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January 5, 2025 - 8:00pm
At a White House ceremony on Saturday, Joe Biden conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the last time on 18 recipients. However, the selection drew fire from conservative quarters, which did not appreciate what they saw as overtly partisan picks for America’s highest civilian honour.
The list was full of celebrities such as Bono, Magic Johnson, Lionel Messi (who did not attend), Denzel Washington, Michael J. Fox, Bill Nye, Ralph Lauren, and Anna Wintour, who were cited for humanitarian work as well as for artistic or athletic feats. And though Biden also gave out awards to a broad range of recipients, outsize media attention inevitably fell on the A-listers. For a Democratic Party weighed down by charges of elitism and celebrity worship, the awards certainly did not work to dispel this persistent public image.
But even more than the front-loaded Hollywood stars, it was the White House’s decision to honour two figures in particular that caused the most uproar: billionaire investor George Soros and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. With these two picks, it put to the test the very idea of the Medal of Freedom as a civic distinction that rewarded “all forms of endeavor that are touched with the public interests” in the lofty words of John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Executive Order, as opposed to merely partisan ones (think astronauts and Nobel Prize winners rather than party bosses and also-rans).
Soros was recognised for his Open Society Foundation, a major grant-making organisation and backer of Left-leaning causes , including “soft on crime” approaches adopted by big city district attorneys. The choice triggered a predictable chorus of both opposition and support online, which included a dramatic plea by Steve Bannon for the incoming administration to rescind the award and a taunt by Elon Musk, MAGA’s own preferred oligarch-policymaker.
Soros was supposedly honoured for aiding initiatives that “strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice”— but only in ways that aligned with the Democrats’ interpretation of those ideals. (Similar controversy greeted Trump’s 2018 award to Miriam Adelson, wife of GOP donor Sheldon Adelson.) A truly impartial selection could have recognised the contributions of Soros and, say, the Kochs or the Mercers, who have done similar things but on the conservative side, thus confirming the award’s non-political bent. Or better yet, offer it to none of the above.
A similar criticism could be levelled at Clinton, who received a sustained ovation from the audience at the ceremony. In an apparent gesture of defiance (or bitterness), Clinton wore the same red pantsuit from her debate with Donald Trump eight years ago. Yet her citation reads simply that she “made history many times over decades in public service, including as the first First Lady elected to the United States Senate” and as “first woman nominated for president by a major United States political party.” But for a figure who supposedly “made history” with prodigious contributions to public life over decades, the White House seemed to be hard-pressed to name a single policy or diplomatic achievement other than the titles she held along with her identity as a woman. Democrats shouldn’t be surprised if the wider public then views this as a hollow consolation prize for Clinton’s lifetime of frustrated ambitions.
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SubscribeDid Hillary Clinton and George Soros deserve Medals of Freedom?
To ask the question is to answer it.
Hard to decide which of these two monsters has done the most damage.
Re: the accompanying photo, maybe he just wanted an opportunity to smell Hillary’s hair.
Aren’t internal award ceremonies nothing but ‘w**k fests’?
The Oscars, for example, are just another example of an ideological ( leftist in that case ) circle jerk. We can view all award ceremonies the same. Who is in charge of handing out the award is all that matters.
Politicos awarding politicos, luvvies awarding luvvies. I detect a theme.
Like the UK gongs the US gongs are ludicrous. As they seemingly cannot be awarded to only genuine contenders best to abolish the gongs altogether.
Hillary Clinton should be in jail for so many incidents. There’s the Benghazi killings of American soldiers. Then, the Russian Dossier which unnecessarily tangled the country in two years of litigation and cost taxpayers $50 million – her team paid $15 million for that goose chase to take down Trump. Then, there’s the 30k emails she deleted on the illegally placed government server, smashing and destroying phones and computers so that an investigation could not take place….there’s more, lots more…early on, she was booted off the Watergate Committee for lying…
There would have been no Iraq War without her bullying of the Democrats in the Senate either. Plus ‘We came. We saw. He died.’ was one of the most disgusting things you can see on youTube. Google it. Sickening.
Get rid of these awards and remove the Presidential pardon from the constitution.
If, as Tom Lehrer claimed, ‘Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace”, then it must have been hanged, drawn and quartered the day Hillary Clinton was awarded the Medal of Freedom
Is it just me or does it seem like Biden’s awarding the Presidential Medal is just another version of Biden awarding Presidential Pardons?
Presidential Pardons by another name.
All this huffing and puffing about Elon Musk throwing his money into right-wing causes. And yet billionaire George Soros has for decades been throwing his money into many left-wing causes in an attempt to manipulate the political processes and undermine the democratic aspirations of electors. He pumped a lot of money, for example, into Black Lives Matter. Dreadful man. But where were the critical voices about his malign influence over these past decades?
Soros also spent $50 million in the UK trying to stop Brexit through a puppet NGO called Best For Britain. The current head honcho of which appears at least once a month on Politics Live on the BBC. We are never told who she represents.
Announce victory and move on. It’s the usual strategy.
Good to see that Betteridge’s Law is once again resoundingly confirmed!
Unlike some countries the US has no problem with political money from foreign billionaires.
So George Soros’Open Society Foundation is a force for good and earns him a medal. Meanwhile Elon Musk is a nom-violent terrorist who must be countered by new legislation across Europe and his businesses must be sanctioned.