Trump’s Attempt to Defend His Offensive Comments Fails Miserably

Donald Trump decided to double down rather than explain what he meant when he denigrated the military’s highest award for valor in armed service, the Medal of Honor.

Speaking with MSNBC on Saturday, the former president repeated that he believed the honor’s civilian variant, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is “better.”

“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,” Trump said. “They’re often dead, they get it posthumously.”

“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,” Trump continued. “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.”

The clarification comes after Trump, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, infuriated veterans across the country by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” because recipients of the Medal of Honor have been “hit so many times by bullets.”

The off-color comment was made all the worse by the fact that Trump made the remark to elevate one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson, a heavy-handed Republican donor and the richest Israeli in the world. Adelson and her husband, Las Vegas Sands billionaire Sheldon Adelson, earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.

Former Trump chief of staff and retired Marine General John Kelly threw out Trump’s comparison of the two honors, telling CNN Monday that the two medals are “not even close. No equivalency of any kind.”

“Think of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Vietnam, or Fallujah,” Kelly told CNN. “The Medal of Honor is earned, not won, by incredibly brave actions on the battlefield under fire typically by very young men who joined when others did not to defend their country.”

“To the service member, the oath is sacred and taken with the understanding that one could be seriously wounded, captured, or killed in living up to the words,” Kelly continued, referring to the oaths of enlistment. “No president, member of Congress, judge, or political appointee—and certainly no recipient of the Presidential Medal—will ever be asked to give life or limb to protect the Constitution. The two awards cannot be compared in any way. Not even close.”

Both comments have drawn comparisons to other disrespectful remarks Trump flung at the military during his time in office, including a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

J.D. Vance thought he made a clever remark when he compared Kamala Harris to Jeffery Epstein on Fox News Sunday, but he was wrong.

“Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, it’s like giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy,” Vance told Shannon Bream Sunday morning.

“The American people are much smarter than that. They don’t buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a fresh start. She is more of the same,” Vance added.

Far from scoring points on economic policy, Vance’s comments instead reminded everyone of Donald Trump’s associations with the notorious sexual abuser and trafficker.

It also brought attention to the fact that Trump has been using Epstein’s plane, derisively referred to as the “Lolita Express,” on the 2024 campaign trail.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention Sunday night, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called out Vance’s poor analogy, pointing out on CNN that it didn’t look good coupled with Vance’s views on abusive relationships and sexual assault.

“For this guy to mention Jeffrey Epstein when he has encouraged women to stay in relationships with domestic violence, and when he called someone getting impregnated through rape as inconvenient, is really something,” Beshear said.

When Trump was mentioned in the first release of Epstein-related documents from a decade-old lawsuit against the sex trafficker in January, Trump was uncharacteristically quiet—a sign that he may have something to hide and doesn’t want to draw attention to his relationship with Epstein. Vance’s remarks probably won’t make Trump and his campaign staff happy.

Donald Trump’s late night social media spree over the upcoming Democratic National Convention and his lackluster Pennsylvania rally had Republican strategists—and Swifties—thinking that the presidential nominee was melting down.

Trump posted at least 25 times to his Truth Social account Sunday night. In numerous separate posts, he shared A.I. images of Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing the Democrat’s team of sharing a misleading video of Trump’s crowd size at his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the day before.

Saturday was intended to be a campaign reset, but instead ended up reinforcing that Trump only knows how to personally belittle his political opponents. Jumping off script from what was supposed to be a speech on economic policy, Trump tapped back into some elementary-grade insults for the Democratic nominee, mocking her as “Comrade Kamala” and complaining that her team would use clips from the event that make it look like he’s “rambling, rambling.”

But that same old song and dance wasn’t enough for his supporters, who began to leave the 8,000-person arena before Trump even finished speaking.

Seeing unadulterated images of his own crowd size was apparently enough to send Trump into a spiral, claiming over several posts on Truth Social that Harris’s social media operation had inaccurately portrayed his turnout.

“We had to turn away lots of people yesterday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but Comrade Kamala Harris’ Social Media Operation showed empty seats, long before the Rally started, early in the afternoon when, in actuality, we had to turn away 11,500 people!” Trump wrote. “Comrade Kamala is a STONE COLD LOSER, she will FAIL and, if she doesn’t, our Country will cease to exist as we know it, turning into a Communist, Crime Ridden Garbage Dump. November 5th will be the Most Important Date in the History of the U.S.A. It’s as simple as that!…”

That didn’t sit well with political pundits and Republican strategists, who felt the hyperbolic claims and nose-wrinkling urgency made Trump look “nervous.”

“Looks like someone woke up on the gibbering barking panicked side of the bed today,” wrote Lincoln Project senior advisor Jeff Timmer.

But his waning rallies weren’t the only thing on Trump’s mind during his extended social media binge. Bizarrely, Trump also seemed to be in the mood to provoke notoriously litigious pop star Taylor Swift’s notoriously mob-minded fans, sharing an A.I.-generated image of Swift clad in red, white, and blue, posing like Uncle Sam before an American flag emblazoned with the text: “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.”

“I accept!” Trump captioned the image.

Another Swift-related post shared by the former president depicted a group of women marching in “Swifties for Trump” shirts. (The post was labeled satire by its creator.)

“It’s a good thing that Swifties are so cool with people using her image in deep fakes and using AI to make it look like Taylor Swift is doing things she’s not,” posted Republican Representative Jack Kimble. “I’m sure none of them will be mad about this.”

It’s not the first time this summer that Trump has obsessed over Swift. During a closed-door meeting between Trump and House Republicans in June—his first visit to Capitol Hill since before the January 6 insurrection—Trump insisted on discussing the pop phenom, lamenting that she might endorse President Joe Biden while he was still in the race. Days before the meeting, Variety reported that Trump had spoken at length about Swift in a one-on-one interview, describing her as “unusually beautiful.”

Swift has not yet endorsed any candidate in the 2024 election and has been notoriously close-lipped about her political beliefs throughout her career, even through the 2016 presidential election when she was rumored to be a closet Republican. That changed when she sided with Tennessee Democrats in the 2018 midterms against now-Senator Marsha Blackburn. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, Swift said that she didn’t mind getting bad press for railing against Trump, whom she described as a “homophobic racist.”

Donald Trump capped the first week of his campaign’s so-called “reset,” already punctuated with chaotic speeches that veered off topic into personal attacks against Kamala Harris, with yet another chaotic speech that veered off topic into personal attacks.

While Trump initially seemed more interested in staying on script than his previous failed forays, he still couldn’t help but shift his speech on economic issues into immature smears and complaining.

“Joe Biden hates her, okay? Hates her. You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her,” Trump said. “This was the overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow. They went out, and I spent $100 million fighting Joe Biden.”

Trump proceeded to make several asides, diverting to his same tired lines and some particularly meandering stories. At one point, he caught himself getting off topic.

“They’ll say, ‘He was rambling.’ I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble,” Trump rambled.

“Anytime I hit too hard, they say, ‘He was rambling!’ Rambling?” Trump said, incredulous.

No matter how many times his campaign may try to keep its candidate on message, Trump can’t seem to stop revisiting his worn-out attacks against Harris. He once again started talking about her laugh, claiming it was “the laugh of a lunatic.”

Trump also complained again about the photo-illustration of Harris on the cover of Time magazine, which he’d previously said made her look like the “most beautiful actress to ever live.”

Trump now claimed it was because they couldn’t get a good enough picture, and scoffed at the idea that Harris was “beautiful.”

“I am much better looking than her,” Trump said, murmuring, “Much better. Much better.”

“I am a better looking person than Kamala!” Trump shouted, as the crowd cheered. But the enthusiasm of his audience was hardly consistent.

Trump’s long-winded tales lost the crowd. He told a particularly meandering story about French president Emmanuel Macron to a mostly quiet audience. Later, he reminisced about being endorsed by renowned basketball coach Bobby Knight ahead of the 2016 election.

“He endorsed me and Indiana was mine.” Trump said, to some mild clapping.

While the former president’s lame insults may wind up his crowds, even they can’t pretend to follow his winding stories.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz showed off his football coach pep talk skills speaking to a high school football team in western Pennsylvania on Sunday.

At a campaign stop, the former high school teacher and football coach spoke on the field to Aliquippa High School football players, many of whom were likely too young to even vote, and linked the values of the sport to democracy.

“Politics isn’t that much different than this,” said Walz, who helped rebuild the Mankato West Scarlets and led them to victory in 1999. “It’s about setting a future goal and trying to reach it. It’s about doing it with dignity and hard work.”

Walz described the fourth quarter of a game where players have to trust their teammates.

“Our country’s not that different,” he continued. “Our neighbors want to be with you. Our neighbors want to do what’s right. And the more we figure out that we’re in this thing together, and we have more in common than we have separated. We’re going to do a heck of a lot better.”

He urged the students not to turn away from politics, despite political conversations feeling “pretty ugly” and “pretty negative” these days.

That negativity can be seen in many Republicans claiming that Walz is lying about coaching his winning team. One recent social media post was shared 5,000 times before it was deemed misinformation.

Clearly, the Harris campaign has a different understanding of “locker room talk” than its opponents.