KNOT HAPPENING

Trump, 80, Gets Tangled Up While Awarding Medal of Honor

The octogenarian president visibly struggled with a basic skill.

President Donald Trump visibly struggled to tie a prestigious medal around the neck of a war hero, days after his 80th birthday.

During the event at the White House on Thursday, Trump presented the nation’s highest military decoration to retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr., the first Black enlisted Marine to receive a battlefield commission, for his efforts during a four-day reconnaissance mission in 1967 in Vietnam.

Another Vietnam veteran, Marine Col. John W. Ripley, also received the award posthumously for going “above and beyond the call of duty.”

After Capers, 88, was helped to the stage, Trump began to put the medal around his neck. The ribbon that holds the medal usually has a pin clasp that fastens it directly at the back.

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As Trump attempted to fasten the ribbon he appeared to whisper, “it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful,” before moving in front of Capers and saying, “let me see what it looks like... we gotta make this perfect,” as he fussed with the low-hanging medal.

However, Trump visibly struggled when attempting to put the medal around the neck of retired Army Maj. Nicholas Dockery, who was awarded for his acts of bravery in Afghanistan.

After taking almost a minute to secure the medal, an unsuccessful Trump gave up and said, “I’m gonna do it a little differently, I’m gonna do it even nicer.”

He tied the ends of the ribbon into a knot by hand, the result of which was captured later by a Reuters photographer at the event.

“Now that’s not coming off now,” Trump joked, before spinning Dockery around to pose for photos with the tightly fitting medal.

Journalist Aaron Rupar posted a video of the awkward moment, with the caption “Trump spectacularly failed his latest cognitive test.”

The curious incident comes as Democrat Jamie Raskin announced on Thursday that he had written to Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, to seek information about the president’s unexplained symptoms and frequent hospital visits, and to ask for the release of the results of his cognitive tests.

“As the oldest person ever elected to the White House, President Trump turned 80 just this past Sunday,” Raskin’s letter said.

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“In light of these troubling medical reports, so many unexplained signs of illness, and the existence of nearly two dozen different doctors on the case, the American people deserve honest and serious answers about whether he is up to the task.”

A meandering Trump went off-script at the start of his speech on Thursday in the East Room ceremony, saying he had some “very important business to take care of,” before telling the military members and their families who were assembled for the event, “I do wanna say though, that the stock market just hit a new all-time high” and added that Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts had done the same.

He also said oil prices were “dropping like a rock, other than that, it’s just another day in paradise.”

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Trump began his ceremony by saying, “Only a few have received our highest military distinction, the Congressional Medal of Honor. I wanted to give it to myself, but I was informed I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t find anything where I was actually worthy, so here we are.”

In April, Trump said he would have led the U.S. to victory in the Vietnam War “very quickly.”

Trump was able to avoid being drafted for the war five times through four education deferments and one medical deferment for bone spurs in 1968.

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