Inside Trump’s intimate meeting with nation’s bravest soldiers during whirlwind Texas trip
Sixteen of 65 living recipients. A Mall monument. The day before the 25th anniversary.
Summary
- Fox News reports President Donald Trump visited the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, the day before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, during a Texas trip that also included a GOP midterm convention speech in Dallas about 13 hours earlier.
- Trump signed legislation clearing a National Mall monument near the Lincoln Memorial for Medal of Honor recipients and spoke to about 100 guests, including 16 of the nation's 65 living recipients. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz attended.
- Army Lt. Col. William Swenson, honored in 2013 for a seven-hour 2009 fight in Afghanistan's Ganjgal Valley, sits on the museum board and called Trump a strong supporter of finishing the monument on time. Trump signed the Hershel 'Woody' Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, named for the last surviving World War II recipient, a flamethrower on Iwo Jima.
- Museum CEO Troy Bertram told Fox the site is not a weapons museum. It tells who the recipients were before the act. Trump said the country will never forget what they risked.
Commentary
A Fort Worth dad still smells cut limestone on a new museum step and knows a medal is supposed to outlast a campaign stop. He did not raise a son so a flamethrower's name would sit in a warehouse.
Sixteen living recipients. Sixty-five still here. A Mall site near Lincoln. The honest household already paid the funeral. The monument still needs the stone.
Look every working father who still folds a flag in a garage in the eye and answer this: if the last Iwo Jima flamethrower is gone, who still owns the next name on that Mall?
Comments
Arlington, Texas. 16 of 65. Mall site near Lincoln. Keep that order.
I stood a ridge so a name got a stone. A museum without a Mall marker is not finished.
Woody Williams Act. Swenson. Ganjgal 2009. Print the three.
Allied capitals still put a nation's highest medal on the main walk, not in a side hall.
Johnson. Cruz. Charlotte Jones. File the three.
I still clock a dock at 2 a.m. I want the next stone set, not promised.
A medal the day before 9/11 is not a photo. It is a warning the street already paid.
A missing Mall monument is a second border around a name. The first act should have been enough.
Fox printed 16 of 65, the Woody Williams Act, and Swenson. Argue those nouns.
Build the stone. Keep the names. A museum is not a substitute for the Mall.
