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tRUMP Flashback!: Dodge The Draft, 5 Time Deferment Trump Tell's America's Military Heroes "'I like soldiers who weren't captured'

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When Americans look at President Donald Trump, They 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.

s 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. It’s 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.



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."





In one fell swoop, an estimated 15,000 active-duty, guard, and reserve 
American transgender soldiers were informed by their commander-in-chief 
that their nation didn't want their service — though the military said it 
will not act on Trump's tweet until a formal order is put in place. The 
"military costs" Trump referenced — which would, according to an estimate, 
range between $2.4 and $8.4 million per year for gender 
affirmation–related health care — are, at their uppermost limit, a tenth 
of amount the military spends each year to treat erectile dysfunction, 
including the cost of Viagra prescriptions.




Trump's administration has also made attacks on immigrant soldiers, too, 
most recently threatening to end the Military Accessions Vital to National 
Interest recruitment program, which started in 2009 and has since enlisted 
10,000 recruits. Recruiting children of immigrants is one of America's 
largest military strategies, and the program was established to allow 
certain immigrants to receive fast-tracked citizenship in exchange for 
their much-needed medical and language abilities. But now the Pentagon has 
proposed doing away with the program, which would in turn cancel 1,000 
enlistment contracts. The recruits would then be immediately at risk for 
deportation once the program formally ends — a result of Trump's 
immigration policy.

It's crucial to ponder what effect this behavior may have on the mentality 
of those who are tasked with defending a nation that's being led by a man 
who has explicitly propagated ideologies to strip them of their ability to 
serve. How do you focus on the task at hand when you're concerned your 
family will be forcibly removed from the country in your absence? How do 
you concentrate when your employer represents a nation you're fighting for 
but still denies your civil rights? As global hostilities rise and new 
threats emerge, America is weakened not by the gender identity of its 
soldiers or their birthplace, but by the coward in the Oval Office who 
accepted five deferments to avoid fighting for his country, then lived to 
brag about it.

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tRUMP Flashback!: Dodge The Draft, 5 Time Deferment Trump Tell's America's Military Heroes "'I like soldiers who weren't captured' AlleyCat <AlleyCat@gmail.com> - 2021-06-09 21:59 +0000

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