Both presidential tickets are facing backlash from the other side for comments about U.S. veterans and military service.
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump was discussing GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson, whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can receive, in 2018, and he compared it to service members who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions.
“It’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers,” Trump said during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal.”
“As a veteran and a leader in helping our wartime allies, I can’t think of anything more disheartening than the way Trump talks about both,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who founded the #AfghanEvac group, which continues to advocate and assist Afghan refugees.
Matt Zeller, a senior adviser with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the co-founder of No One Left Behind, said, “Trump denigrating the Medal of Honor is but in a long line of his contempt for the military and veterans.”
Trump’s remarks were at an event focused on combating antisemitism, and he was introduced by Adelson.
“Donald Trump knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself,” the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement. “For him to insult Medal of Honor recipients, just as he has previously attacked Gold Star families, mocked prisoners of war, and referred to those who lost their lives in service to our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander in chief again.”
“I’m just shocked that any current member of the military or a veteran would support him because he’s continually demeaned military service,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a New York delegate for Vice President Kamala Harris, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s called them as we’ve heard, suckers and losers. What he said about John McCain, he likes servicemen who aren’t captured and become prisoners of war. I mean, just it’s the constant demeaning of it. It’s quite apparent he has no respect for the military or the individuals that are in it. But yesterday’s statement is just a continuation. These aren’t one-offs. This isn’t just someone saying something once and then apologizing for it. This is a gentleman, and I use that term loosely, who continually says negative things about military service. And I just don’t understand how anyone who’s served in the military currently or in the past would support him, because it’s quite apparent he has no respect for them.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, spent four years in the Marine Corps as an enlisted combat correspondent in public affairs, and he deployed to Iraq for about six months.
Trump “is a guy who loves our veterans and who honors our veterans,” Vance told the Milwaukee Police Association on Friday. “I don’t think him complimenting and saying a nice word about a person who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom is in any way denigrating those who received military honors. They’re two different awards, and I think the president was saying some nice things about a person that he liked, and that’s a totally reasonable thing to do.”
Trump has also denied a 2020 Atlantic report that he privately said he did not want to visit the graves of service members killed in action, referring to them as “losers” and “suckers.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the Democratic vice presidential nominee who served more than two decades in the National Guard, has faced questions surrounding whether he misrepresented himself since his retirement as having fought in combat in Afghanistan.
He served from April 8, 1981, to May 16, 2005, though his unit got orders to deploy to Iraq about two months later. Walz has faced accusations that he abandoned his unit, and the attacks, which have resurfaced since Harris picked him to be her running mate, date back to his previous campaigns.
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When he retired in May 2005, Walz was the command sergeant major for the battalion, but he retired as a master sergeant because he did not complete the additional coursework required at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.
The Trump campaign has accused him of stolen valor.
Marisa Schultz contributed to this report.