Notwithstanding the inanity of getting into an argument with the family of Gold Star Family, it seems to me that the Khan family has made one clearly unsupported allegation. As reported in the Huffington Post, Khizr Kahn has accused Donald Trump of dodging the draft.
In common parlance, to dodge the draft was to fail to appear for induction or seek exemption once your number had come up. However Trump’s number never came up.
Donald Trump was born June 14, 1946 making him of an age that subjected him to being drafted for the Vietnam War. However June 14th was the 356th draw in the draft lottery conducted December 1, 1969. No one with such a low number was getting drafted.
I would tend to agree with you. Perhaps Khizr was thinking of the idiom of “you dodged a bullet”, which often indicates passing through unscathed by sheer luck, instead of actually taking action to protect oneself…
Trump did receive several deferments. Five deferments I believe. Let me find a cite. It’s not dodging the draft in the traditional sense, like fleeing to Canada. But he certainly was avoiding it legally.
Well, and then there’s always the point that someone with Trump’s general outlook, or at least the one that he is purporting to have now, should have volunteered for the military during Vietnam.
It could have been that Mr. Khan was thinking that Trump dodged his responsibility.
But yeah, “dodging the draft” was the wrong idiom.
He received a medical deferment for bone spurs. He apparently can’t remember now which foot (or both) bothered him so much, or who the doctor was the provided the letter, or when the pain and suffering cleared up. That’s what I believe most people are referring to when they say he dodged the draft - he ALSO got lucky and got a high number in the lottery, but that was well after he got a medical deferment.
Trump did indeed get several student deferments that were routinely granted. He also was 1-A, eligible for induction, as of November 1966, and again as of November 1968. Didn;t really matter. Trump got lucky. He didn’t dodge the draft.
Politifact did a write up when someone previously accuse Trump of dodging the draft and they cited a copy of Trump’s selective service registration record obtained by The Smoking Gun.
So, best case scenario for him is that he didn’t dodge the draft because of his lottery number, but he was making every effort to dodge the draft with the bone spurs? Basically, he didn’t end up dodging the draft, but only because he didn’t need to ultimately?
I don’t know if I fault him for this one. I don’t know that I would have done anything differently. Well, I guess if I had dodged the draft, I probably wouldn’t be so cavalier about insulting military families as Trump is. But, I still might have dodged it.
I’m fine using the term draft dodger for Trump. There’s no unambiguous definition of this word. While it certainly applies to the thousands who fled to Canada, or simply refused to show up at induction centers and hid out stateside, I’ve heard it applied to people who used special privileges or other nonsense to get out of the draft–like people pretending to be gay or faking psychiatric problems to get 4-F. There’s at least circumstantial evidence that Donald probably never had bone spurs and just had a friendly doctor insure the one year he was really in danger of being drafted (after college), that he wasn’t.
Now, given the high draft number, he’d have not been drafted even if he didn’t get the medical deferment, but the intent was there.
Keep in mind we live in a country now where George W. Bush, who clearly used his father’s political clout to get a cushy national guard posting was able to campaign against two actual Vietnam veterans (Al Gore and John Kerry) and somehow come out looking like the good-soldier. If we can besmirch the military records of actual combat veterans now, I have no issue with going after Donald for his medical deferment.
At best it’s weak tea. The man produces gasoline every day, liberal minded responders are not even arguing with him any more, they’re baiting him and his ego won’t let him stop digging.
He is just as much a draft dodger as Bill Clinton was, and yet I seem to recall the right had no moral quibbles with “technicalities” when they were smearing him.
George W Bush’s date of birth was July 6, 1946 which corresponded to a draft number of 327. Induction only reached to draft number 195 so those with higher numbers did not get inducted even if they had the medical screening. GWB was no more going to get called for induction than anyone else sharing his DOB. But he served in the Air National Guard because he enlisted.
Hillary Clinton’s date of birth was October 26, 1947 which corresponded to a draft number of 7 but I certainly don’t call Hillary Clinton a draft dodger since women were not subject to the draft at the time.
The rules is the rules. And sometimes even the rich and well connected were just plain lucky.
John Kerry (Dec 11, 1943 draft number 39) and Al Gore (Mar 31, 1948 draft number 30) would have been drafted had they not previously enlisted, Kerry in 1966 and Gore in 1969.
Money and influence with colleges made them easier to maintain. The working class kid who had a bad semester was in trouble. Not so the kid who drove home to Stamford every weekend.
More or less agree. You didn’t need to flee to Canada to be a “draft dodger”. I’d be OK with calling someone that who used a phony medical deferment-- i.e., paid a fancy doctor to give him a favorable diagnoses. If you really did have vision too poor to be drafted, for example, that would not be “phony”. Not sure how we can know whether Trump’s medical deferments were “real” or not.
No, the privilege of everyone. I certainly was not the son of a rich man. I had student deferments until the lottery came up and I got what I thought would be a safe number. I dropped my deferment, got the Greetings letter and went for my physical and sweated that year out. They came close, but they didn’t get me.
Now - am I a draft dodger like others are accusing Trump of being?
This. Anyone who still considers Trump as a potential president won’t care anyway. Clinton and Bush were draft dodgerw in this sense, however you use the term it doesn’t matter in presidential politics anymore. Might as well say Hillary dodged the draft by being female. Trump is already overloaded with problems of his own making and he’ll keep on making them.
