Still, in honoring Ms. Adelson, Mr. Trump seemed to take the idea of rewarding big donors to new heights. And he did not make much of an attempt to show the kind of bipartisanship that previous presidents did in selecting any of the other honorees, either.

President Ronald Reagan selected Chief Justice Earl Warren, like him a former Republican governor of California but one whose liberal court was reviled by conservatives. Reagan also draped a medal around the neck of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. President Bill Clinton gave the medal to former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas a year after the president defeated him in the 1996 election. Mr. Obama honored President George Bush.

Most of Mr. Trump’s choices — Senator Orrin G. Hatch and Roger Staubach, the former Navy and Dallas Cowboys quarterback, in addition to Ms. Adelson — are strong Republicans. Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, was the court’s leading conservative. Another nominee, Alan Page, a defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings who went on to become a State Supreme Court justice, has been aligned with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, but his election was considered nonpartisan.

Ruth and Presley were not known to have clear partisan leanings.

Justice Scalia, who is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump as a model for a Supreme Court justice, was known as a forceful writer and strong-willed voice of judicial conservatism. And thanks to the stalling tactics of Senate Republicans, Justice Scalia’s death gave Mr. Trump the opportunity to name his successor, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, early in his presidency, a choice that has proved much more popular than his second selection for the court, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Presiding over the ceremony in the White House’s East Room, which was also attended by cabinet secretaries and some of Justice Scalia’s former colleagues, Mr. Trump had a personal word for all of the winners or their families. After reading the list of Justice Scalia’s nine children, he joked to his widow, Maureen, by saying: “You were very busy. Wow. I always knew I liked him.”

About Mr. Hatch, he said: “He liked me from the very beginning and therefore I like him,” adding, “I guess I’m not supposed to say it, but that’s the way life works, right?”