Miriam Adelson, National Hero

“Miriam, I watched (Sheldon Adelson, her late husband) sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian, it’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor – that’s soldiers.

 

They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump said.

“She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal.”

There have been plenty of comments about this statement, one of the most loathsome things ever said by an American President (most everything on that list came from Trump, but this is certainly at the bottom of all of them.)  The comments have almost entirely revolved around discussing the people who got the Congressional Medal of Honor, almost all at tremendous loss and suffering to themselves. Even Trump said, "because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead," which, horribly, in his well-known view makes them suckers and losers, not heroes.   

Well, Miriam Adelson is certainly not a sucker or a loser, I guess, and I think it is important to look at who Trump is exalting here, in addition to who he is denigrating.

Sheldon Adelson, who died not too long ago, was a very rich man, a multi-billionaire.  Did he make his money inventing some breakthrough industrial technology, or developing a drug that saved millions of lives? Or even through cornering the market on some necessity?  No, of course not.  Sheldon Adelson was a Las Vegas casino owner, the heir to Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen.  To be blunt, Adelson was a very rich gangster.  

Having been made fabulously wealthy by exploiting the weaknesses of his fellow man, did Adelson have the decency to use a reasonable portion of that (may I say) filthy profit to somehow benefit the world?  No, of course not.  He spent hundreds of millions of dollars financing the most corrupt figures in the Republican party, ending in giving 90 million dollars to his fellow casino operator, Donald Trump, in return for which Trump gave his wife, who stood by and did nothing about this obscenity, while enjoying the life of a billionaire, this medal, in a sickening denigration of everyone else in history who has received it.

He is now (thankfully) dead, and his widow, who made herself little more than a world-class scum when she accepted the money she inherited from him, is now in a position to continue his largesse, or not.  So here comes Trump, willing to stand in front of the nation and declare that criminal profits donated to his campaign represent a greater sacrifice, a greater good to the nation, than the suffering and deaths of our bravest soldiers, in the hope that she will continue the flow of money into Trump's pockets.

It is virtually impossible to express in words how craven this is.  No President in history, good or bad, has ever behaved in this manner, exalting crooks above real national heroes, all for the sake of the money he expects to get from those degenerates.  Of course, this is no different than the billions his family has gotten from the Saudi "Kings"  (in fact, nothing but gangsters themselves) or whatever he has gotten from the world's biggest current gangster, Vladimir Putin.  Still, this act alone should disqualify him for serving in the government in any capacity.  It apparently won't, however, because the mainstream press, that is still blasting forth Republican lies about Tim Waltz' 24 year military service, has decided that, as usual, it's okay when a  Republican does it, no matter how craven "it" is.