Donald Trump has angered veterans by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor.
The Republican presidential nominee, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, denigrated the value of the Medal of Honor at a campaign event in New Jersey Thursday night by claiming that the award’s civilian variant is “much better.” According to Trump, that’s because the military medal’s recipients, who receive the honor for valor in combat, are usually “in very bad shape” since they’ve been “hit so many times” by bullets.
“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” Trump said , mistakenly referring to the honor bestowed for valor in combat. “But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
Trump mentioned the award after he was introduced by one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson , a heavy-handed Republican donor who became the richest Israeli in the world after her husband, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, died in 2021. The couple earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.
Four years later, the Adelsons eclipsed their previous spending on the pro-Israel politico with a $90 million donation, and gave $300 million to Republican-focused Senate and congressional Leadership Funds, outspending the next three donors combined, according to Intelligencer .
“She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she got it for—and that’s through committees and everything else,” Trump said, referring to Adelson. “I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
The comments rubbed veterans the wrong way, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”
Veterans for Responsible Leadership, a bipartisan super PAC, highlighted the clip from Thursday’s event, writing on X that Trump believes the Medal of Honor is “secondary to the medal he gives his billionaire funders.”
“He doesn’t care about our military or their sacrifices,” they added.
Retired Navy intelligence officer and veterans’ advocate Travis Akers felt similarly, posting on Friday that Trump’s comments were “like a fever dream.” In a separate post, Akers said Trump’s remarks were “disgusting” and “offensive on so many levels.”
“I am still trying to wrap my head around how grossly and despicably Donald Trump insulted Medal of Honor recipients last night,” Akers said.
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