Trump to award Presidential Medal of Freedom to Elvis, Babe Ruth, others

Donald Trump. File photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

Nov. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has announced the first seven recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his time in office, including three deceased people: musician Elvis Presley, baseball Hall of Famer Babe Ruth and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Also to be awarded honors Friday at the White House are Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch; NFL Hall of Famers Roger Staubach and Alan Page, the latter also a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice; and philanthropist Miriam Adelson, the wife of Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.

Trump did not name any recipients in 2017.

“This prestigious award is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, which may be awarded by the President to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” the White House said in a statement Saturday.

Republican Orrin Hatch is retiring from the U.S. Senate after representing Utah for more than 41 years. The Senate’s president pro tempore and chairman of the Finance Committee “has sponsored more bills that have become law than any other living Member of Congress,” the White House said.

Presley, who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “defined American culture to billions of adoring fans around the world. Elvis fused gospel, country, and rhythm and blues to create a sound all his own, selling more than a billion records,” according to the White House.

Ruth’s “legacy has never been eclipsed, and he remains the personification of ‘America’s Pastime,” the White House said. He played for four teams between 1914 and 1935, including the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

Staubach, as a quarterback, won two Super Bowls and made the Pro Bowl six times with the Dallas Cowboys before retiring in 1979. Previously, he played football for the United States Naval Academy and volunteered to fight in the Vietnam War.

Page is an “accomplished jurist, athlete and philanthropist,” according to the White House. After playing as defensive tackle with the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears, Page practiced law full-time and then won a seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992 until 2015.

Scalia “was one of the greatest Supreme Court justices in American history,” the White House said, after being confirmed unanimously in 1986 and dying in 2016. “He was a champion of the Constitution, insisting that the role of Federal judges is to uphold the original meaning of the Constitution — never to impose their own beliefs on the country,” the White House added.

Adelson was described as “a committed doctor, philanthropist and humanitarian” by the White House. With her husband, she also established the Adelson Medical Research Foundation, which supports research to prevent, reduce, or eliminate disabling and life-threatening illness.

1 COMMENT

  1. Here are four things Elvis Presley did for the common good before he turned 27 years old i) October 28, 1956 (takes third version of the polio vaccine, in front of the world’s press, thus contributing significantly to the exponential increase in the immunization level of all americans from 0.6% to 80%, in six months). ii) January 6, 1957 (His Hungarian refugees emergency appeal yields US$6 million (US$49.5m today) and the 250,000 settle in Austrian and England for life), iii) June 28, 1957 (Leads St Jude’s first huge benefit, fills up an open air stadium with 11,000 donors from MS, TN and AR, and without even singing a single verse, let alone a song, the money just pours in) and iv) March 26, 1961 (provides timely and substantive financial support, towards the building of the USS Arizona Memorial (65 million visitors and counting, since 1962). Those are four dates in which Elvis Presley did more for his fellow men and women, than any of his singing, or even serving in the US Army would. You can google image the four dates, one by one, even without mentioning Elvis and what he did that day will pop up in front of your eyes. Those advocacies, in themselves, are sufficient for him to be given this award posthumously. In fact, Pres. Kennedy should have been the one who gave it to him, as all of these things he did for the common good were acted upon by Elvis, under his own initiative, BEFORE Pres. Kennedy was slain. Now, for what he achieved globally. In my opinion, no musician deserved the US Presidential Medal of Freedom more than Elvis Presley. It has less to do with what he did with his voice, or his movements, but with how many people throughout the world identified with him, from the start, as an American they wanted to be fond of. I can name three Chinese Premiers, two Soviet and Russian leaders, a couple of East and West German Chancellors 2 North Korean dictators, a Japanese Prime Minister, European heads of State who changed the world for the better, or for the worst, all of whom just could not get enough of him, as a person. He was the American those young rebels in North Africa and in Southern Africa wanted to, as I said eartlier, become fond of whether from a prison cell like the extraordinary human being that was Nelson Mandela, whose letters to her daughter, now finally out in a book, confirmed his being a Presley follower, or those in exile, fighting, like the murderous Robert Mugabe. Presley was such a likeable American personality throughout the world, left and right, north and south, than even a then sitting Pope like Benedict XVI, a German, could not resist asking a friend who was close to dying whether he had ever met him. His answer “Not yet your Holiness, but I hope to soon meet him” says everything there is to say about Elvis Presley.

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