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Only traitors vote Trump.
Politics
Donald Trump's Military Cowardice Goes Beyond His 5 Draft Deferrals
He continuously disrespects those who actually served.
By Lincoln Anthony Blades
When I look at President Donald Trump, I see a pot-bellied, 71-year-old
man with a doughy frame. But in 1968, when he was a 22-year-old
University of Pennsylvania graduate, Trump was a tall, fit athlete who
played football, tennis, and golf. His age and clean medical history
qualified Trump as a perfect candidate for the draft to serve in the
United States Army and fight in the Vietnam War, but he avoided combat
after receiving a 1-Y medical deferment, which he has said was due to
"bone spurs in his heels." More than half a million American men were
stationed in Vietnam by the end of that year, which was the bloodiest 12
months of the conflict. On the day of Trump's graduation from the
University of Pennsylvania, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam,
according to The New York Times.
The son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, Donald
Trump did what many other wealthy young men were allowed to do: He dodged
the draft. Between 1964 and 1972, a few months before the draft ended, he received five deferments in addition to his "bone spurs" claim, the
other four were based on his educational status. He received two
deferments while he attended Fordham University from 1964 to 1966, and
two more after transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a draft dodger, Trump never knew the horrors of war, but in 1997, he
laughed when telling radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually
transmitted diseases was like his "personal Vietnam." "It is a dangerous
world out there. Its scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era,
Trump said to Stern, discussing his sex life. "I feel like a great and
very brave soldier.
Today, Trump struggles to recall the most basic facts about the medical condition that was the basis for his final deferment. He doesn't remember
the name of the doctor who provided him with the note of proof and has repeatedly failed to provide a copy of it to The New York Times. He's
also forgotten which of his heels had the spurs, now just claiming it was
both. (During the 2016 presidential election, the affliction wasn't noted
by Dr. Harold Bornstein, a physician who performed a physical on Trump
and found that he had "no significant medical problems." in his medical history)
Unlike the 2,709,918 soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Trump never served.
He wasn't injured like the 304,000 Americans who fought in the war, or
among the more than 58,000 killed in combat. Despite this inexperience,
he is now in charge of the U.S. armed forces, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and the Marine Corps as commander-in-chief. As president, he is tasked with dictating to all military generals and
admirals which battles should be fought, where they should be fought, and
who gets to fight in them on behalf of the United States.
He is certainly not the first American leader to receive draft
deferments. Former vice president Joe Biden received five student
deferments, former VP Dick Cheney received five deferments, and former president Bill Clinton received deferments and even penned a letter to an
ROTC officer thanking him for "saving me from the draft." (It should also
be noted that before Clinton's administration, LGBTQ servicemen and women
were banned from serving. In his time, the military's "don't ask, don't
tell" policy began, which forced them to conceal their identities or risk
being discharged, effectively condoning discrimination.) This column will afford these men no absolution for their decisions, but what makes
Trump's behavior obscene is that despite having never served, he has
fashioned himself as the arbiter of military courage.
It was Trump who, as a presidential candidate in July 2015, dissed
Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war for roughly five and a half
years during Vietnam, by stating, "I like people who weren't captured."
He publicly disrespected Khizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan, the gold-
star Pakistani-American parents of Army captain Humayun Khan, who was
killed in combat in 2004 and posthumously awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery. Not only did Trump attack an immigrant family who made a
sacrifice for their adopted nation, but he even compared their loss to
the "sacrifices" he made while becoming a real estate tycoon. To insult
the family of Khan, who died at war at 27 just two years older than
Trump was when he received his 4-F classification, permanently
disqualifying him from military service by comparing it to his own
business ventures is a claim only made equatable in the mind of a man
with little recognition of his own internalized cowardice.
Now the president, the five-time draft dodger, is weakening the military
to satisfy his own bigotry.
https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/890220423367073792
https://twitter.com/rob_bennett/status/892417583919624192
On July 26, he announced via Twitter that transgender soldiers would no
longer be allowed to fight for their country, essentially promising to
ban transgender people from serving. Reneging on a past campaign promise
to support the LGBTQ community, he announced that he will reinstate a ban
that was lifted by the Obama administration just a year prior, citing
"military costs and disruption that transgender in the military would
entail."
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472
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