302. The Medal

Donald Trump tried to give himself the Congressional Medal of Honor.

This is a real thing that was reported, so I want to get this right: he considered awarding himself the Medal of Honor, which is the nation's highest military decoration, given by the President to members of the armed forces who distinguish themselves through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their life above and beyond the call of duty. He is the Commander in Chief, which technically gives him the authority to initiate this.

He searched his record. He found nothing that qualified. He rejected himself.

(I want to be precise about the sequence here: a sitting President, who controls the military and therefore controls who receives the medal, evaluated his own record for acts of conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, and concluded that he had not done them. This is the finding. He made it himself.)

The Congressional Medal of Honor was established in 1861. It has been awarded to 3,519 people. Approximately 40 percent of the recipients received it posthumously, meaning they were doing something so dangerous at the time that they did not survive the act qualifying them for the award. The living recipients include people who threw themselves on grenades to protect other soldiers.

Donald Trump did not throw himself on a grenade. He knows this. He has now formally documented that he knows this, in the form of a self-rejection.

There is a version of this story in which a man with complete authority over the award process declines to misuse it, and that version reflects well on him. There is another version in which the fact that the consideration happened at all is its own kind of story. Both versions are true.

The medal remains unawarded to him. This was his decision.

The grenade people are presumably fine with the outcome.