A military veteran presented Donald Trump with his Purple Heart ahead of his Tuesday rally in Virginia.
Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, identified the man as a lieutenant colonel. The Purple Heart is a military award given to someone who is wounded or killed while serving.
{mosads}“Man, that’s big stuff,” Trump said.
“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart — this was much easier. I’ll tell you, it was such an honor.”
Trump opened the rally by taking out the medal and telling the crowd in Ashburn, Va., that “something very nice just happened to me.”
He said that when he asked the man if it was a real award or a copy, the man confirmed it was his real Purple Heart medal.
“That’s my real Purple Heart. I have such confidence in you,’” the man replied, according to Trump.
But NBC News’s Katy Tur reported that the man told her before the rally that the award was a copy, not in fact the real one.
The controversy has drawn further scrutiny to Trump’s history with the military draft.
The New York Times on Monday reported that Trump received five deferments from the draft during the Vietnam War. One was a medical deferment for heel spurs, and four were educational deferments.
Former President Bill Clinton, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s husband, wrote to an Army ROTC officer in 1969 to thank him for “saving me from the draft,” the Times reported.