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Former Trump Chief of Staff and retired Marine General John Kelly criticized the former president Donald Trump on Monday for recent comments downplaying the importance of the Medal of Honor.
Trump made the remarks during a speech on Thursday when he recalled awarding the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom to a major conservative donor. Miriam Adelsonand said the award was “much better” than the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military award.
He told the crowd:
It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. But in a civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, so soldiers who are either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit by bullets so many times or they’re dead. (Adelson) gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.
Kelly, who was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told CNN that the awards “don’t even come close” and that they have “no equivalence whatsoever.” He told the network: “The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded for good deeds or, in rarer cases, other considerations, but they don’t even come close.”
Kelly emphasized the importance of the Medal of Honor, saying it is “not won but earned, through incredibly brave acts on the battlefield under fire, typically by very young men who joined the Army when others would not, to defend their country.”
He added: “No president, no member of Congress, no judge or political official – and certainly no recipient of the Presidential Medal – is ever asked to give his life or health to protect the Constitution. The two awards cannot be compared in any way. Not even close.”
Kelly’s counterargument represents another point of contention between the retired general and his former boss.
Kelly famously came under fire from the former president after he echoed Trump’s infamous denigration of U.S. soldiers killed at the Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I. During a 2020 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018, The Atlantic reported that he questioned why he would visit the cemetery, saying it was “full of losers” and “suckers.”
In further remarks at the time, Kelly told CNN Jake Tapper that Trump had shown “open contempt” for all Gold Star families who had lost loved ones in the war.
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