The Harris-Walz campaign quickly criticized Trump's remarks on social media, writing that the former president “knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself” Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Former President 's recent comments about the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the military's Medal of Honor have quickly sparked controversy. Trump compared the two awards after he was introduced on stage by former Medal of Freedom recipient Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-American physician and one of Trump's biggest donors, during a New Jersey campaign event about antisemitism, according to and . “I watched [Adelson's late husband] sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom," Trump said as he took the stage after the introduction, per the outlets.
"That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian.” He went on to say that the award he gave Adelson was the civilian “equivalent" of the Medal of Honor — the highest military award given to soldiers and armed forces who show valor in combat — and added that he believed obtaining the Medal of Freedom was “much better.” Related: "[The] civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers.
They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead," he said, per NBC News. “She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman,” he added, referri.