Shown above Medal of Freedom left, and the three Medals of Honor.
This story is getting considerable media coverage including on MSNBC Weekend today where, as I write this, Joy Reid is interviewing Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim U.S. soldier killed in combat. He became well known after making a Democratic National Convention speech in 2016.
Click to enlarge image.
The reason Trump brought this up was that Miriam Adelson was in the audience and he wanted to praise her as someone he awarded the Medal of Freedom to. Of course, her contributions to the country didn't exist. Her "contributions" literally were monetary contributions to him.
Considering the blowback this comparison has caused I have to wonder what Adelson is thinking. If she has any decency, which considering her support for Trump she may not, she'd regret that he said this.
Trump comparing a top civilian award with an award for extraordinary valor in combat is the very definition of asinine, i.e., extremely stupid and foolish.
I will leave aside J.D. Vance disparaging the military service of Tim Walz, also asinine. Read:
The question I have is: why on God's Green Earth would Trump make this comparison?
In order to attempt to figure this out I have to attempt to look inside of Trump's mind. This is something like voluntarily entering a computer simulation like The Matrix except that I can easily escape.
Why does Trump say things that will damage his chances of winning the election?
In this instance it isn't just that the VFW had, as of 2018, only about 1.6 milli0n members. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the some 345 million population of the United States. It is that when you incur this organization's ire you will make the news.
Obviously not every former member of the military belongs to the VFW, but but when they lambast a candidate both people directly associated with the military and those who support the military will listen. Didn't Trump consider that a group like the VFW, or just the media in general, would zero in on how horrendous this comparison was before he blurted it out?
The most unkind explanation for Trump doing things like this is that he's a nasty narcissistic sadist who enjoys provoking people regardless of the untoward consequences to himself.
The kindest explanation as to why Trump does things like this is that he acts on impulse and doesn't think of consequences before he speaks.
My opinion is that Trump is best decribed as a nasty narcissistic sadist who also lacks impulse control.
He's like the worse improv performer.
The best impov performers have a filter, but unlike most people, with them it works with almost instantaneous efficiency. This is from Wiki:
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted, created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script.
(I'm lucky enough to know an improv comedian, he's my partner's nephew.) When an improv comedian says or does something in a show they don't do this without intentionality. While perfomances aren't scripted, they know their audience. They read the room. They play to the room. They don't want a reporter to write a scatching review saying that they insulted one group or another.
The "room" Trump plays to is very much a creation of his own narcissistic mind. The "room" is populated only by those who matter to him because they will applaud everything he says. The literal room may be the one where his fans have gathered to hear him or it may be those who have subscribed to Truth Social or tuned in to Fox News or other far-right stations.
The actual room is far larger. It is composed of everyone who voted for him in the past but now has doubts about whether to vote for him again.
Trump has done this and has gotten away with it for years. My impression is that he is doing it more frequently. This may be due to the fact that he is feeling desperate. It also could be a sign of dementia. It could be a combination of both.
Either way, desperation or dementia, Trump's mental health and his candidacy are in dire straits.
If, and as is growing more likely, when he loses the election I think we will see him flailing about in extreme ways so that more and more people who are honest with themselves and who tried to pretend he wasn't mentally unstable will be see and believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
These people will have a case of severe buyer's remorse to end all cases of buyer's remorse.
Unfortunately numerous people will stay in denial. It is difficult to admit that you've been gullible and were taken in by a con artist.
For those in the public eye who supported Trump I have my doubts if we'll hear a mea culpa from many of them. Whether we do or not will be a test of their character.
