Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently faced massive backlash for comments made at a campaign event in New Jersey.
During the event, Trump compared the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he awarded to major campaign donor Miriam Adelson, to the Medal of Honor, the highest military award in the United States.
Trump stated that the civilian award was "better" because Adelson is a "healthy beautiful woman," whereas recipients of the Medal of Honor are often "dead or shot before being honoured."
This statement sparked outrage from various quarters. A spokesperson for Democrat Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in the November election, criticized him by saying, "The Republican knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself."
Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, whose father died in combat, called Trump a "repulsive, ignorant, megalomaniac" on X (formerly Twitter).
VoteVets, an organization supporting Democratic veterans running for office, also condemned Trump's remarks, stating that he "doesn’t respect veterans and their sacrifice."
Florent Groberg, a former soldier awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015, weighed in on the controversy. While expressing "tremendous" respect for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Groberg emphasized that the two awards are "not quite comparable" as they have "different criteria and significance."
Trump's history of making disparaging comments about military personnel further fueled the criticism. The Atlantic reported in 2020 that Trump declined to visit a US military cemetery in France, calling it "filled with losers."
His former chief of staff, John Kelly, revealed that Trump had said he didn’t want to be seen near military amputees because "it doesn’t look good for me."
Additionally, during his 2015 presidential campaign, Trump insulted then-Republican senator John McCain, who was tortured and imprisoned during the Vietnam War, by saying he preferred "people that weren’t captured."
Despite the uproar, Trump's vice-presidential pick, J.D. Vance, defended him, asserting that Trump "loves our veterans" and was not "denigrating" them but rather "saying some nice things about a person he liked."
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