Medal of Honor recipient goes off on Trump: he 'does not understand' sacrifice for freedom

A Medal of Honor recipient tore into former President Donald Trump on Friday over his comments that appeared to denigrate recipients of the highest military award.

Trump called the "civilian version" — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — "actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead."

Col. Jack Jacobs blasted the comments on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House, calling it yet another demonstration of how little Trump values service to the country.

"I can't believe we have to have this conversation ... but here we are," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I guess what I want to ask you is, do the — do your peers, do the men and women, do veterans, do the men and women of the military understand that Donald Trump not only doesn't respect them, but really does see them as suckers and losers?"

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"Well, many do, but many don't," said Jacobs. "Despite the fact that Donald Trump is one of the most inept public speakers I've heard, and I'm an old person, so I've heard a great number of public speakers, and you often don't know what it is he's saying, not convinced that he knows what it is he's saying. He drifted off in castigating people who have served and sacrificed and can't tell the difference between the Medal of Freedom and the Medal of Honor."

What must be kept in mind, he continued, is "this is the man who, as you said, denigrated people who served and sacrificed so that he can enjoy the freedom that he enjoys now. And if it weren't for these people, he wouldn't be in the position where he could enjoy freedom ... this is also the guy who managed to avoid serving because of a really deleterious heel spur on his foot. All that notwithstanding, the problem in this regard is that Donald Trump does not understand some of the things which in history have described how we get to a position where we can have freedom. That is through the service and sacrifice of others."

"I'm reminded of the observation of the first-century Hebrew scholar who wrote "If I'm only for myself, what am I?'" Jacobs added. "Well, if you're only for yourself, you're probably Donald Trump. Or the observation, almost as poignantly, of John Stewart Mill, who wrote about war. Trump ought to like him, because he was something of an individualist and a libertarian, who wrote that 'a man for whom nothing is more important than his own safety is a miserable creature, who is made free and kept free by better men than he.'"

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