President Donald Trump opened a solemn Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony Thursday for three combat veterans by bragging about the stock market.

Trump showed up about an hour late to the ceremony, causing the piano player in the room to vamp while the packed room waited.

After the opening prayer, Trump began his remarks.

“Thank you very much, everybody, and we’ll be seated. We have some very important business to take care of. I just do want to say, though, the stock market just hit a new all-time high. The 401ks has hit a new all-time high, and oil is dropping like a rock. Other than that, it’s another day in paradise.”

Trump continued, “Well, thank you very much, chaplain. And I have no higher privilege than serving as the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. I’m so proud of them. A 250-year tradition of the bravest and greatest heroes ever to walk the Earth. But only if you have received our highest military distinction, the Congressional Medal of Honor. I wanted to give it to myself, but I was informed I couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t find anything where I was actually worthy, so here we are.”

The three recipients were Marine Corps Major James Capers, the late Marine Corps Colonel John W. Ripley, and Army Major Nicolas Dockery.

Trump defended his much-maligned memorandum of understanding with Iran at the G-7 summit in France by saying he wanted to avoid an “economic catastrophe” through market instability and continued high oil prices.

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have ​happened,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

“All I know is ​every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ​ship,” Trump said. “Every time we said something negative, like, guess what, we’re not going to be able to settle, it would go down very big.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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