President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that his lack of military service is a sore spot for him.
He told the Washington Post in 2015 of his repeated Vietnam-era deferments: “I’ve always felt somewhat guilty because I didn’t serve like many other people.” In 2019 he cited a desire to “make up for it.”
His method of compensating for that? Comparing his sacrifices to those of actual service members.
Trump’s comments on “The Mark Levin Show” on Tuesday might be his most stunning yet. He explicitly labeled himself a “war hero” because of his decisions on the use of military force.
“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is] a war hero because we work together. He’s a war hero,” Trump told Levin, adding: “I guess I am too.”
“Nobody cares, but I am too,” Trump continued. “I mean, I sent those planes,” he added, referring to US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites earlier this summer.
These kinds of comments would cause a political scandal lasting days or weeks in any era not already so saturated with Trump-fueled controversies. Whatever the difficult choices the president makes as commander in chief, they don’t compare to troops putting their lives in harm’s way.
His remarks – which recall his 2015 attack on then-Sen. John McCain for not being a “war hero” because he was captured – are the latest in a long line of flippant Trump comments comparing himself to service members.
Sometimes, they’re offered in a joking manner. Few explicitly equate Trump to troops. But the totality of them suggests the president would very much like people to view his travails as being comparable to those of the troops.
Trump told 2015 biographer Michael D’Antonio said that his attendance at a military-themed boarding school meant that he “always felt that I was in the military.”
“I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people,” Trump said, adding that he’d had “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”
In 2016, when the father of a slain Army captain suggested Trump’s sacrifices didn’t compare to his family’s, Trump told ABC News: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.”
When pressed on whether working hard was really such a sacrifice, he doubled down.
“I think when I can employ thousands and thousands of people, take care of their education, take care of so many things,” Trump said. “Even in the military, I mean, I was responsible along with a group of people for getting the Vietnam Memorial built in downtown Manhattan, which to this day people thank me for.”
Donald Trump Jr. made a similar case in 2019. He recalled driving through Arlington National Cemetery, seeing the many white gravestones, and having it remind him of his family’s “sacrifices” in facing political attacks and giving up millions in business.
By 2019, the elder Trump quipped about having wanted a Medal of Honor and even asking about giving himself one, before being dissuaded.
In an interview with Piers Morgan that year, he added of his lack of service, “I think I make up for that right now” by pushing for increased military funding.
And in 2020 he said while discussing McCain: “I will be a better warrior than anybody.”
Trump’s 2023 Memorial Day message on Truth Social was in a similar vein.
After wishing a happy holiday to those who made the “ultimate sacrifice,” he extended the same wishes to others who faced “a very different, but equally dangerous fire.”
He said that included those combating the “misfits and lunatic thugs who are working feverishly from within to overturn and destroy our once great country.”
You have to read between the lines a bit, but Trump was effectively saying the political battles he and his movement faced were “equally dangerous” to the threats faced by fallen troops.
Trump has returned to this theme since surviving two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign.
In October, Trump compared the iconography of him emerging from the Pennsylvania attempt, with a bloodied ear and fist in the air, to the Iwo Jima Memorial.
“You’re not supposed to be alive for iconic,” Trump said. “But they say it’s the most … I think Iwo Jima is right there. They took a lot of bullets putting up the flag.”
And just two weeks ago, while marking National Purple Heart Day at the White House, he thanked service members for sending him their Purple Hearts, adding: “I guess, in a certain way, it wasn’t that easy for me either, when you think of it.”
“But you went through a lot more than I did, and I appreciate it all very much,” Trump added.
On these last two counts, Trump has a more credible comparison. He literally came under fire and was wounded during his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.
But his repeated comparisons to service members well predate that. And Trump’s new “war hero” comment alludes to an entirely different justification.
His allies will see jokes or harmless provocations – or perhaps a little bit of overcompensation. It’s true that Trump has rarely literally equated himself to troops, as he did Tuesday, and he’s sometimes taken care to specify that he’s just comparing, not equating.
But the sanctity of military service isn’t supposed to be trifled with because it risks diminishing that sacrifice.
And Trump just keeps trifling with it.
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