Trump Sneers at Veterans. Again.
Plus: The architects of Project 2025 aren’t worried about Trump’s public disavowals.
Kamala Harris will debut major elements of her economic plan at a speech in Raleigh today, one Politico says will “hinge largely on supercharging a set of existing administration proposals, arguing that voters would benefit more from building on Biden’s efforts to fight inflation, rather than breaking from them.”
On the agenda: Lowering prices for insulin, building new homes to alleviate America’s housing crunch, and expanding the child tax credit. (And, as we mentioned yesterday, those damn grocery price controls.)
She’s scheduled to take the stage at 2:45 ET if you want to tune in. Happy Friday.
This Nonsense Again
—William Kristol
Yesterday, at a campaign event at his golf club in New Jersey, Donald Trump was effusively introduced by Miriam Adelson.
Trump returned the favor by effusively praising Adelson, as one does when introduced by a megadonor.
Indeed, Trump noted that he had awarded Adelson the Medal of Freedom at the White House in 2018. That’s an award that has been given since 1963 by presidents to honor a wide variety of individuals who have contributed to the “interests of the United States,” or “world peace” or other cultural or “significant public or private endeavors.”
Trump characterized it as “the highest award you can get as a civilian,” by which I guess he meant it’s the highest award given by a president to a civilian. Fine. But Trump then went on to say that “it’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor” (the Medal of Honor is sometimes mistakenly called the Congressional Medal of Honor).
More than 600 individuals have received the Medal of Freedom. Many have been worthy recipients. I was proud to attend the White House ceremony in July 2002 when my father was honored, as one of an impressive group of recipients ranging from Hank Aaron to Placido Domingo to Fred Rogers. It was a memorable day, and a moving one.
“Each of these men and women has enriched the life of America and the world,” President Bush said at that ceremony.
And so they had.
But I’m confident that none of them—none—thought their award was in any way equivalent to the Medal of Honor.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military honor the United States can bestow. It is awarded to a member of the military who has distinguished “himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”
You can read the citations for all Medal of Honor recipients, detailing their extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, here.
But Trump didn’t stop with the untenable claim that the Medal of Freedom was the equivalent of the Medal of Honor.
No, he continued, the Medal of Freedom is “actually much better” than the Medal of Honor, he said.
Why?
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. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
What can one say?
One can say—again—that Trump is a vulgar, thoughtless, and awful man.
One can also point out this isn’t the first time Trump has denigrated military service. In 2015, he attacked John McCain for having been a prisoner of war. Later, while serving as president, Trump called America’s war dead “suckers” and “losers.” Now he denigrates Medal of Honor recipients because some are deceased or injured.
Trump has spent the last four years emphatically denying he ever made that “suckers” and “losers” comment, despite its confirmation by his former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly. Whether he’ll keep denying it now that he’s expressed much the same sentiment in front of cameras remains to be seen.
Beyond Trump, one could also ask JD Vance, a veteran himself, to say a word. He’s been attacking Tim Walz for allegedly avoiding service in combat. Perhaps he’d want to criticize his running mate for denigrating those who’ve done so?
What’s more, during a speech in Pennsylvania yesterday, Vance claimed that Trump exemplified the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis.
I honor every member of every branch of our armed forces, but the one thing that I think the Marines really do well is we have the best motto . . . Semper Fidelis, always faithful. You hear Marines say it all the time, Semper Fi, and to me, what it means is that Marines are always faithful to our country. . . . I really do think that Donald Trump exemplifies that motto . . .
Does Vance really believe Trump’s remarks exemplify Semper Fidelis? Does he think Trump honors those who have served in the military?
One looks forward to JD’s explanation of what he said, and of what Trump said.
But whatever spin the Yale Law grad comes up with, the rest of us know what we heard. And we know what we have to do: Do our best to ensure that Trump is not elected the next president of the United States.
‘He’s Very Supportive of What We Do’
—Andrew Egger
The right-wing brainiacs putting together an aggressive agenda for Donald Trump’s second term have gotten his marching orders loud and clear: Quit talking about Project 2025! Can’t you see it’s insanely unpopular?
But the “stand back and stand by” plan has its hidden pitfalls. For instance, you wouldn’t want one of the architects of Project 2025 to be secretly recorded bragging about how Trump is still quietly all-in on their plans.
Tragically, that’s exactly what happened this week to Russell Vought, Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget director, who is expected to take an even more prominent role in a second Trump term. A British sting-video group, the Centre for Climate Reporting, managed to talk their way into a meeting with Vought while posing as scions of a conservative donor interested in supporting his work.
Vought has spent the Biden years helming a new think tank, the Center for Renewing America, and plotting the demise of the “Deep State” when Trump takes back over. He authored the Project 2025 chapter on “taking the reins” of the executive branch in order to “bring the bureaucracy in line.”
And he was crystal clear with his incognito visitors: Trump was still in their corner.
“I expect to hear ten times more from the rally the president distancing himself from the left’s bogeyman of Project 2025,” Vought said in footage released by the group Thursday. “I’m not worried about it.”
Vought went on:
He’s running against the brand. He is not running against any people. He is not running against any institutions. It’s interesting—he’s in fact not even running opposing himself to a particular policy. . . . He’s been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it. . . . He’s very supportive of what we do.
What might those plans be? Vought is happy to share:
Eighty percent of my time working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence . . . whether that is thinking through how the deportation would work.
There’s lots more to raise the hackles here, much of it tied to Vought’s don’t-call-it-Christian-nationalism “Christian nation-ism.”
Trump, Vought says, won’t stick to his current abortion-agnostic campaign rhetoric if reelected: “What I’ve told people is he had the most pro-life record ever.” Vought also ponders whether conservatives might push for restrictions on new construction of mosques, bans on access to pornography, or an immigration system that prioritizes Christian migrants.
Just a couple quick things to say about this. One is: How stupid does Trump think his voters are, that he imagines they’ll believe his insistence that this mega-project built for his presidency will simply be scrapped? But the second is more important—it almost doesn’t matter whether Trump is sincere or not in his distancing himself from Project 2025. The inescapable fact is that when you compare the first Trump administration to a hypothetical second one, the biggest difference is that the people who make up a second one are all going to look and sound an awful lot like Russell Vought.
When Trump was first swept into office, he was a political newbie. He didn’t have a cadre of staffers and old aides to turn to. His victory also happened in such a disorganized way—he hadn’t even expected to win—that he was essentially obliged to staff his administration with a bunch of people who still adhered to the old Republican way of doing business. Those people didn’t necessarily have a deep well of loyalty to Trump personally. One big pattern of that first administration was Trump’s slow purge of that type of Republican, and the gradual replacement with more pliable yes-men and more radical ideologues.
This time, the lickspittles and yes-men haven’t been waiting around. They’re not going to be caught flat-footed by a second Trump win. They’re making their plans, and they’re getting ready to lurch into action. Trump might be trying to distance himself from them today, but that hardly matters: These are the guys who are going to staff his next administration. If Trump wins, you won’t need a sting operation to hear from Russell Vought: He’ll be front and center.
Quick Hits
SET YOUR TIVOS: This year’s traditional cycle of debate brinksmanship is nearing its end. Kamala Harris’s campaign announced Thursday that it will participate in three debates: The ABC debate between Harris and Trump on September 10, a CBS-hosted vice-presidential debate on October 1, and a follow-up Trump-Harris matchup later in October. Team Trump had wanted five total debates—three between Trump and Harris, and two between JD Vance and Tim Walz—and Vance mocked Walz for agreeing to just one: “Tim Walz refuses to deploy!”
WALZ APPEAR STURDY: A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll shows that Tim Walz remains broadly popular amid the wave of attacks on his record in Minnesota and military service. Harris’s number two has a 39 percent approval rating in the poll, while 30 percent see him unfavorably. By contrast, JD Vance is underwater, with a 32 percent/42 percent favorable/unfavorable rating.
THE HEN IN THE FOXHOUSE: Axios is reporting this morning that the Harris campaign is starting to run ads on Fox News. The spots, four in total, will be largely biographical—a counter-programming of sorts to the actual programming on the conservative network, which is fairly and consistently brutal in its coverage of the VP. Democrats have long debated the merits of engaging with Fox News. But running ads on the network is not full engagement. And with the Harris campaign sitting on a robust war chest, this seems like a decent investment.
Cheap Shots
This whole "Trump is dedicated to the country" nonsense is really getting out of control. Trump didn't "take a bullet for the country," he took a bullet from a loner kid who had access to the AR-15s that the GOP has done its best to pump into society since the AWB expired in 2004. To the contrary, Trump has put a bullet *into* the country--and the democracy it rests upon--by refusing to accept a certified political loss and creating the Big Lie that is now at the heart of rightwing distrust in American institutions. He's encouraged the proliferation of "Deep State" conspiracy theories that poison the wells of functioning society and shared truth. He incites racial animus and social resentment among our people. He demonizes and scapegoats whole swaths of our populace. That is not dedication to the country, that is the tearing down of the country through division, distrust, and hate. And he does all of this not with any kind of interest for the country or its people, he does so in the name of seeking the absolute power and status that he has continually sought all of his life--because even being a billionaire celebrity was not enough to satisfy this man's thirst for power and fame.
If there is a latin term that defines Trump, it is not Semper Fidelis--and how dare Vance of all people apply that term to a guy like Trump. No, the latin terms that define Trump are auto-cura and inanis gloria (self-interest and vainglory). Trump is a man who embraces individualism and self-interest, not shared sacrifice and patriotism.
Not only has this disgraceful clown denigrated the Medal of Honor and it's recipients, he's also cheapened the Medal of Freedom.
Trump awarded the medal to Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Rush Limbaugh and the "beautiful" Miriam. When Trump thinks of the cost of freedom, he thinks "how much did they give to me".