The “bone spurs” diagnosis that Donald Trump used as draft protection during the Vietnam War has always looked dodgy, but it gets worse: the diagnosis appears to have been provided by a podiatrist who rented his office from Fred Trump, Donald’s father. And “I know it was a favor,” according to Dr. Elysa Braunstein, one of the late Dr. Larry Braunstein’s daughters.
Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment. “But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said. [...]
“What he got was access to Fred Trump,” Elysa Braunstein said. “If there was anything wrong in the building, my dad would call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got.”
A former coworker of Larry Braunstein remembers a conversation about how accommodating the Trumps had been with things like lowering rent increases—not the sort of thing you associate with the Trumps as a general rule. Another doctor who Elysa Braunstein and her sister recall may have been involved in the diagnosis moved into a Trump-owned apartment the same year as Donald magically got bone spurs. That diagnosis came two years after Trump had undergone a physical examination that did not result in a medical exemption for the draft. Somehow Trump only became physically exempt right after his educational deferments ran out.
Lots of people avoided the Vietnam draft any way they could. But Trump first used his father’s wealth and then went on to posture endlessly about his own toughness and patriotism, so he can go right to hell with his fake bone spurs diagnosis.