There’s nothing wrong with getting a draft deferment—or several draft deferments. Many young men sought them during the Vietnam War 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. The guy who at age 70 tells us that he is the “healthiest” person ever to run for president can’t seem to recall how he 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 severe enough 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 draft—though some of the details of this disabling condition were harder for the world’s best memory to remember.
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 a 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 could not remember the doctor’s name. …
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. …
The medical deferment meant that Mr. Trump, who had just completed the undergraduate real estate program at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, could follow his father into the development business, which he was eager to do.
And none of that—none of that—is really a problem. If Trump got out of being drafted by telling people he had flat feet, or bad knees, or little voices speaking from his teeth … that’s okay. Trump says now that he was opposed to the Vietnam War from the beginning. Good for him.
What’s slightly less okay is that Trump spent years telling people that he had been saved from the draft not by a deferment, but by a high draft number.
For many years, Mr. Trump, 70, has also asserted that it was “ultimately” the luck of a high draft lottery number — rather than the medical deferment — that kept him out of the war.
That’s not true. And he has frequently recalled nervously watching the draft lottery hoping that his number didn’t come up.
“I’ll never forget; that was an amazing period of time in my life,” he said in the interview, on Fox 5 New York. “I was going to the Wharton School of Finance, and I was watching as they did the draft numbers, and I got a very, very high number.”
Turns out not only was he not in peril, but the first lottery didn’t even occur until more than a year after he graduated.
And all of that would be just an understandable bit of discomfort, even possibly a little internalized guilt over how he avoided service, were it not for statements like this:
Even if his views on Vietnam are broadly shared today, both his record and his statements on the war have proved fraught for Mr. Trump during his campaign. Last summer, he faced a backlash when he declared that John McCain, the Republican senator who had been a prisoner of war during Vietnam, was “not a war hero,” explaining, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Then a series of audio clips surfaced from the 1990s, including one in which Mr. Trump told Howard Stern, the radio show host, that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while dating “is my personal Vietnam.”
And even more recently, statements like this:
“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.”
From this distance, it’s not possible to know if Donald Trump ever had bone spurs. What is certain is that his “personal Vietnam” is a long way from the sacrifices that either Humayun Khan or John McCain made in their lives.
It’s also clear that, as with everything, Trump’s perfect memory recalls the world as it best serves Donald Trump—not as it actually happened.