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.
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