MORE “PINOCCHIO’S” BEING ASSIGNED TO DONALD J. TRUMP

…Trump in the middle here, sure looks well enough to me to be drafted into the military

 

Just one more falsehood from the mouth of Donald J. Trump

 

Well, looks like we’re in for another Trump lie from the past.

 

The New York Times has now written and article that gives us the truth about why Trump was able to avoid being drafted for the war in Vietnam after he left High School.

 

Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump, as shown above, seemed the picture of health.

 

Trump stood at 6 feet 2 inches and with an athletic build.  He had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.

 

But after Trump graduated from college in the spring of 1968, that made him eligible to be drafted and to be sent to Vietnam.  However, as with other Trump miracles, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: Trump’s doctor said he had bone spurs in his heels.

 

The diagnosis resulted in the then coveted 1-Y medical draft deferment that fall.  This exempted him from military service as the United States was undertaking huge troop deployments to Southeast Asia, inducting about 300,000 men into the military just that year.

 

The deferment was one of five that Mr. Trump received during the Vietnam War. The other deferments were for education.  He received subsequent college student deferments during his sophomore, junior and senior years.

 

His experience during this era is drawing new scrutiny after the Muslim American parents of a soldier who was killed in Iraq publicly questioned whether Mr. Trump had ever sacrificed for his country.

 

In an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, directly addressed Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, saying, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

 

Mr. Trump’s public statements about his draft experience have sometimes conflicted with his Selective Service records, and as usual, Trump is often hazy in recalling details.

 

So, where is the lie I mentioned?

 

Well, for many years, Mr. Trump, now 70, has also asserted that it was “ultimately” the luck of a high draft lottery number, not a medical deferment, that kept him out of the Vietnam war.

 

However, Trump’s Selective Service records, obtained from the National Archives, have told us otherwise.

 

Mr. Trump had been medically exempted for more than a year before the draft lottery even began in December 1969.  That was well before he received what he has described as his “phenomenal” high draft number.

 

Because of his medical exemption, his lottery number would have been totally irrelevant, said Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, who has worked for the agency for three decades.

 

“He was already classified and determined not to be subject to the draft under the conditions in place at the time,” Mr. Flahavan said.

 

On the day of Mr. Trump’s graduation, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam. The Pentagon was also preparing to call up more troops.  With his schooling behind him, there would have been little to prevent someone in Mr. Trump’s situation from being drafted, if not for the diagnosis of his bone spurs.

 

“If you didn’t have a basis to be exempt or postponed, you would have been ordered for induction,” said Mr. Flahavan.

 

“Many men of Mr. Trump’s age were looking for ways to avoid the war”, said Charles Freehof, a draft counselor at Brooklyn College at the time, noting that getting a letter from a physician was a particularly effective option.  “We had very little trouble with people coming back saying, ‘They wouldn’t accept my doctor’s note,’” Mr. Freehof said.

 

Mr. Trump had a 1-Y classification, which was considered a temporary exemption. But in practice, only a national emergency or an official declaration of war, which the United States avoided during the fighting in Vietnam, would have resulted in his being called for service.

 

Neither occurred, and Mr. Trump remained 1-Y until 1972, when his status changed to 4-F, permanently disqualifying him.  “For all practical purposes, once you got the 1-Y, you were free and clear of vulnerability for the draft, even in the case of the lottery,” Mr. Flahavan said.

 

In an interview with The New York Times last month, Mr. Trump said the bone spurs had been “temporary”, a “minor” malady that had not had any meaningful impact on him.

 

He said he had visited a doctor who provided him a letter for draft officials, who granted him the medical exemption. He of course, could not remember the doctor’s name.

 

“I had a doctor that gave me a letter, a very strong letter on the heels,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.

 

The Selective Service records that remain in the National Archives do not specify what medical condition exempted Mr. Trump from military service.  Mr. Trump has described the condition as heel spurs, which are protrusions caused by calcium built up on the heel bone, treated through stretching, orthotics or sometimes surgery.

 

Mr. Trump said that he could not recall exactly when he was no longer bothered by the spurs, but that he had not had an operation for the problem.  “Over a period of time, it healed up,” he said.

 

In the 2015 biography “The Truth About Trump,” the author, Michael D’Antonio, described interviewing Mr. Trump, who at one point slipped off of a couch to display a tiny bulge on his heel.  And during a news conference last year, Mr. Trump could not recall which heel had been involved, prompting his campaign to immediately release a statement saying it was both heels.

 

Mr. Trump, who has hailed his health as “perfection,” said the heel spurs were “not a big problem, but it was enough of a problem.”  “They were spurs,” he said. “You know, it was difficult from the long-term walking standpoint.”

 

In December, his longtime personal physician, Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, had announced that Mr. Trump had “no significant medical problems” over four decades and that, if elected, he “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Dr. Bornstein made no mention of the bone spurs but did note the appendectomy from Mr. Trump’s childhood.

 

Therefore, if Donald Trump would have just told the truth, instead of the false statement of his “high lottery number”, I would not be writing this article.

 

Since Mr. Khan publicly addressed Trump in his Democratic convention speech, Trump has been pressed about his so called, ”sacrifice”, including from George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Sunday “This Week” program.

 

But what has made this even more ridiculous is Trump’s comparison of his “sacrifice” to the Khan’s “sacrifice”.

 

“I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Stephanopoulos. “I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”

How the hell any millionaire or billionaire can equate, “working very hard” to a Gold Star mother, “losing their son or daughter to being killed in war”, is beyond me.  But we must remember, we are talking about a statement from Donald J. Trump.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016