Bone Spurs

Although he is of the age to have been drafted during the Vietnam War, Donald Trump famously received five deferments. Four of those were because he was in college, albeit as a student who never did his assignments, showed up for class, or read his required readings.

The fifth and deferment after he graduated from college has always been the most controversial -- Trump received a permanent medical deferment for bone spurs in his heels, notwithstanding he played four sports in school. He passed the military's physical but then obtained a podiatrist's letter stating that he was debilitated by bone spurs. No evidence has ever been found of Trump having difficulty walking or standing as a result of this supposed disability.

Yesterday, the New York Times broke the story (details here) that the podiatrist who signed a letter stating Trump had bone spurs was a tenant of Trump's father who provided the certification as a favor to his landlord. That now-deceased podiatrist's children have reason to believe the alleged bone spurs were nonexistent and that their father had never even examined Trump as a patient.

Plenty of people in the 1960s and early 1970s avoided being drafted -- some by enrolling in school, some by volunteering for alternative programs like the Peace Corps, some by leaving the country to live in Canada or Sweden, and some by flatly refusing to serve and facing the consequences head on.

There is something particularly cowardly, however, in obtaining a fraudulent letter and then lying about a nonexistent condition. We'll probably never know for sure whether Trump did this, but it's certainly in keeping with his character.