Maybe Trump can yell at her now

It's getting to where it's almost unnecessary to add the adjective "surreal" to any description of an event involving Donald Trump, but there was yet another one of those Tuesday at a rally in Ashburn, Virginia, where a veteran gave him a copy of his Purple Heart medal, apparently in recognition of the sacrifices Trump has made for this nation.

You know something very nice just happened to me. A man came up to me and he handed me his Purple Heart. Now, I said to him, "Is that like the real one, or is that a copy?" He said, that's my real Purple Heart. I have such confidence in you." And I said, "Man, that's like big stuff. I've always wanted to get the Purple Heart." This was much easier. But I tell you, this was such an honor.

The veteran had in fact told NBC News the medal was actually a replica of the real thing. Trump hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, mmm-hmm.

Not surprisingly, given Trump's rather extensively documented history of draft avoidance -- which the New York Times had reviewed in detail the very morning of the rally -- more than a few veterans took umbrage at Trump's amusing little joke about getting a Purple Heart the "easy" way, which is how Trump seems to think he deserves everything. Illinois Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, who's running for Senate this fall, tweeted out this little reminder of how she received a Purple Heart the hard way:

So you can get a replica of a Purple Heart handed to you by an admirer, and you can also get a real one after getting your legs blown off when a rocket propelled grenade shoots down the helicopter you're piloting. That second way seems rather less pleasant than having a replica handed to you at a campaign rally, but being injured or killed in service does tend to be the only official way of receiving a Purple Heart. (Trivia fact: in 1945, the War Department ordered so many Purple Heart medals -- in anticipation of enormous casualties from invading Japan -- that at least some WW II era Purple Heart medals, refurbished with new ribbons, were still being issued to service members injured or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, although supplies of the medals have been supplemented with more recently ordered stocks.)

In addition to Duckworth's tweet, HuffPo notes,

Another Purple Heart recipient, Sean Barney, a Democratic congressional candidate in Delaware, posted a powerful statement on Tuesday calling Trump’s remarks “flippant and repugnant.”

“As someone who fought for our country in Iraq, was injured, and was awarded a Purple Heart, I can tell you, no one should ever ‘want’ to get a Purple Heart,” the Iraq War veteran wrote.

Another popular way to receive a Purple Heart is dying in combat, a point raised by Khizr Khan, whose son Humayun Khan was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star after he died in 2004 preventing a car bomb from reaching the gate of his base in Iraq. Mr. Trump has been engaged in several days of pissing on the Khan family, implying that Mrs Khan was muzzled at the Democratic Convention and that Mr. Khan had "no right" to criticize Trump's stance on Muslim immigration, because the issue isn't whether Muslim soldiers can be heroes, but whether Radical Islamic Terrorism is trying to kill us all. Mr Khan, apparently still under the illusion that things like "honor" and "dignity" matter, said Trump never should have accepted the medal from the veteran (CNN reports the story as if the medal were the genuine article):

"You dodged the draft," Khan, a Muslim whose son was slain in the Iraq War, said of Trump to CNN's Anderson Cooper. "Put that Purple Heart back on that person's chest." [...]

"You had the time. You did not serve," Khan told Cooper. "You should have pinned that back to that veteran's chest and should have hugged him and thanked him."

Well that's a fine attitude, Mr. Khan. If we don't give out little trophies to our draft-dodging presidential candidates to indulge their whims, what incentive will they have to continue the difficult task of making America great again?

[NBC News / CNN / HuffPo / History News Network]