Washington:

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Saturday that her Republican rival Donald Trump “disrespected sacred ground” at a US military cemetery during a contentious pre-election visit.

Trump’s presence at the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery — intended to provide a campaign boost ahead of the November 5 vote — has instead mushroomed into a public dispute consuming the candidates and the military.

“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris said of Monday’s incident at the cemetery near Washington, where Trump defied the rules and posed for photos with relatives of US service members killed in Afghanistan.

In one image, he is standing with family members of a fallen Marine, posing among headstones while grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up.

“If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude,” Harris wrote on X.

‘Abruptly pushed aside’

On Thursday, the US Army issued a rare statement confirming that a cemetery staff member had been “abruptly pushed aside” after asking Trump’s team to stop filming in a burial section for those killed in recent wars, where photography for political purposes is banned.

Trump’s campaign team has gone on the offensive by describing the employee as a “despicable individual” and claiming she was suffering a mental health episode.

But the military said the staff member had “acted with professionalism” and it condemned the incident as “unfortunate.”

Trump has made criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the US retreat from Afghanistan a keynote of his campaign, arguing that he would have managed it better.

He visited the cemetery with families of some of the 13 service members killed in a 2021 bombing in Kabul during the last, chaotic hours of the US withdrawal.

Trump’s relationship with the military has long spawned controversy.

While often touting his support for the armed forces, he privately mocked the war dead while he was president and did not want to be seen near military amputees, according to his former chief of staff.

Harris’s blunt response Saturday over the cemetery incident appeared to underline her determination to take the fight directly to Trump in what is shaping up to be a bruising presidential election.

Trump has repeatedly mocked Harris’s name, intelligence, appearance and racial identity, while the Harris campaign has replied that the former president is “weird,” an aspiring dictator, and “out of his mind.”

Harris earlier faced withering criticism over the cemetery incident from Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, who has launched a series of fierce attacks against the vice president.

Apparently responding to a mistaken report that Harris had already reacted to the cemetery visit, Vance accused her of feigning outrage and said, “She can go to hell.”

“Don’t focus on Donald Trump showing up to grieve with some people who lost their children. Focus on your own job. Don’t do this fake outrage thing,” he later told the Washington Post.

At that point Harris had not publicly mentioned the cemetery visit.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Vice President Kamala Harris opened up a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and passed the torch to her, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, followed both the Republican National Convention where Trump on Thursday formally accepted his party’s nomination and the Biden announcement on Sunday he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris.

Harris, whose campaign says she has secured the Democratic nomination, led Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll, a difference within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.

Harris and Trump were tied at 44% in a July 15-16 poll, and Trump led by one percentage point in a July 1-2 poll, both within the same margin of error.

While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, just a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the U.S. Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.

The most recent poll showed 56% of registered voters agreed with a statement that Harris, 59, was “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” compared to 49% who said the same of Trump, 78.

Only 22% of voters assessed Biden that way.

Biden, 81, ended his reelection effort after a debate with Trump in which he often stammered and failed to aggressively challenge attacks by Trump that included falsehoods.

When voters in the survey were shown a hypothetical ballot that included independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harris led Trump 42% to 38%, an advantage outside the margin of error. Kennedy, favored by 8% of voters in the poll, has yet to qualify for the ballot in many states ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,241 U.S. adults nationwide, including 1,018 registered voters.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)