So, I ran across a retweet of the below tweet and it immediately raised flags. Puffing up a witness has a reason, so decided to go look for the documentation behind it, since it had a direct quote. Didn't take long - few minutes and NPR coughed it up (will link at the end)./1

About puffing someone up - the reason is to try to give the person credibility, their views more weight than they should be given, and to set them above someone they are in disagreement with. In this case, also to elicit support due to his medal./2

In the case of the tweet, it is immediately followed by the statement "speaking out against the command-in-chief." (you're suppose to gasp here I think)



Then "the reason" is given - people kept telling him he needed to speak up (be sure to ignore other possible reasons)./3