Trump Participates in a Medal of Honor Ceremony, Jun. 18, 2026
June 18, 2026 · The White House · 0:24:54
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to three recipients at the White House on June 18, 2026. “Only a few have received our highest military distinction, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Today, we present this award… to three new recipients,” he said: Marine Corps Major James Capers Jr., Marine Corps Colonel John W. Ripley, honored posthumously, and Army Major Nicholas Dockery. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth attended, along with UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine, and eleven former Medal of Honor recipients.
Of Capers, the President told the story of Vietnam in 1967: promoted from staff sergeant directly to second lieutenant — “making Jim the first black Marine in history to receive a battlefield commission in the middle of a war” — Capers led his nine-man force reconnaissance team through four days of attacks, was gravely wounded in an ambush, called in close air support for an hour, and loaded his wounded men onto the extraction helicopter before himself. Recommended for the Medal of Honor in 1967, his paperwork was lost when his commanding officer was killed. “Jim, the nation kept you waiting far too long. So I say to you, congratulations. You made it.”
Ripley, the President said, “was given the Navy Cross and today we posthumously award him the highest of all awards.” Of Dockery, he recounted the final act of valor in which Dockery climbed to an open roof under Taliban fire and signaled enemy positions with smoke grenades so gunships could rescue his platoon: “Major Dockery, you were the last man to depart the battlefield that day, and you left it a legend and a hero.”
Why it matters
A Medal of Honor ceremony is the presidency’s oldest ceremonial duty to the armed forces, and this one closed a 59-year wait for Capers — a recommendation made in a Vietnam jungle in 1967 and fulfilled at the White House in the country’s 250th year. This chronicle files it on the Veterans hub alongside the Medal of Honor Monument bill signing paged in September.
Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Medal of Honor Ceremony,” the White House, June 18, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All details as stated by the President in the ceremony.
On this page