Tammy Duckworth rips Trump over remarks about medal-winning soldiers

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs fighting in the Iraq War, on Sunday called Republican nominee Donald Trump "despicable" for comments Thursday about soldiers honored for their actions in combat.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," the Illinois Democrat said: "Donald Trump is despicable. He doesn’t deserve to be commander in chief. And certainly those remarks are consistent with where he’s always been. He thinks that we’re suckers and losers."

On Thursday, when addressing megadonor Miriam Adelson about the Presidential Medal of Freedom he had given her in 2018, Trump said: "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."

The former president, in calling those two awards basically equivalent, added about Adelson: “She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal.”

Addressing ABC host Martha Raddatz, Duckworth said American voters will have to decide: "Do they want a five-time draft dodger who denigrates military men and women and our veterans and calls us suckers and losers, who doesn’t want to have his picture taken with amputee veterans of various conflicts to be the next commander in chief or are you going to have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who care deeply about veterans?"

In discussing Walz's military record, Duckworth said she had no issues with how the Minnesota governor has characterized his service and blasted Trump and his allies for their criticisms.

"It’s despicable what Republicans are doing," she told Raddatz, "the same party that thinks that Donald Trump, who dodged a draft five times, who thinks veterans are suckers and losers, that's who they think is better than someone who served 24 years in uniform."

Duckworth, the first female double amputee to serve in the Senate, is a retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel whose Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by Iraqi insurgents on Nov. 12, 2004. She wrote in "Every Day is a Gift," her 2021 memoir: "A rocket-propelled grenade blew through the plexiglass 'chin bubble' window at my feet and detonated in a violent fireball right in my lap."

The senator is not a recipient of the Medal of Honor, but a total of 3,538 have been awarded since the Civil War, including to Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), Francis Warren (R-Wyo.) and four others who went on to serve in the Senate.

Trump awarded Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2018, along with football greats Alan Page and Roger Staubach and then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). He also presented three posthumous awards that day, to Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.