LETTER: Trump and the Purple Heart
In his Saturday letter to the editor (“Stolen valor”), John Boron, a retired U.S. Air Force major, suggests that Donald Trump could be awarded a Purple Heart in recognition of the ear injury he sustained during the assassination attempt at a campaign rally.
A Purple Heart is awarded only to those individuals who sustain injury or are killed in the course of performing duties while a “member of an armed force” or to a civilian who is injured or killed while serving “with one of the U.S. Armed Services.”
At the time Mr. Trump suffered his ear injury, he was not the commander in chief nor a member of an armed force. He was not a civilian serving with one of the U.S. Armed Services. Rather, he was simply a civilian campaigning for office. Therefore, he would not be eligible for a purple heart.
If Mr. Boron’s comment was not so ludicrous on its face, it would be an insult to those courageous men and women who properly earned the Purple Heart.