Trump made the disparaging comment during an event at his New Jersey golf club — his latest in a documented pattern of insulting service members and veterans
While addressing Jewish supporters gathered at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — an event meant to center on fighting antisemitism — Donald Trump said that a civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor because soldiers who are recognized are “in very bad shape … or they’re dead.”
The insulting remark was made as the former president lauded Miriam Adelson, a billionaire and widow of longtime Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Miriam has continued to to dump millions into Trump’s campaign following Sheldon’s death in 2021. The former president awarded Miriam with the Medal of Freedom in 2018, for work as a doctor and her donations to facilities treating drug addiction.
“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Trump said on Thursday evening. “That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor,” Trump added, referring to the highest military honor given 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 continued. “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.”
In 2020, The Atlantic reported that Trump privately disparaged U.S. service members and veterans during a trip to France in 2018 for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I and reportedly called Marines who died at Belleau Wood “suckers” and soldiers who were buried at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery “losers.”
