I am really, really angry about our former President’s comments that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor.

Most of you have watched or listened to what he said a few days ago, speaking of the 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. 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. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”  

She is the equal of soldiers who are “hit so many times by bullets or they are dead?”

What is it with this guy who shows no respect for honor, courage, or sacrifice, whose vacuousness regularly produces such instantly cringeworthy observations as his discussion of the Battle of Gettysburg?—

“What an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable—I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways.  Gettysburg, Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee—who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor—‘Never fight uphill me boys, never fight uphill.’  They were fighting uphill. He said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.” He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’  But it was too late”

Civil War historians have never found any verification that a native Virginian ever sounded like a native of Ireland in encouraging his soldiers to fight.  Uphill, downhill, or on flat land. Or that he said anything such as that or—

According to Trump, Lee said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.”

Wow?  Here is part of Lee’s report of the battle:

“The highest praise is due to both officers and men for their conduct during the campaign. The privations and hardships of the march and camp were cheerfully encountered, and borne with a fortitude unsurpassed by our ancestors in their struggle for independence, while their courage in battle entitles them to rank with the soldiers of any army and of any time.”

Lee lost. He did not say wow.  But he did honor his troops, living and dead, in the full report.

Sixty-four Union soldiers received the Medal of Honor for actions at Gettysburg.

Or his extensive knowledge of the American Revolution, shared in a July 4^th speech in 2019 when he educated his audience this way:

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their Star Spangled Banner waved defiant.”

Fort McHenry and the Francis Scott Key’s poem about the flag are from the War of 1812, not the revolution.  And—what is his definition of “rampart.”  And seizing the airports????!!!

(There was no Medal of Honor in the American Revolution. George Washington established a Badge of Military Merit, the first medal applying to private soldiers, in 1782. The medal today is awarded for reasons Washington did not mention and is known since its formal establishment 150 years later as the Purple Heart.)

I’m getting too worked up as I go back over the uncounted instances of disrespect for those who have worn our country’s uniforms and the historical and scientific gibberish that he thinks is clever and smart and that far too many people who must be a whole lot smarter than him accept anyway. Let me get back to what I started to write.

I am not a veteran.  But I cannot describe the depth of gratitude that I have for veterans, whether they came under enemy fire or whether they were a clerk at a stateside base. I was honored to be asked to work with a dedicated group made up of veterans and Gold Star Family members (Gold Star families are those who have lost loved ones in wartime) to build a Gold Star Family Memorial Monument near the Capitol a few years ago. I provided the words carved into the memorial’s stones.

The Chairman of that group was my State Representative, Dave Griffith, a Special Forces veteran who has spent most of his life in positions of service to the public. We differ on some political issues—some—but that has not affected our friendship and our working on some legislation for next year that will restore millions of dollars in funding for our state veterans homes and for other causes.  It is an honor to associate with people such as him.  And it is that kind of respect that leaves me so angry when someone such as our 45^th President diminishes the Medal of Honor and disrespects those who have received it as well as those who have served honorably whether on the front lines or in the back offices.

There seems to be nothing this candidate cannot cheapen with his words and his actions. He awarded 24 Presidential Medals of Freedom, fourteen of them to sports figures. He interrupted one of his State of the Union speeches to give one to Rush Limbaugh. The quotation at the start of this entry refers to the award to Miriam Adelson, a doctor known for her humanitarian work and donations to Jewish organizations.  But probably more important to him is that she and her late husband donated $20 million to his 2016 campaign and another five-million dollars to his inauguration fund, then a half-million more to a legal fund for Trump aides, another $100 million that went to conservative groups and Republican candidates in 2018. Open Secrets, which watches political donations, says the Adelson’s total giving to these causes and to a pro-Trump political action committee is close to $220 million dollars in 2019 and 2020. She’s also “a healthy and beautiful woman,” which most of us would not consider a qualification for a presidential medal.

Here’s an important difference between those who get the Medal of Freedom and those who receive the Medal of Honor:

Military members are encouraged to salute a Medal of Honor recipient who is wearing the medal, even if that person is wearing civilian clothes. The military custom is for junior offices to salute senior officers.  But the Medal of Honor recipient is entitled to receive a salute from anyone, regardless of rank.

No Medal of Freedom winner is entitled to that show of respect. The former President is correct that many recipients of the Medal of Honor are dead or have dealt with serious wounds.  To say that they are entitled to less respect from the President of the United States than someone who hits a baseball, shoots a basketball, hits a golf ball, or carries a football is unforgiveable—or gives a lot of money to his campaign and also is a good-looking woman—is beyond forgivable.

It is best to stop here rather than go on with the altercation at Arlington that was as much about honoring soldiers killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal (that he planned while in office) as staging a photo op at a D.C. church was about sincerely-held faith.

NO, ON SECOND THOUGHT IT IS NOT BEST TO STOP.

The above material was written last Wednesday.  On Thursday, he blamed the Arlington controversy on “very bad people” and suggested that the Gold Star families he was with made the video of the event public, not members of his campaign staff who have been accused of pushing a cemetery staffer out of the way when she tried to enforce the no-politicking rule for the area out of the way.

“This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington. These are bad people we’re dealing with,” he told an interviewer in Michigan. “They ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning. The one thing I get is plenty of publicity… I don’t need the publicity.”

If he didn’t need the publicity, why did he have a video crew with him?

The Army has confirmed that the shoving incident happened when the staffer tried to keep a Trump campaign aide out of the area that has strict rules about media presence. The area is for recently-buried service members and regulations published by the Army and Arlington National Cemetery prohibit political activity there. The Washington Post reported that “ahead of the visit, Arlington National Cemetery officials had warned Trump’s team that he could visit the grave sites, but not as part of a campaign event. The cemetery made clear that while media could accompany Trump to a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they could not accompany him into Section 60.”

Officials have told The New York Times the woman refused to press chages because “she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.”  Trump Campaign Press Secretary Steven Cheung says she is “suffering from a mental health issue,” and senior adviser Chris LaCivita has called her a “despicable individual.

Trump’s campaign social media site shortly afterwards posted several pictures and videos that were taken during the visit, including a recording of him blaming President Biden for the deaths of American soldiers in the final hours of our occupation of Afghanistan.

When asked by NBC if his campaign should have published the images, Trump gave his familiar excuse: he knew “nothing about” that.  And when the reporter bored in with another question, he suggested parents of the dead servicemen distributed the images.

On HIS social media??????.

“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it, It could have been them – it could have been the parents.”  When pressed even more, he said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”

There is a terrible irony to this deplorable incident at Arlington:

A 1998 law allows Trump, if he wishes, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery—-

—-the burial place of more than 400 recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Surely, he wouldn’t——

would he?

(This entry was changed on September 2, 2024 to include Maggie Haberman’s post on X)