President Trump’s Medal of Honor

Our favorite part of President Trump’s address on the State of the Union is toward the end, when he bestows two medals of honor, one on Chief Warrant Officer Five Eric Slover for his courage in the recent raid on Venezuela and the other to one of our heroes of the Korean War, Captain Royce Williams of the Navy, for an astounding dog fight that was a secret for more than 50 years. “He didn’t even want to tell his wife,” the president said. Chief Warrant Officer Slover was decorated for his courage in Venezuela, where he landed his helicopter under heavy machine gun fire, staying with the maneuver though he was seriously shot in the leg. It was only after landing the helicopter with all the warriors aboard in what Mr. Trump called the exact right spot that Chief Warrant Officer Slover, having saved the mission, handed over the controls of the Chinook to his co-pilot.Captain Williams was decorated for what Mr. Trump called the “dogfight of a lifetime” in the skies over Korea. Flying through a blizzard, Williams’s squadron was ambushed by seven Soviet planes. “It was his first aerial combat of the war and despite being massively outnumbered and outgunned, Royce led the takedown of four enemy jets,” vanquishing his adversaries “while taking 263 bullets to his own plane” and, Mr. Trump notes, “being seriously hurt.”The dogfight became a matter of legend. The San Diego Union, per Wikipedia, reckons that it was deemed “one of the greatest feats in aviation history.” Declared Mr. Trump: “Tonight, at 100 years old, this brave Navy captain is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He was a legend long before this evening.” So the president asked Williams to stand and he asked the First Lady to drape the hero with the medal and ribbon of blue silk dotted by stars.And then came the Trumpian touch. “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor,” the president declared. “but I was informed, I’m not allowed to give it to myself and I wouldn’t know why I’d be taking it. But if they ever open up that law, I will be there with you someday. But, you know, that’s our highest honor, Congressional Medal of Honor. And that’s a big thing, and it’s an honor to be in the same room with you.”The idea of a president ruminating, from the world’s biggest stage, on being told that he isn’t allowed to bestow the Medal of Honor on himself, well, let’s just say one is either laughing with him or at him. For our part, we were laughing with him. What American youth has not, upon watching a Medal of Honor ceremony, wondered what it would be like to wear the ribbon, upon spotting which, it is said, a general would salute a private.These columns praised other presidents, most notably President Obama, for going back to earlier wars to find deserving candidates for the Medal of Honor who were, for various reasons, overlooked. In Mr. Obama’s case, he made a point of honoring overlooked heroes of the war in Vietnam. It was a wonderful thing to have done then, as it is now for Mr. Trump, who spoke for all Americans in feeling honored just to be in a room with Captain Williams.________This editorial has been expanded from the bulldog edition.

President Trump’s Medal of Honor

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