President honors soldiers killed in battle and pays tribute to men who died in racially motivated attack in Portland, after defending son-in-law on Sunday

Donald Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington national cemetery on Memorial Day before honoring the memory of US soldiers killed in battle.

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The occasion was dignified and calm; Trump was likely thankful for the opportunity to address something other than the array of scandals currently roiling his administration. Preceding the speech, the president also paid tribute to two men who died in a racially motivated attack in Portland, Oregon on Friday.

Over the weekend, the president returned from a relatively successful overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe to find his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner named in reports as having sought secret communications with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

At Arlington, reading from a teleprompter, the president relayed stories of several soldiers killed in battle in Afghanistan and Iraq, citing scripture and offering thanks to families who have lost loved ones in service.

“Words cannot measure the depth of their devotion,” he said, “the purity of their love or the totality of their courage. We only hope that every day we can prove worthy, not only of their sacrifice and service, but of the sacrifice of those they left behind.

“To every gold-star family who honors us with your presence: You lost sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. They each had their own names, their own stories, their own beautiful dreams, but they were all angels sent to us by god and they all share one title in common; and that is the title of hero.”

Trump, who received five draft deferments and did not serve during the Vietnam war, has often found ways in public to celebrate himself and air grievances over perceived unfairness towards him by others, especially the press. Most famously he did so in January, in a speech in front of the memorial at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Those remarks prompted criticism from some quarters for a perceived lack of respect.

On Monday, having confined himself prior to the speech to tweets about Memorial Day and one about Sunday’s North Korean missile test, Trump eschewed any digressions or distractions.

On Kushner, Trump issued a statement to the New York Times on Sunday night in which he seemed to stand by his son-in-law and the work he has done in the White House.

“Jared is doing a great job for the country,” Trump said. “I have total confidence in him. He is respected by virtually everyone and is working on programs that will save our country billions of dollars. In addition to that, and perhaps more importantly, he is a very good person.”

Kushner’s position as one of Trump’s closest advisers has come into question over the reports linking him to Russia, which have made him the most senior member of the White House staff to be named amid investigations of links between Trump aides and Russia, and Russian attempts to influence the election in Trump’s favour.

Kushner has expressed a willingness to co-operate with such investigations, with his attorney Jamie Gorelick saying last week: “Mr Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry.”

Over the weekend, the Trump administration mounted a defense of the president’s son-in-law, homeland security secretary John Kelly telling ABC that the kind of “back channel” communications reportedly sought with the Russians by Kushner were “both normal, in my opinion, and acceptable.

“Any way that you can communicate with people,” Kelly said, “particularly organizations that are maybe not particularly friendly to us, is a good thing.”

Kelly’s remarks did not address the “one president at a time” convention, by which members of a transition team are not supposed to act in policy, particularly on foreign matters, until the preceding president has left office.

Nor did the Arizona senator John McCain, a persistent Republican critic of Trump, calm troubled waters when he told an Australian radio station earlier in the day that Russian president Vladimir Putin was “the premier and most important threat” to global security, “more so than Isis”.

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On Monday morning Trump also remarked, via Twitter, on the stabbing death of two men in Portland after they intervened to stop a man who was shouting hate speech at a Muslim girl on a commuter train on Friday.

The man, who has been identified as 35-year-old white supremacist Jeremy Christian, allegedly stabbed two victims to death and wounded a third man, who is expected to survive his injuries. Christian was due to appear in court in Portland on Monday.

Calls for comment from Trump had grown over the weekend, as a candlelit vigil was held in Portland and the city’s mayor lead tributes to the men who were killed. The veteran broadcaster Dan Rather led such calls with a much-shared Facebook post, in which he asked the president to acknowledge the “brave Americans who died at the hands of someone who, when all the facts are collected, we may have every right to call a terrorist”.

A little before Trump spoke at Arlington, a tweet was posted from his less-commonly used @POTUS account, rather than personal handle @realDonaldTrump.

Trump tweeted: “The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them.”