Badlands Media - Badlands Media Special Coverage: 9/10/26 - Trump Signs Medal of Honor Monument Act in Texas

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Trump visits the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington to sign the Herschel Woody Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, and the whole event carries a rare, genuinely reverent tone. Fifteen living Medal of Honor recipients are in the room as Trump reflects on the almost unbelievable bravery behind their stories, including the late Woody Williams' harrowing flamethrower duty on Iwo Jima, before signing legislation that clears the way for a brand new monument near the National Mall. There's a lighthearted detour into economic numbers, tariffs, and a jab or two at political rivals, but the heart of this one is the tribute itself, honoring the museum's founders, the Williams family, and the handful of living legends seated in the crowd. Trump also picks up an honorary title of his own before wrapping things up. Less rally, more remembrance, with genuine warmth running through it.

The Badlands, what are the Badlands? Explain those Badlands. That's a hell of their name. And welcome to the National Medal of Honor Museum. Only in America to be the privilege and joy of pursuing our dreams, because 40 million men and women have put on that uniform, have raised their right hand, and have dedicated their lives to keeping us three.

Fewer than 4,000 of those have received the Medal of Honor. Just 65 are alive today, and 16 are here with us. Please rise one more time and join me and showing appreciation for these incredible individuals and all to us. The number one best new museum in America. Seven most beautiful new museums in the world. We are thrilled this stunning place has received such recognition, but it wasn't built for awards. It was built as a vault for the values enshrined in our country's highest award, the Medal of Honor. This is not a war museum.

This is a museum about hurt, about courage, about sacrifice, and patriotism. It holds the stories of ordinary individuals who have done extraordinary individuals who have done extraordinary. extraordinary means, who risked everything, and sacrifice themselves for our country, for people they would never meet. To protect a democracy that many wouldn't live to see fully realized, it holds the stories of our nation's greatest heroes, who they are, and why they did what they did. Yes, it was built to honor them and preserve their stories. Its true purpose is to carry their values across the nation and inspire the next generation

of character-driven leaders. The National Medal of Honor Museum is one piece of a three-part project that everyone in this room has helped bring to life in such an impressive way. The museum is the vault of the values of the Medal of Honor, but the Griffin Institute, just down the hall, is the vehicle by which we share them and espouse them across the table. country, the values of courage and sacrifice, commitment and integrity, citizenship and matriotism, with the nation inspiring young people and rising leaders to live life. And today, just a year in, we have reached over 300,000 students in over 29,000 schools,

and we're just getting started. The third piece of this historic project is the National Medal of Honor Monument, which today makes a giant leap forward toward becoming a reality. We have so many distinguished guests in this room that's today and we are so glad that you are here, that they are too in this room that enjoy and should enjoy a very special recognition because we wouldn't be here today without them. First Congressman Blake Moore of Utah, since he first arrived in Congress in 2021, our initial monument bill was the first piece of legislation he ever sponsored as a freshman congressman.

Thank you, like. And ironically, the Herschel Woody Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, which brings us here today, was the first bill ever sponsored by Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia. Thank you, Senator Justice. Thank you, Senator Justice. The first place is named for a proud son

of West Virginia, Medal of Honor recipient, Woody Williams. Please join me and thank you these incredible men and all that you have done to get this project I'm going to finish by this project hasn't already been built and why it doesn't exist already. And every time I answer, I think it's because our country needs it now more than ever before. This is a prime example of unity. It's a prime example of impact about courage and courage and and it takes those values to bring all of us together across the aisle side by side for our country you know you don't need to look much further than this piece of legislation it had the unifying power to bring everybody together it took eight votes over the past six years to come to fruition to be able to be able to sign in here today Eight votes in every single one of them have unanimous approval.

That does not happen in Washington. Unanimous approval. That just does not happen. That is the inspirational power of the Medal of Honor, and that is why this project matters. And now, without further delight, it is my pleasure to introduce our very special guest. He is a strong supporter of our military,

a true and trusted friend of the Medal of Honor, and the 45th and the 47th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. Yeah. you see it but i'm thrilled to be here at the national medal of honor museum it's got a great reputation already all over the world it's very special for all of us it's very special for me to be here it's an american treasure devoted to the best and bravest warriors of our country and frankly it's really the best they've ever produced the 3,500 and

36 recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And as you probably heard, we have a few more coming your way. Very great people. Since opening last year, this museum has already welcomed over 100,000 visitors. I want to thank the chair of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation. And she's a respected woman all over. Great genetics, I have to tell you. Great genetics.

I'm a big blood person. I believe in blood. You don't get better than those two. You don't get better than those too, Charlotte. So I just want to thank you for the great job you've done. And I want to thank Jerry's been a friend of mine for a long time. I refuse to say, how long is you going to say we're old people? I don't want to do that. We want to be young here.

And I want to thank Gene. She's a phenomenal woman. We respect it all over the planet, frankly. Thank you very much, Gene. It's a great honor to be with you. and your family and the board and thank you as well to speaker Mike Johnson is there any of something or is I saw it on it's more proof for the majority of two and any man and it's really a majority of one because one always votes there something wrong with him he's cuckoo

he always votes against us it doesn't matter if you vote or ID he'll vote against so we have really a majority of one maybe two but he's had to And thanks as well to Speaker Mike Johnson. Is around here someplace? Where is I love my speaker? It gets more approved with a majority of two than any man. And it's really a majority of one because one always votes. There's something wrong with him.

He's cuckoo. He always votes against us. It doesn't matter. It could be voter ID. He'll vote against. So we have really a majority of one, maybe two. But he's fantastic. guy, Mike, and he's a friend of mine, Mike Johnson, and Senator Jim Justice, he's been my friend

long before he ran for office. Where's Big Jim? He's the biggest senator in the history of the Senate. You could play for the Cowboys right now, offensive line only. I think offensive line. But he's been my friend for a long time. And another friend of mine, a guy who I was really friendly with, and then we got into a scuffle because we were running against each other. We got a long So long, I mean, the press was asking, will you two guys ever fight? I said, don't worry, it'll happen. But right now we get along, and we remember that, Ted? We got along so well. Long into the campaign, he was tough. And then we started fighting. We fought like hell. It took about two years to recuperate. And he's been my very dear friend, and he's been with me and everything, and I'm with

him and everything, and we ran together. And we had the greatest victories, right? The greatest victories, do we have to do that again for Ken. We said last night, I said, Ken, I don't want to embarrass you, but I don't agree with a lot of things. But you're the greatest Attorney General we've ever had, and that alone should carry him. I said, I'm not sure if I like your look. I'm not sure if I like the way you dress. I don't like the way you talk. But you're the greatest Attorney General.

So therefore, that's the only thing that matters, Jerry, right? He's the best Attorney General in the country. And we have the wall because of him. We have so much because of him. We have the best numbers in terms of what happened and illegal immigrants pouring into your country and your state. And he's done such a great job. So I think it's going to work out very well.

We had a great night last night. After we're finished here, we're going back over to the arena. And the interim, they've never done it. We had the midterm convention. You've never had it. Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. I said, you know, everyone talks about the midterms, but we never have a convention.

Why don't we try having a convention? We immediately picked this. I would have used the stadium, but I was a little bit concerned about filling that one up. The one last night, we packed it. That was packed, and we'll be back a lot. It's a special place. Dallas is special.

Texas is special. So I want to thank Ted Cruz, and I want to thank Representative Blake Moore, John McGuire, Mike Kennedy, Warren Davidson, all great people, Bruce Westerman, and Roger Williams, a very, very brave guy, Roger is. They came at him pretty strong, right, Roger, and you looked him in the eye, but pretty tough cookie and a good guy. I've been my friend for a long time. We're also pleased to be joined by the mayor of Arlington, Texas, Jim Ross. Thank you, Jim. You're doing a good job.

And Texas State Senator, Phil King, and the Council General, a place called Qatar. It's a little under siege right now, but you're going to be just fine. Don't worry about it. You're going to be perfect. And, of course, we're privileged to have with us 15 of the 65 living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. You know, I've never said this. I told Jerry a long time ago, I think I really want as I want for myself a Congressional Medal of honor and I've studied it. I will give it to myself. I have no problem, but I'm not allowed to. Can you

believe it? The one thing I'm not allowed to do, I would give myself so it would make it instead of 15 would have 16, but I'm not allowed to do that. Now, you know, the sad part about saying that to all of that, look at all that fake news back there, but the sad part is that they'll now go and they'll say Donald Trump wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor. They don't say that I kid. One thing in the world of politics. You can't be sarcastic. You can't have any fun. You can't do anything that you think is cute because it is so tonight the story will be that Donald Trump wants the Congressional Medal of Honor for himself. I'm only kidding. Actually, I'm not kidding. I would like to have. I can think of no other thing. We have the civilian version, which is the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I don't know. It's a very, very powerful thing, but when I see the recipients of the Congressional Medal of those that are living, many are dead. They died. And they died in battle. Some of the battles I read inscriptions of what took place. A level of bravery is incredible. The nice part about the Presidential Medal of Honor is the people are in good health. In other words, they get it because they won it sports. or they wanted something, but they don't have to get shot and they don't have to go through the trauma that you people have gone through

because what you've gone through is incredible. The bravery inspires us all. This year, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, and it's only because of courageous patriots like those honored at this museum is incredible. I have to say, you know, Charlotte is too modest. This was rated.

I read it in a magazine two weeks ago when I heard I was coming. He says, I think the best, I think the best, new, most beautiful new museum built in this country in many, many years. It's a big statement. And that's a tribute to you and your group and your directors. And your architect who's excellent, by the way. I know him very well from New York. He did some of the great. He did some great buildings.

But America has endured the two and a half centuries that we've done it well. And I will just say speaking, bringing it right up to the present, our country is right now very strong. We have over $2.1 trillion being invested in our country. Nobody, no country ever, ever, no matter where, no matter what country has ever even come close to that. We have $21 trillion, close to $21 trillion, actually. and it's coming in at levels that nobody's ever seen before. That number will be changing next month, and we could even hit $24, $25 trillion.

That's even a lot of money for Jerry, right, Jared? That's a lot of money. That's a lot of football players. And that's what's happening is, you know, we went years without building a car plant in the United States. Now we're building many, many car plants, Toyota, just announced they're leaving Mexico. We have many of the others. General Motors just announced a massive plant for it, the same thing. It's actually amazing what's happening. Honda's coming in. They're all coming in, and I say they're coming in because of what used to, I used to say it's my favorite word,

but I don't say that anyway. You've heard that story because the press just kills me. I said, My favorite word is tariff. And they said, what about your wife? What about your family? What about God? What about religion? He's a terrible human being when tariff is his favorite. So I made it my fifth favorite word, and now I'm okay.

But the numbers that we're taking in are incredible. Because when you come in and you build your plant in the United States, including in Arlington and Texas, anywhere you want in the United States, there is no tariff. So rather than paying 25, 50, 100, sometimes I go crazy, you go 250, rather than doing that, or rather than saying we don't want to trade with you because your country's taken advantage of us, like we have a country a little bit to the north, which has been taken advantage of us for many years. But rather than doing that, we just, we do something, and it just worked out so well. The numbers are, nobody's ever seen it.

Like, now just so you understand, other countries have done this to us for years, and that's why they were successful. But we've never had a period of time where we have this kind of investment, this kind of building and the building projects. Hundreds and hundreds of factories and plants are being built and other things are being built all over the country. And very shortly, though, exciting for me. I'll sign into law the Herschel Woody Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act. It's a long name, but it's a very long name. But it's an important name, authorizing the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation to establish a brand new monument in Washington, D.C., which is now one of the safest cities. By the way, our capital two years ago is one of the most unsafe cities in the country.

Now it's one of the safest cities in the country. It's the way it should be. Our National Guard was unbelievable. We don't play games anymore. and we've cleaned it. It's spotless. We got rid of all the graffiti over monuments that have been touched in 40, 50, 60 years,

monuments, fountains, everything. It's amazing. We did 82 of them, Jerry. We took care of 82 of them. I showed you the bridge, the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Your daughter wanted to have that bridge for herself so she could do so.

I said, I'm sorry. I think this one's taken, right? So I'm glad. We had the little, but we're going to find you an even better location, okay? But we had 82 monuments and statues and fountains that we've made, I mean, taken them from horrible looking, in all cases, horrible red graffiti, red and green. They like red and green, and some of it seeps into this beautiful limestone and marble. and you think that was easy getting it out. It wasn't, but some of those things are looking so beautiful.

More beautiful than when they were built many years ago. And in terms of crime, the crime rate's way down. It's down to a level that's one of the safer cities. But we removed over 5,000 criminals. Many of them came through the open border policy of Sleepy Joe Biden, it had open border for the world to come in. everybody come into our country. They emptied their jails. They emptied all of their mental institutions into our country. And, you know, Texas was right at the forefront of this disaster. But they had a person interviewed the other day on a television,

one of the network news programs. And the person said, we lived in hell two years ago. They were on the border. And this person, a beautiful. man and wife, sort of like 40 years old, and they were living in hell. And he said when President Trump got elected, it all changed. It's like we live in a different place now. We were being accosted. We were being run over by people pouring across dangerous people, too, in many cases, pouring across the border. Now, we haven't seen anybody in a year and a half. It's been

pretty amazing, Ted, what we've done on the border. And it's my honor and it brought your state back. But all that can disappear very quickly. You put a Talafriko in or you put any one of these people in, these people that don't know what the hell they're doing. And even if they do, you know, some are very smart. They're radical left. They have crazy policies. Some are not smart at all. But he would be a disaster for this country. So we are dedicating all of the, receipts of all of the money that we're taking is a lot of additional money and money even today I got so many calls of people that heard I was going to be here they say we want to make a contribution so you could have a lot of money pouring in I don't know charlie you probably don't need it but do you need

okay then I'll then I'm going to have them sent it okay they've got plenty but this monument this is a monument now I think will be entirely funded by private donations and located in the heart of our nation's capital near the Lincoln Memorial. We will find you an even better look. I know the location you're talking about. It just happens to be taken. But we're going to find you an even better location. I think I have an idea that you like even better. I got very familiar with the land. I like real estate. I got very familiar with D.C. land. But the bill creating this beautiful new monument is named for one of the most beloved Medal of Honor recipients, the late great Woody Williams.

When he died, Woody was the last surviving recipient from World War II, one of the most dangerous jobs of war, and that's operating a flamethrower. They say it's one of the most dangerous jobs, very dangerous for the people on the other end, too, I can tell you. But I'm going to have to ask somebody why, but they say it's like an unbelievable, unbelievably important, unbelievably dangerous in the battle of Iwo Jima. he carved a path to American victory. Literally carved a path so soldiers could get in and win. Through a deadly gauntlet of enemy strongholds, back and forth he went. He just kept going back and forth. He said, would he take it easy? No, no, I can't have to clear the path. And one machine gun nest after another, he knocked out. And he did it for hours and hours. People said they've never seen anything quite like it.

Out of the 300 flamethrower operators, you had 300 flamethrower operators on Iwojima, they had a casualty rate of substantially over 90%. So, like I said, it's dangerous. And Woody was one of the few who survived, but he survived with a lot of trauma. We're joined today by Woody's family, great family. Thank you for all being here,

signed this bill honoring Woody and more than 3,500 other true American patrons. Would you stand up, please? Woody's family. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. That's also good genetics, you know. I was saying to Charlotte, you have good genetics, too. History is made of the biographies of Brave and America trusts every warrior to answer with courage. And when, do you? And when Duty calls, they're there. These people are there. They're there faster than probably any of us in this room would want to be there, except for the Medal of Honor winners of which we have some of the best. But those honored in this museum did more than answer the call. They stormed into hellfire and crushed America's enemies. They had bravery like few people could even think of having. They carried the wounded out of battle and their own backs. They carried them. Back and forth, I have stories that, as I, you know, I had the honor of giving out a lot of Medal of Honors and some of the stories. I'm reading them.

I'm reading. I like to be a little prepared, so I'd study it a little bit before I went up there and discussed it. And I said, boy, these people are brave. But they gave their bodies or shields for their brothers in arms. They stood in the way of bullets purposely, just standing just like this and taking bullets. and it's amazing. These are amazing.

I see why Charlotte's so committed to it, you know, because you just don't meet people like this. They stood tall when their country needed heroes, and we will remember them all for what they do. That's all the people in this room and all of those great Medal of Honor winners that are no longer with us. With this museum and a new monument in Washington, D.C.,

America will never, ever forget what they did and what they risk and how much they risk what they've meant to their families and what they've meant to our country. And I want to thank you all once again. And I really want to congratulate Charlotte Jones and the entire Jones family for their incredible dedication to the museum. And also I know it was very important to Charlotte. She's got a board of directors and I know some of them from a different life and you have a very fine board of directors. as I must say, a very good one. And I'm just very proud of, you know, Jerry Jones has been somebody that I've known so long.

I just have such great respect for him. And Gene is an incredible woman respected by everybody. That's a family. This is a family that's very, very special. So it's an honor for me to be here with you. And great. I wasn't supposed to be doing this today, Jerry, because I am busy as hell. But when they called, I said, I got to just forget about this, okay?

And I'm going to do this. So, Charlotte's going to come up. She's going to say a few more words, and I'm going to then receive. I think you're getting, somebody said, Trump is receiving an honor. I'll take it. Maybe it's the Congressional Medal of Honor. I'll really. And I just want to let you know that we'll go back to Washington.

We're going to get you all set up. We're going to get you the best side in all of Washington. And I think our speaker may be very instrumental in that too, right, Mike? And when the speaker talks, everybody listens. So Charlotte, come on up. Thank you. Come on in, fellas. Come on, Jim.

He's got the good size for the team, Jerry. I don't know. I'm not sure about the movement. And Mr. President, thank you again for being at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas today to sign this very special piece of legislation. But before you depart, I would. like to make a special presentation. So I'm excited to share with everyone here the incredible news that you have graciously agreed to become one of our honorary directors. We are thrilled

to add you to the amazing bipartisan group of commanders-in-chief. Thank you so much, Mr. President. And finally, I am happy to now present you our Foundation's Champion of Honor Award. This is with sincere appreciation and gratitude, the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation recognizes President Donald J. Trump as a champion of honor. For his unwavering commitment to preserving and sharing the legacies of the Medal of Honor recipients, his tireless effort to ensure the Medal of Honor and those who received it are celebrated nationally, and for his unconditional support of the Herschel Woody Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, ensuring recipients of our nation's highest decoration for valor in combat are permanently recognized on the national mall in Washington, D.C.

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