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PolitiFact chides for Rachel Maddow for saying Reagan started the practice of saluting soldiers

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You likely heard this already, but some conservatives and members of the military are upset that President Barack Obama saluted to Marines on Tuesday while holding a cup. Others are coming to Obama’s defense....

"There’s no regulation that stipulates presidents must salute the troops. In fact, for the first 192 years of our republic, it didn’t happen. None of the first 38 commanders in chief did it," wrote Brian Adam Jones.

To prove it, Jones quotes from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s 2012 book Drift. Maddow says saluting was a thing started by Ronald Reagan.

"Soldiers were supposed to salute their president; the president was not supposed to salute the soldiers. No modern president, not even old Gen. Eisenhower, had saluted military personnel. It might even be, well, sort of, improper." (The passage starts on Page 36.)

We wouldn’t normally dig up a claim a few years old, but the current fascination with the presidential salute and Jones' post had us wondering about Maddow’s claim that "not even old Gen. Eisenhower, had saluted military personnel."

YouTube and archival video proves this claim wrong.

As President-elect, Eisenhower visited Korea during the Korean War. In this video, Eisenhower clearly salutes American and United Nations troops. The salute is about 2 minutes, 30 seconds in.

If you need proof of Eisenhower saluting the troops after taking the Oath of Office and in civilian clothes, he did so on Nov. 10, 1954, while attending the dedication of the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial.

Read entire article at Politifact