President Trump Says Soldiers Can't Receive Religious Gifts; They Can

WASHINGTON, DC — A strange comment by President Donald Trump as he signed an executive order on religious liberty reportedly raised some eyebrows at the Pentagon. Trump made the bizarre claim that members of the U.S. military were forbidden from giving or receiving religious items at military hospitals — a claim that is 100 percent false.

"People were forbidden from giving or receiving religious items at a military hospital where our brave service members were being treated, and when they wanted those religious items," Trump said at the signing ceremony. "These were great, great people. These are great soldiers. They wanted those items. They were precluded from getting them."

There is in fact no policy that prohibits someone in the military from getting a religious item at a military installation.

In an attempt to figure out what Trump was referring to, CNN asked Pentagon officials, who told the news organization that the only thing they could think of was when the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in D.C. instituted a patient visitation policy in 2011 that barred unsolicited proselytizing, including distributing religious items to military members who had not asked for them. But that is a far cry form a blanket ban on religious items.

The visitation policy caused some controversy when it was first introduced six years ago, resulting in chain emails like the following one published by Snopes.com from December 2011: "The soldiers who wake up in Walter Reed Medical Center are in Maryland — not communist China. But under the Navy’s new rules, they may not know the difference! Navy officials have announced that 'no religious items (including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.' The new orders are buried in a four-page document about patient care, which an Army officer forwarded to us in disbelief. Effective immediately, families, friends, and even pastors will have to check their beliefs at the door to visit one of the largest military hospitals in the United States."

Walter Reed officials acknowledged the policy was too broad and poorly worded. But the wording was fixed more than five years ago, a development that Trump apparently hasn't caught wind of.

"The WRNMMC policy was not intended to nor did it ever have the effect of limiting religious expression of patients," states a memo from the hospital. "The policy as written was incorrect and should have been more thoroughly reviewed before its release. It has been rescinded. Family members have been and will always be allowed to bring religious materials and texts. Subsequently, the new “Patient Visitation Policy” WRNATMILMEDCEN INSTRUCTION 5720.4D was reissued on 24 January 2012 with all incorrect verbiage and implications removed."

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