WASHINGTON, Aug 17 — Donald Trump was criticised yesterday after he said the top civilian award he gave to a donor was better than the highest US military medal because his supporter remains “healthy and beautiful” while soldiers tend to be dead or shot before being honoured. At a campaign event with Jewish supporters late Thursday in New Jersey, Trump turned to Miriam Adelson and noted that during his time in the White House he’d given her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He said that Adelson — a major campaign donor and widow of the late Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson — had received an award “better” than the more famous Medal of Honour, which is only given to members of the military for acts of extreme bravery.
The civilian version is “the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honour,” Trump said, although the military award is not called “congressional.” “It’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers,” he continued. “They’re either in very bad shape, because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.
” Adelson, by contrast, “she gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman.” A spokesperson for Democrat Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in the November election, said the Republican “knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself.” Democratic congressman Dean Phillips posted on X that his father had died in combat and called.