August 19, 2024 11:48 AM UTC

Trump's Insane Slam On The Medal Of Honor Leaves Pueblo Asking WTF

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• by: Colorado Pols

CBS News‘ James LaPorte reports on comments from ex-President Donald Trump last Thursday that have outraged veterans and sent Trump’s cable news surrogates scrambling for acceptable explanations–certainly not the first time that Trump has bizarrely disparaged Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the nation, but in clear terms that make it impossible to say he “misspoke.”

Former President Donald Trump received an immediate backlash Thursday when he said the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to Dr. Miriam Adelson, the widow of Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, was “equivalent” and “much better” than the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for bravery in combat…

“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” said Trump as he spoke from the podium in front of multiple American and Israeli flags.

He added, “It’s actually much better because everyone 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 are dead. [Pols emphasis] She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

Trump’s dim view of Medal of Honor recipients is consistent with numerous other statements he has allegedly made in the past about fallen American servicemen, like calling Americans who died in World War II “suckers” and “losers” and claiming former Sen. John McCain was “only a war hero because he was captured.” These are not isolated gaffes, but an expression of sincerely-held contempt consistent over the course of many years.

On Saturday, after the furor escalated the previous day with veteran’s groups across the country condemning Trump’s statements, Trump was given the chance to explain himself, which is any case other than Trump’s would mean an apology for attacking one of the nation’s most revered honorees. And of course, not only did Trump not apologize, but he doubled down as only Trump can:

“The Presidential Medal of Freedom, to my knowledge, I don’t think anybody suffered,” [Pols emphasis] Trump said in an interview after his rally on Saturday, attempting to clarify comments made on Thursday. “People [who] get the Congressional Medal of Honor, which I’ve given to many, are often horribly wounded or dead. They’re often dead, they get it posthumously. And when you get the Congressional Medal of Honor, I always consider that to be the ultimate — but it is a painful thing to get it.”

He added, “When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s usually for other things, like you’ve achieved great success in sports, or you’ve achieved great success someplace else … I don’t think anybody suffered, other than they’ve, you know, they worked hard, and they’ve done great things.”

So first of all, while it’s true that recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom are often actors, athletes, and wealthy political donors, there are other recipients like Holocaust survivors and Dr. Martin Luther King., Jr. who most certainly did suffer earning this recognition. But more important to the current discussion, Trump is making it abundantly clear, again, that the sacrifice made by soldiers in war is not as worthy as what Trump considers success. Here’s what VoteVets had to say in response:

It isn’t a one-off insult of our Troops and our Veterans. It started when he got out of Vietnam by lying about bone spurs, continued on when he tried to kick Veteran vendors off of 5th Avenue, insulted John McCain, insulted Gold Star Families, called our fallen suckers and losers, refused to go to a military cemetery, told the military to stop having wounded warriors perform at ceremonies because “nobody wants to see that.” It isn’t just that Donald Trump doesn’t respect Veterans and their sacrifice. It’s that Donald Trump hates Veterans and their sacrifice, because he looks so small in comparison to them.

Here in Colorado, in addition to a large population of active-duty and retired military personnel who call our state home, the politically swingable city of Pueblo in southern Colorado is known as the “Home of Heroes” in honor of not just the four recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor who called Pueblo their hometown, but every soldier who received what is commonly referred to as the nation’s highest honor. Trump’s disparagement of the Medal of Honor is something that every Pueblo-area Republican candidate should have to answer for, being such an integral component of the city’s brand.

And Pueblo isn’t where the questions should end. CO-08 candidate Gabe Evans, running heavily on his military service, needs to go on record either condemning Trump’s comments about Medal of Honor recipients or (more likely) making J.D. Vance-style excuses for them. Either way, this will tell a significant number of Colorado voters what they need to know.

How many more sacred conservative cows can Trump skewer before November? And when, if ever, will Republicans run out of excuses?