Tag: Trump draft dodger

‘A lying draft dodger’: Republican military veterans slam Trump and declare their support for Biden in a scathing attack ad

AlterNet logoThe Lincoln Project is not the only right-wing group that has been running ads slamming President Donald Trump; the group Republicans Voters Against Trump has been running anti-Trump ads as well. And a new RVAT ad, Ed Mazza reports in HuffPost, features Republican military veterans who do not want to see Trump reelected and are supporting former Vice President Joe Biden.

The ad, Mazza notes, will air on Fox News later this month during the 2020 Republican National Convention. And it will air in key battleground states that include Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona — all of which Trump won in 2016. Recent polls have shown Biden to be quite competitive in those states as well as in Michigan, where Trump’s campaign has suspended its advertising following an abundance of polls showing Biden with a double-digit lead.

In the ad, one of the veterans says of Trump, “We’re looking at a lying draft dodger who berates those who serve our country honorably, rewards those who do not.” Continue reading.

The two favors that may have helped Trump avoid fighting in the Vietnam

President Trump’s avoidance of the war in Vietnam is neither new nor unique. Each of the two baby-boomer presidents who preceded him — Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — worked the system to keep from having to fight in a war that quickly became seen as, at best, a horrible mistake. But Trump’s success at avoiding the draft is remarkable in part because of the contrast that can be drawn between his rhetoric on the military and veterans and the way in which he managed to avoid service — an effort that a new report from the New York Times helps flesh out in fuller detail.

It seems that two favors, two years apart, made almost all of the difference.

Donald John Trump was born June 14, 1946. When the Vietnam draft lottery began in 1970, he was 24 and out of college, seemingly positioned to be quickly added to the ranks of those being shipped to the expanding conflict. But that didn’t happen.

View the complete December 26 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Donald Trump’s Military Cowardice Goes Beyond His 5 Draft Deferrals

NOTE:  As we get further and further into discussions of patriotism, the flag, military service, what’s sacred, etc., a look back at the history of the person who started this situation, President Trump, seemed like something we should do.)

The following column by Lincoln Anthony Blades was posted on the Teen Vogue website August 3, 2017:

Credit: Seth Poppel, Yearbook Library

When I look at President Donald Trump, I see a pot-bellied, 71-year-old man with a doughy frame. But in 1968, when he was a 22-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate, Trump was a tall, fit athlete who played football, tennis, and golf. His age and clean medical history qualified Trump as a perfect candidate for the draft to serve in the United States Army and fight in the Vietnam War, but he avoided combat after receiving a 1-Y medical deferment, which he has said was due to “bone spurs in his heels.” More than half a million American men were stationed in Vietnam by the end of that year, which was the bloodiest 12 months of the conflict. On the day of Trump’s graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam, according to The New York Times.

The son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, Donald Trump did what many other wealthy young men were allowed to do: He dodged the draft. Between 1964 and 1972, a few months before the draft ended, he received five deferments — in addition to his “bone spurs” claim, the other four were based on his educational status. He received two deferments while he attended Fordham University from 1964 to 1966, and two more after transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Military Cowardice Goes Beyond His 5 Draft Deferrals”