We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

As former President Donald Trump was set to return to the sight of his brush with death, a Vietnam veteran bestowed him with an honor for which he “couldn’t think of anybody more deserving…”

“You got guts.”

On the eve of a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 12 weeks after a would-be assassin had opened fire, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and wounding the president and two others, Trump held a town hall in Fayetteville, North Carolina moderated by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.

The closing leg of a week spent surveying the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, aiding in facilitating disaster relief and, by the time of this posting, helping to raise over $5.6 million toward assistance, found the GOP leader joined by a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who saw fit to present his own Purple Heart to the onetime commander-in-chief.

Before rising to stand beside Trump, Luna offered an introduction and said, “I wanted to read this to the crowd. He had actually written a letter to you after you’d been shot in Pennsylvania. ‘Dear President Trump, watching you during the Butler rally, and you getting back up, both my wife and I gave a sigh of relief as well as a few tears. I would be honored if you would accept this small token I received as a young Marine in Vietnam. My wife and I both thought it appropriate. God bless you, your family, and the United States of America. Sincerely, Dwight.’”

As the veteran stood beside the president, Trump added levity to the moment with a joke about the man’s notecard with prepared remarks and said, “It looks like a check. It’s a check. It’s cash.”

“For those of you who may not know, Dwight had given President Trump his Purple Heart,” Luna chimed in as the GOP leader acknowledged, “That’s right. That’s right.”

Earning gratitude from Trump, Dwight expressed, “I couldn’t think of anybody more deserving of a Purple Heart.”

“You took it,” he went on of the bullet wound suffered on July 13. “You laid down there, you got back up and the first words out of your mouth was, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’”

“You didn’t even have anything to shoot back at him. You got guts,” asserted the veteran.

After Dwight spoke to the immense relief at seeing Trump get back up, the president himself recalled the amount of blood and the fortune he’d had that day to not have turned his head the other direction.

“I got very lucky,” he marked as he looked up, “and maybe it wasn’t so much luck. Maybe there’s something else. Right? Maybe there’s something else up there.”

Ahead of his 2016 election victory, Trump had been gifted a Purple Heart from another veteran. At the time, the then-nominee had expressed, “Something very nice just happened to me. A man came up to me and handed me his Purple Heart. I said to him, ‘Is that like the real one or is that a copy?’ And he said, ‘That’s my real Purple Heart. I have such confidence in you.’”

“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart,” Trump told the crowd of the award reserved for military members injured or killed in combat. “This was much easier.”

Dwight went on to contend that homelessness among veterans had doubled from 7% to 14% under the Biden-Harris administration as he wondered what Trump’s plan was to see aid provided to citizens instead of illegal aliens occupying hotels across the country.

“It’s not sustainable by any country,” said the president in part. “We’re going to take care of our veterans properly. We’re not gonna have that happen anymore.”

Guests for Saturday’s event at the same sight as the July 13 Butler rally were expected to include the family of Comperatore, as well as David Dutch, one of the injured attendees, and billionaire Elon Musk who’d emphatically endorsed the president’s third White House bid after the attempt on Trump’s life that day.

Kevin Haggerty
Latest posts by Kevin Haggerty (see all)

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.