There is a popular comedian who laments when he was once arrested for being drunk, “I had the right to remain silent, but I didn’t have the ability.”

You may know that Donald Trump never uses alcohol, but you couldn’t prove that by his inability to remain silent. And that inability continues to undermine his reelection campaign.

In June 2017, Trump’s first year in office, it was abundantly apparent that he had an uncanny propensity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Back then, in a column titled “Memo to POTUS: Stop Swapping Spit With Jackasses,” I listed a pattern of examples of how, when Trump was getting great traction on an important issue, he would derail that traction by compulsively issuing some petulant remark. The pattern became so pervasive over the course of the following years that it prompted the question, Does he suffer some self-destructive pathology?

Never had his tone-deaf need to be center stage been more destructively apparent than his droning press conferences in April of the 2020 election year, when every afternoon he appeared in front of the press with the latest COVID pandemic numbers — how many masks were produced, how many respirators delivered, etc., ad nauseam. Many of us pleaded with Trump and his communications handlers that he stop, or risk becoming the “The Poster Child Face of CV19 Misery,” but to no avail. Unfortunately by May, just ahead of the Demos’ violent “summer of rage,” Trump had already dug himself into a deep approval hole.

Now, after the long-ago-planned Big Swap from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris and her stolen valor sidekick, Tim Walz, every conservative political strategist in America is pleading with Trump to stop his rambling press events, tighten up, and focus strictly on the record. But Trump addresses the hostile press as if he is speaking to his fan base.

One of our analysts wrote optimistically last week that Trump is regaining his focus.“ Perhaps Trump is finally realizing that he is not entitled to be president again and that the contest with Harris as his opponent is much more difficult than with Biden.

In good news for Trump, since Walz joined Harris’s ticket, Walz’s disgraceful record of stolen valor via embellished military service claims, which I covered in detail, was gaining traction among one of Trump’s most supportive constituent groups — military personnel, Veterans, and their families, most of whom are outraged at Walz.

The bad news is that Trump did what he has done so often — in this case, making what could best be called a "careless comment” that not only offended his military and Veteran constituency but also derailed the attention from Walz’s stolen valor record.

In the words of that Patriot sage Yogi Berra, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

What did Trump say?

In a rambling remark last Thursday in a big donor forum, Trump noted, in what was intended to be a compliment to a major donor, that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is “the highest award you can get as a civilian.” Correct.

But he then asserted, “It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version.” There is no equivalence whatsoever. None.

He continued: “It’s actually much better because everyone 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. [Adelson] gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. They’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and she got it through committees and everything else.”

I’m sure what Trump meant by “equivalent” is that they are both the highest awards for two respective groups, one for military and one for civilian service. While there are distinguished recipients, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is often awarded to those who are political favorites and have distinguished themselves by promoting partisan interests.

And I’m sure what Trump meant by “it’s actually much better” is that the Presidential Medal recipients don’t have to make a great sacrifice, often including losing their lives, to receive it.

It is tiresome parsing what Trump says versus what he means.

Trump’s remarks were leaked to the press — because no event like this is without an opposition research mole in the mix. And my kind interpretations above of what Trump meant notwithstanding, the Harris/Walz Leftmedia publicists trumpeted his careless remarks nationwide. Typical of the headlines was this from CNN: “Trump says civilian award is ‘much better’ than Medal of Honor.”

No doubt their disingenuous objective of undermining Trump’s military/Veteran support, to some degree, worked. Typical of the outcome is this headline from The Washington Post: “Trump draws intense criticism for calling civilian medal ‘much better’ than military award.”

The result…

The VFW is the largest and oldest war Veterans service organization in the country. The VFW’s just-elected commander-in-chief, Vietnam Vet Al Lipphardt, responded to Trump’s remarks by noting, “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.” Lipphardt, who knows well the support Trump has among our military and Veterans, chastised Trump, saying that a commander-in-chief must “discharge their responsibilities to our men and women in uniform with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position.”

Notably, Lipphardt is a Georgia native, and Trump’s recent fratricidal attacks against Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp have damaged Trump’s credibility in a state he must win.

Jack McManus, president of the Vietnam Veterans Association, clarified: “This medal is a symbol of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, often awarded posthumously. It is important to note that receiving the Medal of Honor does not require an individual to have been severely wounded; rather, it is awarded for acts of heroism that demonstrate exceptional bravery and gallantry in combat.” He added, “Misrepresenting the meaning and significance of these awards not only disrespects the sacrifices made by our veterans but also undermines the integrity of our national honors.”

Trump could have resolved this the hour the media picked it up, with an apology for his careless words, but I have never heard Trump apologize for anything he has said. That would require a modicum of humility he does not possess.

As the author of many Profiles of Valor featuring Medal of Honor recipients, and as the co-chair of the National Medal of Honor Sustaining Fund, I have met most of the living Medal of Honor recipients. Their political views are almost universally on the “conservative” side of the spectrum, as is the case with the vast majority of combat Veterans, but Trump’s Medal of Honor equivocation was a colossal unforced error. And it was dreadfully typical of those we witnessed repeatedly during his four years in office.

Not only did it derail the media momentum of the Walz stolen valor issue, but it also fed right into all the lies about what Trump has and has not said in the past about military personnel and Veterans. That portrayal of Trump will be front and center at the DNC’s Kamalafest coronation convention this week.

Now, Walz can stand tall like a military hero, talking up his years as a weekend warrior with the Minnesota National Guard, and insist that Trump does not know the difference between rich people who give a lot of money and receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom and the recipients of our nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor, most being posthumous.

Walz will gloat about how Trump avoided military service in Vietnam with four student draft deferments (one less than Biden) and then was reclassified 4-F (unfit for military service) in 1972 because of bone spurs in his feet (just ahead of the ceasefire suspension of combat actions). Of course, there was no draft when Walz did his Guard duty, and he will not talk about the fact that he abandoned his Battalion before its one-and-only combat deployment to Iraq.

Teeing up Walz’s convention remarks, Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said: “For him to insult Medal of Honor recipients, just as he has previously attacked Gold Star families, mocked prisoners of war, and referred to those who lost their lives in service to our country as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ should remind all Americans that we owe it to our service members, our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander-in-chief again.”

Unfortunately, among those lies is one disgraceful truth, and that was Trump’s denigration of former Navy fighter pilot and POW John McCain.

Joe Biden’s non compos mentis ramblings are often incoherent. Unfortunately, Trump’s too often mindless ramblings are coherent and easy to discern. Trump’s propensity for spewing profoundly stupid remarks leaves him totally exposed to Leftmedia spin, and that is the “interpretation” most of America will hear.

Regarding his rants, Trump has the right to remain silent, but does he have the ability? The question of whether he can conduct himself with sufficient humility and demeanor befitting a president will largely determine the outcome of the 2024 election – as it did the 2020 election.

Currently, for obvious reasons, Democrats have a deliberate campaign strategy that is simply, “Let Him Speak — It’s Working.” They will defeat Trump with that strategy unless he shifts to policy comparisons and exercises great discipline in the words he chooses at every public appearance.

Updated: Trump later attempted to clarify his careless comments, consistent with what we knew he meant as noted above. “When I say ‘better,’ I would rather, in a certain way, get it, because people, they get the Congressional Medal of Honor…are often horribly wounded or…they get it posthumously. I always consider that to be the ultimate, but it is a painful thing to get it. When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s usually for other things, like you’ve achieved great success in sports, or you’ve achieved great success someplace else.” For future reference, a clarification of this magnitude should be made in writing….

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.