Loose Lips Sink Ships (Or Campaigns)
Trumps undercuts current messaging & brings up past military service controversies
The most common constructive criticism Republicans offer to former President Trump is “stay focused on the issues.” … OK, your collective eye rolls are so powerful that they have broken time and space, allowing me to see them as I write that lead sentence. Anyway, once again Trump has shown us both why that is so necessary and also why it’s unlikely to happen.
As James and I have both written about, one of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J. D. Vance’s primary attacks on his direct opponent, Tim Walz, has been over the Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate’s representation of his military service. To the degree such an attack makes sense, Vance was the right person to voice it given his military service. That’s especially true because Trump has a problematic history regarding the US Military.
While Trump benefits from the overall conservative leanings of many current and former armed services members, he also dodged the draft for Vietnam and used that war as a punchline in jokes about his sex life. He’s been accused of being callous when interacting with grieving military families. Trump has a fixation on Soviet-style military parades. He pardoned former military members convicted of war crimes. He attacked fellow Republican John McCain over his service. He chose not to participate in joint remembrances of WWII soldiers in France. And, by the accounts of his own Chief of Staff, Trump degraded military service when outside the public eye. If John Kelly’s accounts are correct, it appears the former President cannot understand on a core level the idea of sacrificing one’s life for their country.
Given all that baggage, you would expect the former President to know to avoid this issue. But once again, as Trump loves to remind us, don’t expect a snake to change its nature. Which leads us to this comment:
Here is a breakdown of the comment and its context from CBS News:
Speaking at a campaign event intended to discuss antisemitism, Trump was introduced by Miriam Adelson, a wealthy Republican donor and widow of Sheldon Adelson, who pumped millions of dollars of his own money into electing Republican candidates. He died in 2021.
“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Trump said at his New Jersey resort.
“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor,” Trump continued, referring to the highest military honor bestowed for valor in combat. The Medal of Honor is often mistakenly called the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“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 concluded. “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.”
So again, Trump (1) said the Presidential Medal of Freedom is much better than the Medal of Honor, and (2) the reason its better is it goes to civilians who didn’t need to be injured or killed to get the award. The Republican nominee for President casually denigrated the sacrifice of heroic soldiers, while, at the same time his Vice Presidential Candidate is denigrating the career of a veteran.
What’s also notable is why Trump most likely chose to say those words–he’s fawning over Miriam Adelson in an attempt to repair a rift he reportedly caused in one of his many mercurial moments. From The Independent:
Donald Trump’s inner circle is working to clean up the “mess” the former president created after he reportedly instructed an aide to send a string of angry text messages to a megadonor in the heat of an angry moment.
The former president has apparently engaged in some “erratic behavior” recently, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, in part due to the stress of the atypical presidential race.
That includes having his aide send texts to Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and eighth richest woman in the world, complaining that the super PAC she funds, which has poured millions of dollars into supporting Trump, was being run by RINOs – Republicans in name only.
“This caused a lot of concern that she was going to scale back her giving,” Haberman told CNN host Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday.
Haberman reported for The New York Times that Trump’s decision to rattle off angry messages at Adelson was partly encouraged by Ike Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment and a Trump megadonor, who hoped Adelson would contribute to a super PAC he backs.
So for those keeping notes, Trump denigrated Medal of Honor winners in hopes of restoring a damaged relationship with a significant campaign donor… who had already gotten a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump for being a significant campaign donor.
In doing so, Trump also provided his opponents an opportunity to discuss how in the past he said of wounded and dead soldiers things like:
- “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
- “Why should I go to that [military] cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
- “I don’t get it. What was in it for [these soldiers killed in war]?”
- Those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all “suckers because there is nothing in it for them.”
- Avoided being photographed with military amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.”
At least, when news of those quotes came out, Trump supporters were able to hand-wave the private comments away as lies told by an aggrieved former Chief of Staff (he hires the best people, doesn’t he). However, public comments like the one recently made make it a lot harder to suggest that Trump really “loves the Troops.”
Will this cause MAGA military folks to abandon the former President? Not at all. Like most of the President’s strong supporters, they will find a way to explain away these “unfair” attacks on the former President (otherwise, they might have to move on from outrage and anger).
However, in an election that increasingly looks like it will be more about turning out past supporters than converting independents, these could lead some Veterans who have voted for Trump in the past to stay home or write in a candidate. With margins so close, that is something his campaign cannot afford.
Futher, I expect these undisciplined gaffes to continue, especially as Trump seems to have decided that the only way to regain some ground against Kamala Harris is to do more rallies and media events.
When Trump is speaking to a crowd, he’s constantly scanning the room, trying to determine how a particular line or point is going over. That’s the main reason he seems so scattered when we watch video clips of a speech – he’s seen someone shake their head or give a thumb’s up, and he veers away from something or repeats it to get another thumb’s up.
The GOP idea that he should talk about (bwahahahaha) policy is code for stick to the damn script, FFS, and stop reacting to what’s in front of you. To Trump, this means his own campaign doesn’t understand the special bond he has with his supporters, and he resists the advice with all his energy. Because he knows, deep down in what passes for his heart, that he’s right and they’re not.
If you’re on the Trump campaign team, November is a few decades away. Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!
@Not the IT Dept.: I think you are being generous to Trump here. He has gotten more and more scattered over the years and I think it’s a sign of creeping senility. I’ve dealt with people in decline who become verbose and this is how they talk, with every word they say pinging something else in their brain. That pinging happens to everyone, all the time but in these cases the ping isn’t suppressed but immediately spoken, which causes another ping, and so on until there’s a pachinko machine with a hundred pinballs cascading in their heads and pouring out through their mouths. That’s what Trump sounds like to me.
But even if you can argue that instead it is just a side effect of his strategy, how do you explain the comment “it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many…”? I mean, I’ve long argued that Trump is and always has been a stupid person, but even he is not stupid enough to think this will play well with anyone. To me it is obvious that he is simply speaking aloud one of those random thoughts pinging around in his brain, because he no longer has even the most basic control of what he is saying once he gets rolling.
The fact that so many people actually vote for a guy who says these kinds of things is the sign of a nation ripe for God’s wrath.
Trump knows what he is: the star of a cult of personality. He knows the culties have no interest in policy or patriotism, they are evangelical Christian apostates, guys who can’t get laid, women bitter that their life choices didn’t work out, crypto-suckers and Klansmen. They are united by resentment and entitlement and incoherent rage. WTF does any of that have to do with economic policy? WTF does it have to do with foreign policy, or environmental policy? MAGA is a clown car of creeps and morons engaging in an obscene rage orgy.
Trump is their evil Elvis. He knows he’s an entertainer, a charismatic preacher, not a leader, of course he’ll play to the audience. His ‘advisers’ are idiots – Elvis doesn’t do policy, he squeezes his fat ass into a white jump suit and croaks out the hits for his shrinking audience.
@MarkedMan: “But even if you can argue that instead it is just a side effect of his strategy…”
I argue no such thing. Whatever the hell he’s doing up there at a podium, it doesn’t have even a nodding acquaintance with strategy. When he can’t see a crowd reacting to him, he gets angry and edgy and insulting. That’s who he is, and has been since 2012.
And this doesn’t mean he’s also not mentally falling apart. That’s pretty clear too. But it’s too easy just to handwave it away by saying all of it’s based on dementia. There are reasons why he does particular things. When he goofed around with the food products beside him yesterday, it was his way of rebelling against his campaign team and their nagging at him. I’m sure some people in the audience laughed and he reacted to that.
It’s disgusting on several levels. Giving the Medal of Freedom to her? And to Rush Limbaugh?!
Maybe someone with a megaphone bigger than mine can stop letting Trump’s strong supporters get away with this anymore. His surrogates need to be forced to explain their continued advocacy for this scumbag Every. Time. They. Speak. In. Public.
I don’t know what to call it other than The System, but somehow the press, the polled public, and one of our two major political parties came together to correct for Biden being… old. But, it has become accepted that the press, the polled public, and the other of our major political parties can’t do anything about Trump being demented, horrid, and megalomaniacal.
@Scott F.:
That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and I honestly have no working theories for why this isn’t happening other than a sort of “sunk cost fallacy” on the part of all parties. In other words, everyone has allowed such behavior to continue, uncommented upon, for so long that changing course now would require admitting that their complicit role in contributing to said behavior. And no one is prepared to do that.
Also, in keeping with yesterday’s post on Haley, let’s not forget that she also criticized Trump on this topic before jumping on board:
@Michael Reynolds: yes, there are some A.I. pictures around of Trump as Fat Elvis…(oh, the eyeballs!)
@Matt Bernius:
My working theories are under formed as well, but I would humbly submit that we start by doing away with any suggestions of homogeneity. The Republicans have agency. The political press has vested interests.
I absolutely agree that forced admission of complicity is the rocky row to be hoed. But, the time has come to stop explaining why that’s not happening and start blaming those who are refusing to go there.
@reid: The modern Republican Party has no values or standards. Congressional Medal of Freedom? It’s a party favor to be given to big donors. Judgeships? The only question that matters is, will they do what the Federalist Society patrons want them to do. Congressional Investigations? Shams and grandstanding, and only against their real or perceived opposition.
It was all inevitable. This is the way the Deep South was run, and the Republicans have been subsumed by the Deep South and so essentially moved their governance philosophy in retrograde to match 1950’s Alabama. It’s ironic that some of the Deep South states (Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina) have made substantial moves away from this “all things flow from and to the big man” mentality.
@Scott F.:
Thanks for the feedback.
I want to stress that I did not intend to suggest either homogeneity of rationales or lack of agency across the board. I also think there are a number of different structural incentives that are leading various actors to continue their behaviors.
I also suspect there are some unconscious reasons for perpetuating the behavior as well.
That said, I also think that many of those different factors can still be grouped (if not fully reduced) to sunk cost fallacies that are helping perpetuate the behavior.
Trump is a draft dodger that fled the US to Canada.
MT PoliticsGirl parrots the approved progressive socialist Wikipedia narrative for Swiftboating.[Edit: I’m following my approved progressive socialist Wikipedia directives to remove all off topic, gish gallop links. — mb]
@Michael Reynolds: “Trump is their evil Elvis.” Masterful
@Not Popehat:
Welcome back Paul L. We don’t care about your latest off topic gripe with someone on social media or the MidasTouch Network. And we’re doing fine on gish gallops, thank you.
Stay on topic or your posts will be deleted/edited. In the meantime progressive socialist Wikipedia editing of your comments will continue to happen until you learn to stay on topic. Think of it as practice for your eventual placement in the reeducation camps.*
* – to be clear, since reading comprehension isn’t your thing, there was an intended “/s” or “sarcastic” following that comment about reeducation camps. And no, this is not some type of weird mind game to cover up plans for actual reeducation camps. It was just a bad joke. I am serious that rather than blocking you, I will edit any off-topic comments on my posts. I can’t speak for how James or Steven choose to deal with having you back.
[You were warned. My socialist communist Soros based agenda has no time for you gish galloping complaints intended to get us to notice you. You have your own blog, complain about how mean we are to you there or on twitter.
Again, if you post what I, and most humans, consider to be on topic I’ll leave it. But low energy, self-indulgent gish gallop windups followed by whining about my decisions are definitely not on topic. – mb]
@Not Popehat [Paul L.]:
I have a question. When Trump loses, what are you going to do with yourself, and who’s your next cult leader?
@Not Popehat [Paul L.]: Trump didn’t need to flee to Canada to avoid the draft. He had enough money to pay a doctor to diagnose bone spurs and probably his dad had enough stroke with the draft board to get them to take the diagnosis at face value.
I didn’t need to flee to Canada to avoid the draft either. I had enough money to go to college and remain there through the end of the active draft for Vietnam. But the draft has never been about anything other than conscripting the powerless into service. Even in Lincoln’s day, men who were rich enough could purchase an exemption by paying a fine for not serving and
buying the service of a poor manconvincing another person to go in their place.Also of note: his sucking up to Alderson was a day after he endorse a Holocaust denier for the NC governor’s race.
Hey all, a request–since Not Popehat/Paul L. hasn’t opted to post again, let’s not feed him more than is needed.
I mean, I’m happy to remove any reference to Trump’s draft dodging from the article, and the point remains the same. There is overwhelming evidence that (a) he cannot control himself in any way that will bring focus to the campaign, (b) he has no actual respect for active troops or veterans. That goes doubly so if they were wounded, and (c) who he is most concerned about are people who give him money.
People can choose to do with that as they please. If their choice is to try to distract you from that with cheap online tricks in order to “help” themselves feel better, I think that only demonstrates how much they are unwilling to deal with their own personal pain.
@Matt Bernius: My apologies.
If the Felon supporters want to reveal El Felón fled to Canada to avoid the draft, let them.
Trump may “stay focused on the issues.”
As my father used to say regarding unlikely eventualities:
“Yeah, and my arse is a kipper.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
No worries. Just trying to avoid an unproductive pile on.
It’s remarkable really: Sunak only had to leave the D-Day commemorations early to be buried in a storm of anger and derision.
(I have a private theory with some polling support, that this led a lot of Tory wavering voter to break away; either to Reform on the right, or to the Lab/LibDem centre-left, or to abstain)
But Trump actively scorns the military, and the Republican base seems unbothered.
Weird.
@JohnSF:
You know that the main reason Trump said the Medal of Freedom is much, much better is that he, the president, gets to award it.
@CSK: I think you meant to say is that while both are awarded at the Whitehouse by the President, unlike the MoH, the president gets to select who receives the Medal of Freedom.
@a country lawyer:
Indeed I did.
@MarkedMan: Trump’s narcissism also comes into play. Because he would never sacrifice his life or physical health for his country, he thinks that the only people who would are suckers.
It also helps explain his “Kamala’s not black” comments. Yeah, he thinks he’s scoring points with black voters by saying it, but imo he really thinks it, too. You know how he often says, “Nobody knows that blah, blah, blah” about something that many people actually do know? It’s because he recently learned it, and assumed that if he didn’t know it, nobody else did either. So he donated to Harris years ago, and I assume the photo of her in a sari with her Indian family was sent out as part of a donor thank you (when he tweeted the photo, he thanked her for sending it to him). He saw the photo and presumed she was Indian, without realizing that she is also black. So when he found out she was black, he assumed that nobody else knew this, and therefore Harris was either denying her blackness in the past, or lying about it now.
@Matt Bernius:..troll patrol…
I try to starve the trolls as best I can. My rational take is that if I don’t respond to their bait maybe they will abandon these threads.
Who am I kidding?
It is more a test of my self restraint than any real hope of exorcising the likes of Paul L and the other righteous rascals from OTB.
I believe your approach of editing or deleting any off topic comments is a very workable solution to the dilemma at hand.
@~Chris:
If “God’s wrath” was a thing, we’d have been toast millennia ago. Nobody’s that long-suffering. Nobody.
Please delete this post and apologise. President Trump does indeed prize courage when awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Consider, for example, the peroration of his statement awarding the Medal to one of America’s greatest civilian warriors:
Few Medal of Honor winners have done anything approaching the sustained bravery and patriotism of the CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group.
The situation was humorous at one time. But not no more. Miriam Adelson and Rush Limbaugh getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom is akin to getting the Congressional Medal of Honor for paying a conscript to take your place in the draft. They gave a tiny bit of their huge surplus. It makes a mockery of those who do for others without counting cost. So what else can be expected of Trump or those who support him. Money means more to them than doing the right thing. Political prostitutes.