Trump announces Medal of Freedom for Roger Clemens at Texas rally

By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)

Roger Clemens stood stunned as President Donald Trump called him back onstage at Freeman Coliseum. “This supersedes anything that obviously I’ve done in my playing career,” Clemens said. He told the San Antonio crowd he would want the honor from no other president, and that the announcement in his home state, from “a winner,” left him stunned.

Trump had just made the pledge himself. “Roger Clemens is being given the single highest award,” the president said during a speech lasting more than 100 minutes at the Oct. 7, 2026, rally for GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton. “We’re giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and tonight I’m announcing that Roger Clemens is being given this.” Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and 11-time All-Star, had introduced Trump earlier. Trump brought him back after the pledge.

The president framed the honor against baseball’s Hall of Fame exclusion. “About eight months ago after I played a round of golf with Roger, and we had a great time. He’s an amazing guy, and I said, ‘I’m going to call the commissioner of baseball. It’s a ridiculous thing that you’re not in the Hall of Fame with that kind of a record,’” Trump said. “He won seven Cy Young. If you win one, you’re a superstar. If you win one, you go to the Hall of Fame for the most part. You win two, you’re guaranteed. He won seven, and they didn’t take him.”

Clemens’s 24-season major-league career ran through the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Houston Astros. He struck out 20 batters in a game in 1986 and again a decade later, a major-league record. He won two World Series titles with the Yankees. Those numbers are not in dispute. The Hall of Fame ballot has still kept him out.

Trump addressed the reason voters give. “By the way, people talk drugs. He never admitted to anything,” the president said. “They have no information. They didn’t find anything. He never admitted to anything. He’s just a physical monster. He’s a big, strong, and he just he was great.” The record on that point is longer than a rally line. Clemens was named in the 2007 Mitchell Report. Former Yankees trainer Brian McNamee said he injected Clemens with steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Former teammates Jose Canseco, Andy Pettitte and Jason Grimsley also claimed knowledge of use. Clemens has denied performance-enhancing drug use. In 2012, after a first trial ended in mistrial, he was acquitted on all six counts—two of perjury, three of false statements and one of obstruction of Congress—stemming from his congressional testimony.

That acquittal is the hard legal fact. A federal jury cleared him. Hall of Fame voters, over a decade on the ballot, did not. The conservative case rests there, not on rewriting baseball’s private election. A president who recognizes a pitcher with seven Cy Young Awards, two 20-strikeout games and two World Series rings is acting on a public performance record and a completed criminal case that ended in full acquittal. Writers’ ballots are not courts. Courts already spoke. Treating an acquitted man as permanently disqualified by allegation alone is the opposite of the rule of law ordinary Americans expect when their own names are on the line.

Opponents of the honor can and do point to the Mitchell Report, McNamee’s statements and the claims from Canseco, Pettitte and Grimsley, and to the Hall’s continued refusal. That is the other side’s argument in its own terms. The counter is also on the record: Clemens never admitted to drug use, the jury found him not guilty on every count, and the statistical case Trump recited—seven Cy Youngs against a standard where one or two often suffice—remains unmatched by the exclusion.

Trump added a lighter dig that Clemens then corrected on the spot. “Now he did have a couple of problems. He was known for two things as a pitcher: power and accuracy. I said, then Roger, how come you hit more batters than any other pitcher in history? Which is true, he hit more batters than any. And when he hit you, it hurt,” Trump said. Clemens answered directly: “I don’t think that I led Major League Baseball in hit batters, Mr. President. I don’t think. Besides, when you let it go inside, it’s the hitter’s job to get out of the way, right?” He closed, “I can’t thank you enough. That’s a huge honor. I am stunned.”

Fox News and Breitbart covered the announcement. The president’s travel pool recorded no press interaction around the event: Trump left Air Force One at 3:00 p.m. and 5:18 p.m. for the Freeman Coliseum rally without taking questions, and later departed Marine One at 12:22 a.m. ET, again without questions.

A White House press office email later said Trump meant the Medal of Honor, not the Medal of Freedom, and that no award was presented at the rally.