When asked by a reporter, the former President feigned ignorance of the veterans’ backlash after he demeaned Medal of Honor recipients at his golf resort. Then he tried to walk it back, but he made things worse instead.
“Many veterans are upset about that, including here in Pennsylvania,” the reporter told Trump.
“No, I didn’t hear that,” Trump insisted. “I only heard, when I say better, I would rather in a certain way get it because people that get the Congressional Medal of Honor, which I’ve given to many, are often horribly wounded or dead.”
“They’re often dead,” he continued. “They get it posthumously. And when you get the Congressional Medal of Honor, I always consider that to be the ultimate, but it is a painful thing to get it.”
“When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s usually for other things, like you’ve achieved great success in sports or you’ve achieved great success someplace else,” he said of the award he gave to Rush Limbaugh and Jim Jordan.
“When you get the Medal of Honor, generally speaking, and I’ve met many of them, and I’ve seen the families of many of them, this is an incredible honor, but it was a statement that it’s much more painful to get because they’re oftentimes in very bad shape,” he said.
“I’ve seen them come up, and they’ve suffered greatly, whereas the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to my knowledge, I don’t think anybody’s suffered other than they’ve worked hard and they’ve done great things,” he added. “One’s a military award, one’s a civilian award, but sometimes it’s very painful to get the other.”
That went down well:
Narcissists lack empathy, so expressing gratitude to those who sacrificed themselves for our country is something he cannot do. Trump has repeatedly disparaged those who served. It’s not new.
