisemitism, xenophobia, and isolationismHegseth quoted Reagan: "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction"Why he has the threat pointed in exactly the wrong directionThe oldest authoritarian move: wrap yourself in the flag of the people who defeated the last threat, quote the heroes, stand at their gravesHow Trump marked D-Day: a fake music video of himself set to an auto-tuned song chanting "Everywhere I go, they love Donald Donald Trump"Cartoonish characters meant to represent people from Mexico, Italy, the Middle East, Africa, China, and India, with Trump's face made of pepperoni and scenes of him stuffing his face with tacosOn a day built entirely on sacrifice, the Commander in Chief's contribution was a song about how much the world adores himThe four American women buried in that cemetery: Mary Bankston, Mary Barlow, and Dolores Browne of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female Army unit to serve overseas in that warElizabeth Richardson, a Red Cross volunteer, who earned her place among America's honored deadThe men who stormed those beaches walked past the bodies of the friends who fell before them, through water turned red, and kept moving forward anyway. They did not do it alone. They did it with allies. We have been and always will be better together. An evil man has taken the wheel of our government. But he does not have the soul of the country, he never has, and he never will.This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.