Let's just savor this one: Donald Trump, inventing a whole new type of "endorsement."
"We had a fantastic meeting with the folks, (a) pretty large group of folks, and they’re very upset about the way they’re being treated, and I understand that fully," Trump said. "And they’ve endorsed me, endorsed me fully. I’ve been endorsed by virtually every police department and police group. And I’ve been endorsed largely, at least conceptually, by the military. We’ve had tremendous veteran endorsements because the veterans have been treated so unfairly."
That's right, says the man with the largest ego in America. His campaign has been "conceptually" endorsed by the American military. It would be illegal for the military to "endorse" anyone in a presidential campaign, but conceptually? Conceptually, Donald Trump has been endorsed by the military, by America's doors and doorknobs, and by the various inhabitants of the forest moon Endor.
The rest of it is bunk too, of course. Yes, individual retired military members have endorsed him—but not as many as regularly endorse other presidential candidates. "Police departments" don't generally endorse presidents either—Trump is conflating that with the endorsement he received from an individual police union. And it builds on Trump's most common "endorsement" fib, that he's been "endorsed" by Immigration and Customs.
[T]he agency has not endorsed any candidate, nor is it able to. Instead the union representing ICE employees, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, gave the Republican nominee its backing. And it represents just a quarter of the more than 20,000 employees that work at the agency.
Surely, that counts as a conceptual endorsement of Trump, just as Trump's feud with Rosie O'Donnell conceptually has prepared him for making tough deals with Vladimir Putin or his mismanagement of his casino business conceptually qualifies him as an expert on government spending.
Conceptually, does Donald Trump understand the difference between federal departments of government and individual employee unions or interest groups? There's still no way to know, or know if he even cares. Donald J. Trump seems to only hear the parts of sentences that feature his own name, while everything else makes it through only in bits and pieces.