Disgraced former President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm of criticism and controversy after saying the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a civilian award, is “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Speaking about billionaire Miriam Adelson, the widow of major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump said members of the military who receive the Medal of Honor are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
Trump decided to double down rather than explain what he meant when he denigrated the military’s highest award for valor in armed service while GOP attack dogs sought to defame the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Leaders of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, among others, reacted to the insult but 50 Republican military veterans who are members of Congress signed on to a letter to Gov. Tim Walz, condemning the Democratic vice presidential nominee for over slight inconsistencies on his military service record.
VFW National Commander Al Lipphardt issued a statement calling Trump’s comments “asinine.”
“For him to insult Medal of Honor recipients, just as he has previously attacked Gold Star families, mocked prisoners of war, and referred to those who lost their lives in service to our country as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ should remind all Americans that we owe it to our service members, our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander in chief again,” said Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika.
The Harris campaign early on referred to Walz as a “retired Command Sergeant Major,” a rank he did achieve but was moved down to master sergeant before retiring in 2005. The campaign later updated his online biography.
Walz in 2018 referred to “weapons of war, that I carried in war” when decrying gun violence, though he did not serve in a combat zone.
A spokesperson later said he “misspoke” in saying he carried weapons in war, but that he did “handle weapons of war.”
The piddling complaints appeared to be part of an effort to smear Walz the way Vietnam War hero John Kerry was defamed in 2004, by a dark money group called Swift Boat Veterans.
However, Trump’s contempt for American military forces makes such hypocrisy ineffective because it only reminds voters about the myriad insults of which the disgraced former President is guilty.
“Regardles of your politics or mine, there really is a certain finite point where the insults are unacceptable,” said Stewart Resmer, a Marine veteran who served in Vietnam and now lives in Wayne, New Jersey. ” This is one of those defining moments uttered by one such individual who knows better but did it anyway when he put a price point in dollars in exchange for the blood and sacrifice of those who selflessly serve beyond the shadows at the edge of freedoms shinning when there is no one else to do what must be done at any and all cost and forfeit their very lives.”
Tammy Duckworth — U.S. senator, a wounded Iraq war veteran, and mother — used her personal experience to take direct aim at former president Trump, calling him a “five-time draft-dodging coward” whose “anti-woman crusade has put other Americans’ right to have their own families at risk.”
After ten years of struggling with infertility, Duckworth told delegates at the Democratic National Convention that her daughters would never have been born without access to reproductive care and in-vitro fertilization.
Trump has said women who terminate their unwanted pregnancy should be punished and many Republicans are committed to banning abortion nationwide.
There are also GOP efforts to prohibit birth control, IVF and oral sex, as well as same sex marriage or even medical advice regarding reproductive health.
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura called out Trump as a “rich white boy” and the “biggest draft dodger” as he criticized the GOP presidential candidate and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, for their character, values, and disrespectful comments about military service.
Ventura, who served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, said: “Vance is doing a disservice to himself and a disservice to the United States Marine Corps. I know a lot of great Marines, and Marines show respect, and Vance is not showing respect.”
Three veterans slammed Trump as a “draft dodger” and argued he is unfit to be commander in chief earlier this year in a video marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
Marine Corps veteran Curtis Register, Army veteran Ed McCabe and Navy veteran Matthew McLaughlin participated in the minutelong video, which highlighted instances where Trump criticized veterans, has refused to attend military funerals, and ducked accountability.
“A good commander in chief is somebody who gives a shit,” Register said in the video.
“Donald Trump has zero accountability in his life,” McLaughlin said.
McCabe added, “He’s a draft dodger, simple as that.”
Trump reportedly referred to American veterans buried in France as “losers” and “suckers” and mocked then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was a prisoner in the Vietnam War. Trump has previously denied making the “suckers” remark, though it was later confirmed by his former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, who slammed his ex-boss for saying he believed the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Trump was reluctant to travel to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery where U.S. service members were buried there during World War I because he was concerned that the rain would dishevel his hair.
He canceled the planned visit a French cemetery just outside Paris in 2018, where he was to honor the Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz volunteered for 24 years as an enlisted man in the Army National Guard and served at the highest possible rank, compared with the former failed president who was a disrespectful draft dodger.
“I’d like to meet that American hero who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place. I hope he is still alive,” said Congressman Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran.
Trump — a draft dodger who has mocked Sen. John McCain, Gold Star families, and soldiers with traumatic brain injury —
Trump, who avoided serving in Vietnam a handful of times, including once for bone spurs, has long come under fire for mocking McCain in 2015 by saying the Navy pilot “was not a hero.”
McCain was captured and tortured for years after his plane was shot down in Vietnam, but Trump said he liked “people who weren’t captured.”
Trump has also attacked veterans and Gold Star families when they’ve not supported him, including Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who spoke out against Trump’s divisive rhetoric at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Their son, Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004 after engaging a suicide bomber.
After more than five dozen troops were being treated for traumatic brain injuries sustained during the missile strike that killed Iranian military and intelligence commander Qassem Soleimani, Trump spewed more nonsense.
“I don’t consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen,” the president has said, describing the impact as “headaches.”
Trump was golfing the day the body of 25-year-old Army Sgt. La David Johnson was returned to Dover Air Force Base after the honorary Green Beret died along with Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright during an ISIS ambush in Niger.
Trump told Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” according to Rep. Frederica Wilson, who said she heard part of the conversation on speakerphone.
The pregnant widow said that the phone call she received from Trump before meeting her husband’s body at Dover Air Force Base made her more upset as he struggled to remember her spouse’s name.
“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out there fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” Myeshia Johnson told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And that made me cry even more.”