Trump says civilian award is ‘much better’ than Medal of Honor

By CNN

Published August 16, 2024 9:36 AM

CNN

By Kate Sullivan, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which honors civilians, “is actually much better” than the Medal of Honor, because service members who receive the nation’s highest military decoration are often wounded or awarded it posthumously.

Trump was praising Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom while in office, during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“Miriam, I watched (Sheldon Adelson, her late husband) 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. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor – that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump said.

“She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal,” Trump said.

It’s the latest in Trump’s history of making disparaging comments about military service. Early in his first presidential campaign, Trump attracted controversy by claiming then-Sen. John McCain — a political rival who served as a naval aviator during the Vietnam War and was imprisoned for more than five years by the North Vietnamese, during which he suffered injuries that would affect him for the rest of his life — was “not a war hero.”

“I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said at the time.

Then, in 2020, The Atlantic reported that Trump said privately during a 2018 trip to France that he did not want to visit the graves of American service members and proceeded to refer to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump has repeatedly denied making the remark.

Trump, who received five military draft deferments during the Vietnam War, also once referred to his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases as “my personal Vietnam.”

Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, condemned Trump over the comments.

“Donald Trump knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself. 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,” Chitika said in a statement.

Thursday’s event focused on combating antisemitism, and Trump was introduced by Adelson, who is Jewish and has donated millions of dollars to Trump’s reelection effort. Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, also was a major Republican donor who supported Trump.