Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has once again come out in defense of controversial remarks made by his running mate, former president Donald Trump.
When speaking to the Milwaukee Police Association on Friday, Vance—who spent four years in the Marines and served a tour in Iraq in 2005 as a combat correspondent—attempted to soften Trump’s recent remarks diminishing the importance of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The medal, which has been around for more than 150 years, is the country’s highest award for military valor in action. Trump equated that award with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
During a campaign event Thursday at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump called out to Miriam Adelson in the crowd.
Adelson, a prominent Republican donor and casino magnate who has an estimated net worth of $32.3 billion, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 by Trump. During his failed 2020 bid for office, Adelson and her husband donated $90 million to Preserve America, a super PAC dedicated to electing Trump.
This time around, she’s slated to give even more.
“We gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Trump began. “It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version.” He then goes on to say that freedom award is “actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, 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,” Trump continued, noting that the two awards are “rated equal.”
The former president may have been using the moment to make nice with Adelson after he reportedly had an aide send her a slew of angry text messages last month, according to The New York Times.
“This is a guy who loves our veterans and who honors our veterans,” JD Vance said of Trump on Friday, claiming that he hadn’t seen the full remarks. “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,” Vance continued. “They are two different awards. And I think the president was saying some nice things about a person that he liked and that is a totally reasonable thing to do.”
“The veteran community is very, very much behind Donald Trump,” Vance said after mentioning a meeting he had with veterans in Pennsylvania.
Veterans across the nation have denounced Trump’s recent remarks and critiqued Vance for endorsing his running mate’s actions as a veteran himself.
Veterans of Foreign Wars—a nonprofit serving active, guard, and reserve forces that has previously denounced language that Trump has used when discussing veterans—called the former president’s comments “asinine.”
“When a candidate to serve as our military’s commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor and those who have earned it, I must question whether they would discharge their responsibilities to our men and women in uniform with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position,” the organization said in a statement, adding that Trump “should frankly already know better.”
In an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Iraq war veteran and co-founder of the veterans advocacy group VoteVets.org Jon Soltz said of Vance: “Totally respect his service, but he’s a fraud.”
