Trump, 'healthiest
candidate ever to run for president,'
got a medical
deferment from the draft
By Mark Sumner
There’s nothing
wrong with getting
a draft deferment.
Or several draft deferments.
Many young men
sought them during the Vietnam era,
and voters haven’t shown any particular
reluctance about
electing candidates who avoided service in Vietnam.
In fact,
they’ve sometimes
been harder on candidates
who went and served honorably
than on those who sat
out the war
(see Kerry, John).
So
the fact that Donald
Trump
received deferments is neither shocking nor disqualifying.
But
what is striking is
just how much the man who brags he has
‘the best memory’
can’t remember about
the nature of his deferments,
and
how the guy who, at
70, tells us that he is the ‘healthiest’ person ever to run for president
received a medical
deferment in his early 20s.
Trump graduated
from New York Military Academy in 1964 at age 18,
but
being college bound
he soon got
his first educational deferment.
He got three more
before graduating.
And
that’s when
things get
a little fuzzy.
As Mr. Trump’s
graduation neared, the fighting in Vietnam was intensifying.
The Tet offensive in
January 1968 had left thousands of American troops dead or wounded,
with battles
continuing into the spring.
On the day of Mr.
Trump’s graduation,
40 Americans were
killed in Vietnam.
The Pentagon was
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.
That Trump had bone
spurs sufficient to keep him from military service
seems a bit at
odds from his activities at the time.
He stood 6 feet 2
inches
with an athletic build;
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
Trump got a note
from a doctor
declaring that he had bone spurs.
That was enough.
Fortunately for
Trump,
they stuck around only until
he was no longer eligible for the draf
though some of the
details of this disabling condition
were harder for the world’s best memory to
remember.