A. Introduction
Donald Trump’s paternal grandfather, who had emigrated to the United States, tried to return to his native Germany in 1904 but was expelled because it was revealed he had avoided the required military service. Donald John Trump has continued that tradition. Moreover, he has lied about those in uniform, ridiculed them, and insulted them in a way no American “leader” ever has. He is the most viciously anti-military president in our history, despite his embrace of the military trappings of his office. Let’s plunge into his appalling and outrageous personal history in this area.
B. The Birth of Cadet Bone Spurs
Trump, from all accounts, was an ill-behaved child. Frustrated with his lack of personal discipline, after Donald's 8th grade year his parents shipped him off to New York Military Academy in the Hudson Valley. Trump appeared to thrive in the school's highly disciplined and structured regimen. It seemed to bring out his competitive nature as well. It was this period that convinced Trump he was some sort of military expert.
It was this attitude that caused The New York Daily News, after Trump had denigrated John McCain’s heroism, to ridicule Trump mercilessly:
Trump began his higher education in 1964 at Fordham University. In 1966 he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It was during this period that Trump received four draft deferments on the basis of being a college student. After graduating from Wharton, Trump was re-classified as 1A in July 1968. An armed forces physical found him disqualified on the basis of bone spurs in his heels, which got him his fifth deferment. Later Trump got a high number in the draft lottery. Curiously, his supposed physical limitation didn't prevent Trump from participating in various sports, including golf, baseball, tennis, and squash.
C. Trump’s Personal Vietnam
Trump was quite the playboy and womanizer in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Trump later joked with radio personality Howard Stern about this time in his life. Here is a transcript of what was said:
STERN: Now getting back to dating, and when you got to say to a woman, you gotta go to my personal doctor and I’m gonna have you checked out, is that a tough thing to say to a woman?
TRUMP: It’s amazing, I can’t even believe it. I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s like Vietnam, sort of.
STERN: Hey it’s your personal Vietnam isn’t it?
TRUMP: It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier! [My emphasis]
STERN: A lot of guys who went through Vietnam came out unscathed. A lot of guys going through the 80’s having sex with different women came out with AIDS and all kinds of things.
TRUMP: This is better than Vietnam, but it’s uh… it’s more fun.
STERN: A little better, but every v****a is a landmine, haven’t we both said that in private?
TRUMP: [intense laughter] I think it is a potential landmine. There’s some real danger there.
STERN: When you go to a bar, do you ever go with a fleet of doctors and have them check all the women, and then party with the uninfected?
TRUMP: [laughter] The few! You mean the few uninfected!
D. Trump’s Anti-Military Attitude Deepens
Trump has also acted to prevent disabled veterans from vending outside his building on Fifth Avenue in New York:
“While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” Trump wrote in a 1991 letter to John Dearie, then-chairman of the state Assembly’s Committee on Cities.
“Do we allow Fifth Ave., one of the world’s finest and most luxurious shopping districts, to be turned into an outdoor flea market, clogging and seriously downgrading the area?” Trump demanded.
In 2004, Trump complained again:
"He complained in a letter to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the ambiance of Fifth Ave. — the address of his gleaming Trump Tower headquarters — was being wrecked by peddlers, including some he accused of only posing as vets. [My emphasis]
This article from Politico is both eye-opening and infuriating. Former U.S. Marine Dan Rossi, a disabled veteran, remembering Trump’s attempt to destroy the livelihoods of people like him, said,
“He’s done more damage to the disabled veterans in this city than any other man.”
E. Trump and John McCain
I was not an admirer of John McCain’s politics, but I had nothing but respect for the terrible sacrifices he made and the horrific suffering he endured in Vietnam.
McCain was held in captivity in North Vietnam for 5 and one-half years. He was offered a chance to leave early (because his father was an admiral) but he refused. He underwent shockingly brutal treatment, including beatings, torture, and solitary confinement. At one point McCain’s weight dropped to 95 pounds.
A brief account:
Less than a year into McCain's imprisonment, his father was named commander of US forces in the Pacific, and the North Vietnamese saw an opportunity for leverage by offering the younger McCain's release — what would have been both a propaganda victory and a way to demoralize other American POWs.
But McCain refused, sticking to the POW code of conduct that says troops must accept release in the order in which they are captured.
"I knew that every prisoner the Vietnamese tried to break, those who had arrived before me and those who would come after me, would be taunted with the story of how an admiral's son had gone home early, a lucky beneficiary of America's class-conscious society," McCain later recalled.
The North Vietnamese reacted with fury and escalated McCain's torture.
McCain soon reached what he would later describe as his lowest point in Vietnam, and after surviving intense beatings and two suicide attempts, he signed a "confession" to war crimes written by his captors.
"I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine," McCain wrote in a first-person account published in US News & World Report in May 1973.
McCain in captivity
In 2015, after McCain had criticized Trump, Trump was asked about McCain. Here is his answer:
But there was to be much more to the Trump-McCain saga. azcentral published a list of the various criticisms the two made of each other. When McCain defended Arizona’s Hispanic population against Trump’s ugly, racist lies, Trump responded:
July 11, 2015: Trump appeared at a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center. "We have incompetent politicians, not only the president," Trump told the crowd. "I mean, right here, in your own state, you have John McCain." The pro-Trump audience booed the mention of McCain's name. After the event, Trump hammered McCain some more. "I've supported John McCain, but he's very weak on immigration," Trump said. "If the right person runs against John McCain, he will lose."
July 16, 2015: The New Yorker published McCain's reaction to Trump's Arizona rally. “This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain said in the interview. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.” Trump immediately fired back on Twitter, demanding that McCain apologize for the "crazies" remark and calling McCain a "dummy" for graduating last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Trump called for McCain to be defeated in his primary.
There was a brief period of seeming reconciliation, but once Trump became president, hostilities flared again.
Feb. 9, 2017: After McCain criticized the White House for calling a raid on Yemen a success, noting a U.S. Navy SEAL died during the event, Trump attacked McCain on Twitter. He chided the senator for characterizing the raid as a failure, saying it only emboldens the enemy.
July 20, 2017: Just hours after announcing he had been diagnosed with brain cancer, McCain blasts Trump for his decision to end an Obama policy of offering CIA training for moderate Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.
"If these reports are true, the administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin," McCain said in a statement.
July 27, 2017:McCain casts a dramatic "no" vote on the "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act, providing the decisive vote that kept the law alive. The late-night vote brought an immediate, somewhat mild, reaction from Trump. But he would soon use numerous opportunities to diss McCain — usually without naming him — by calling out the senator's "thumbs-down" gesture that sank the bill.
This final act by McCain propelled Trump’s hatred of him to new depths. As McCain was dying of brain cancer, Trump increased his ugly personal attacks on him, urging crowds to boo and ridicule the dying national hero. Trump issued insincere statements wishing McCain the best, but the hypocrisy in them was evident. Trump continued to attack McCain even after McCain’s death, in a remarkable example of vindictiveness. Such attacks were often not well-received:
Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral, by the way. Trump later complained that he had not been thanked (!) for the funeral, an event which he had very little to do with and which did not require his permission.
And of course, while the rest of political Washington was mourning McCain’s death, Trump was playing golf and tweeting.
There is much, much more to come in these diaries about Trump and the military. It gets even worse.
