CNN Panel Shreds Trump for Joking About Giving Himself a Medal of Honor: ‘He DOES Think He’s the Chosen One!’

A CNN panel on The Situation Room blasted President Donald Trump for off-handedly joking to a veterans’ group that he looked into awarding himself a Congressional Medal of Honor, which is only given to members of the military — often posthumously — for incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice.

“He told a joke and he got a laugh from veterans today about how he wanted to award himself the Medal of Honor and his aides said that, you know, that’s not something he would qualify for,” guest host Brianna Keilar noted. “Knowing that the president recently awarded, he went through the whole ceremony of [awarding] the Medal of Honor to someone and it strikes me as someone from a military family, how somber that was. Because there’s sacrifice. This is very serious when you’re talking about what happened. It is an honor but it is an honor for something unimaginable that someone has gone through and he’s cracking a joke about it.”

Trump has a history of attacking or dismissing veterans and military families, especially if he perceives them as a political threat. He infamously denigrated Arizona Senator and former POW John McCain for being captured in Vietnam, insulted a Muslim Gold Star family who criticized him in a speech at the 2016 Democratic Convention, and he stumbled through an awkward consolation call to a mother of a soldier killed in Niger in 2017—and then effectively called her a liar afterward when she complained about tit.

“Yeah, empathy isn’t really his strong suit,” Jackie Kucinich, Washington bureau chief of The Daily Beast, noted. “Remember when someone gave him a Purple Heart at one of his rallies. I think he was still a candidate. And he said: ‘I’ve always wanted a Purple Heart.’ You don’t want that. You get a Purple Heart for being injured in battle. So there is this fundamental disconnect where military families would never joke about it. Well, he’s not from a military family. He’s someone who has a very inauspicious lack of military family.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin even disputed the notion that Trump was actually joking.

“The other thing I would like to point out is the jokes. He always, like when he’s saying, I’m the chosen one. I’m sure his aides would say: ‘Of course, he was joking about that.’ But his jokes are not jokes,” Toobin said. “He does think he should get a medal, he does believe that! He does think he’s the chosen one!”

Watch the video above, via CNN.