Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has once again come out in defense of controversial remarks made by his running mate, former president Donald Trump.

When speaking to the Milwaukee Police Association on Friday, Vance—who spent four years in the Marines and served a tour in Iraq in 2005 as a combat correspondent—attempted to soften Trump’s recent remarks diminishing the importance of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The medal, which has been around for more than 150 years, is the country’s highest award for military valor in action. Trump equated that award with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

During a campaign event Thursday at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump called out to Miriam Adelson in the crowd.

Adelson, a prominent Republican donor and casino magnate who has an estimated net worth of $32.3 billion, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018 by Trump. During his failed 2020 bid for office, Adelson and her husband donated $90 million to Preserve America, a super PAC dedicated to electing Trump.

This time around, she’s slated to give even more.

“We gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Trump began. “It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version.” He then goes on to say that freedom award is “actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets—or they’re dead.”

“She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman,” Trump continued, noting that the two awards are “rated equal.”

The former president may have been using the moment to make nice with Adelson after he reportedly had an aide send her a slew of angry text messages last month, according to The New York Times.

“This is a guy who loves our veterans and who honors our veterans,” JD Vance said of Trump on Friday, claiming that he hadn’t seen the full remarks. “I don't think him complimenting and saying a nice word about a person who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom is in any way denigrating those who received military honors,” Vance continued. “They are two different awards. And I think the president was saying some nice things about a person that he liked and that is a totally reasonable thing to do."

“The veteran community is very, very much behind Donald Trump,” Vance said after mentioning a meeting he had with veterans in Pennsylvania.

Veterans across the nation have denounced Trump’s recent remarks and critiqued Vance for endorsing his running mate’s actions as a veteran himself.

Veterans of Foreign Wars—a nonprofit serving active, guard, and reserve forces that has previously denounced language that Trump has used when discussing veterans—called the former president’s comments “asinine.”

“When a candidate to serve as our military’s commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor and those who have earned it, I must question whether they would discharge their responsibilities to our men and women in uniform with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position,” the organization said in a statement, adding that Trump “should frankly already know better.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Iraq war veteran and co-founder of the veterans advocacy group VoteVets.org Jon Soltz said of Vance: “Totally respect his service, but he’s a fraud.”

“If you’re gonna be a veteran and you’re gonna go out and stump for this guy, you have to ask yourself, are you a fraud?” Soltz continued. “He sold out every member of the military, and every veteran in this country, and he sold his soul.”

Trump's recent comments are the latest episode in his already fraught relationship with veterans and military service.

A young Donald Trump had four service deferments and in 1968 acquired a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam—an ailment the prescribing doctor’s daughter has said was made up.

While running for president two cycles ago, Trump went after then Arizona Senator John McCain, who spent 1967 to 1973 in captivity as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “He’s a war hero ’cause he was captured,” Trump said in 2015. “I like people that weren’t captured.”

As president, he also reportedly canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he said, according to multiple people with firsthand knowledge, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” He’s also called the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood “suckers” for getting killed, according to reporting from Susan Glasser and Peter Baker that was later confirmed by former Trump chief of staff John Kelly. Trump denies the claims.

Trump’s comments about the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Vance’s defense, come as their camp has been misrepresenting comments from Tim Walz, the presumptive democratic nominee for vice president, claiming that he attempted to steal valor from other soldiers during his time in the military. Walz, who served 24 years in the National Guard before retiring in 2005 to run for Congress, has employed this experience when calling for a ban on military-style rifles for civilians.

In 2018, Walz claimed that he had handled assault weapons “in war,” which was a misrepresentation, as he did not deploy to a combat zone as part of his service. The Kamala Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement to CNN that the governor had “misspoke,” adding that he “did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them.”

Vance has said that he would be “ashamed” to have “lied about my military service like he did.” Trump has also shaded Walz and questioned his “valor.”

“Donald Trump knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself,” Harris campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement Friday. “For him to insult Medal of Honor recipients,” she continued, “should remind all Americans that we owe it to our service members, our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander in chief again.”

Since being chosen as Trump’s second hand guy, Vance has kept himself busy with defending the former president—on firing striking workers, on overarching executive power, on rolling back access to abortion pills, to name a few.

On Friday, he continued to be a well-behaved and compliant partner, setting an excellent example for Atlas, his newly revealed dog. The VP hopeful’s nine-month-old German Shepherd joined the campaign for the first time this week and made news for appearing to be awkwardly handled by his owner, JD Vance, who urged that “nobody kidnap my dog because we want him back.”