President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was awarding the presidential medal of freedom to Ohio deputy Jim Jordan, a combative Republican ally in Congress who continues to support the president even after deadly violence last week by a pro-mob Trump through the Capitol.
Jordan received the country’s highest civilian award from a lame and increasingly isolated president, who had only nine days in office and faces the humiliation of a possible second impeachment before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
A Trump defender with sharp elbows, Jordan helped lead the Republican Party’s attack on Special Lawyer Robert Mueller’s investigation into interference in the Russian elections and his harsh interrogation of witnesses – in addition to his refusal to wear a jacket in doing so – made him a national figure and lightning rod for critics.
In announcing the award, the White House praised Jordan, among other things, for his work to “unmask the farce of Russia and tackle the corruption of the Deep State” and for his efforts to “tackle the witch hunt of impeachment”.
Trump was impeached for the first time by the democratically controlled House in 2019 for pressuring the Ukrainian president to do political damage to Biden. He was acquitted by the Senate led by the Republican Party.
Following the invasion of the Capitol last week, Jordan joined the bipartisan chorus condemning the violence.
But just hours after the building was ransacked, Jordan was also one of 147 Republican deputies and senators who participated in the latest effort to undermine Biden’s legitimate victory by raising objections to the Electoral College results and echoing Trump’s baseless allegations of an election.
Jordan, a founding member of arch-conservative Freedom Caucus who has sometimes angered members of his own party, is not Trump’s first political ally to receive the president’s award.
Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who also firmly defended Trump, won a medal last week. And before that, right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh was a recipient.
The day after the attack on the Capitol, Trump gave the medal to three professional golfers – Annika Sorenstam, Gary Player and, posthumously, Babe Didrikson Zaharias. And later this week, Trump is expected to give the medal to New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
In Ohio, The Dayton Daily News editorial board rejected Jordan receiving the award, calling him one of the instigators of the deadly mob violence in Washington.
Jordan was one of several Republican congressmen who “deliberately created an alternative reality by spreading lies and conspiracy theories,” wrote the council.
“Jim Jordan is an accomplice to the worst president in our country’s history and the violent uprising that took place last week,” said Victor Ruiz, a member of the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial board, recently at a roundtable. “He did a terrible job for our country and his name should not be mentioned by people like Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez and Maya Angelou.”
“I can’t think of anyone less deserving of the Freedom Medal than Jim Jordan, one of the seditious lawmakers who blocked a peaceful transition of power,” added board member Lisa Garvin.
But conservative Plain Dealer columnist Ted Diadiun called Jordan “a standing guy and a patriot who says what he thinks and lives by his word”.
“Any award that anyone deems appropriate to give him is well deserved and, for me, fine,” said Diadiun, who also called for Trump’s impeachment for inciting the riot.
The delivery of the medal to Jordan was also heavily criticized by some former Ohio State University fighters, who accused him of doing nothing to protect them from a team doctor who sexually abused them when Jordan was a technical assistant from 1986 to 1994.
“If turning your back on hundreds of sexually abused athletes under your supervision and allowing an incumbent president to incite a domestic terrorist insurrection are qualities of a candidate to receive the country’s highest civilian award, Jim Jordan should receive two freedom medals ”, Former OSU fighter Mike DiSabato told NBC News.
Jordan, a former college champion fighter, vehemently denied any knowledge of what the team’s doctor, Richard Strauss, was doing to the fighters, including listening to any “locker room talk”.
