Did Donald Trump give himself a Purple Heart, the American military’s oldest award?

Donald Trump‘s list of faux pas is near-endless. The inexplicably-newly-adorned Time Person of the Year has said and done some despicable things over the years but still finds himself as the president-elect of the United States of America. Despite his many lies, goofs, gaffs, history of sexual misconduct, and the literal crimes he’s committed, supporters of the twice-indicted convicted felon flatly refuse to see any faults in him.

However, one thing nobody — not even his most staunch cult members — can deny is that he hasn’t been in the military. In fact, the despicable Trump outright ducked any possibility of experiencing combat by getting a military exemption due to “bone spurs” (he obtained separate educational deferments and, later, a medical exemption after his diagnosis) and has vocally disparaged members of the armed forces who died in battle. His former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly — a retired four-star Marine general — told the New York Times that Trump called service members who were injured or killed “losers” and “suckers,” and, as PBS confirmed, he called the late John McCain, who spent over five years in a Vietnam jail as a prisoner of war, “a loser,” words that every living human should condemn as utterly vile.

Therefore, it’s beyond shameless that Trump has accepted the gift of a Purple Heart medal from one of his campaign staffers. Per the Washington Post, in October this year, John Ford, a man injured in combat, presented the medal to the orange one because of the “great job you’ve done for our country” and for the “injuries” he’s endured (presumably a reference to that highly questionable July assassination attempt, in which a bullet supposedly grazed his ear).

In Trump’s meeting with Ford, when the latter handed the former his medal, Trump asked, “Is that yours?” Ford replied, “Yes, sir, it has my name on it.” Trump responded, “That’s fantastic,” before taking it and handing it to one of his aides.

Trump’s adviser, Dan Scavino, shared a video on X of Trump accepting the Purple Heart before gormlessly posing with Ford and subsequently saying, “That’s the original! I can see that.”

Bizarrely, that’s not even the only occasion on which the cowardly Trump has been gifted a Purple Heart. Earlier in October, a veteran identified only as “Dwight” by Trump’s campaign gave his medal to the president-elect, saying he “couldn’t think of anybody more deserving to have a Purple Heart” after the aforementioned ear incident.

And there’s more! Staggeringly, in 2016, another veteran handed Trump his Purple Heart. Given that he hadn’t even had his ear grazed at that point, military medal experts were more vocal in questioning whether he should have had the barefaced audacity to accept it on that occasion.

The Purple Heart is the American military’s oldest award. It’s given to those wounded while serving in the armed forces or posthumously to those killed in action. To say that Trump is undeserving of one would be a massive understatement. So, did he give himself one? No. But the fact he now possesses three, after shamelessly accepting them from people who earned them, would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sickening.