"But I really, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That's the highest award you can get as a civilian. It's the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version, 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. She gets it and she's healthy, beautiful woman."

That’s the GOP candidate for president on the time he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson for being a “committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian” whose late husband donated $90 million to a PAC supporting Trump’s 2016 campaign, and is reportedly planning to spend even more supporting Trump during the 2024 election cycle.

When he’s not banging Tic Tac containers together like a dementia patient at the checkout counter of a Safeway to show us how inflation works, Trump has these moments when he shows us not just who he is, but the kind of America he wants for the rest of us.

He makes it easy to focus on his condescending view of service, how he faked injury to avoid the draft, how he denigrated McCain’s ordeal in Vietnam, and referred to those who gave their lives in Europe during the First World War as “losers”.

It’s all a distraction from what he and everyone like him really want: power at the expense of others. Because that, in Trumpland, for the authors of Project 2025, is a winner.

Someone who’s stood on someone else to raise themselves up. Who got to where they are by breaking down, not building up.

If that’s what winning looks like in Trump’s America, I’ll take the losers. Anytime.

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