Tag: Trump draft dodging

Donald Trump’s Astonishing Lies About Vietnam

When politicians talk in private, they regularly use a cruel shorthand. For example, a candidate who is uninformed, unreflective and uncurious is often branded a “lightweight,” as in, “He is so lightweight he could tap-dance on a souffle.” Conversely, a “heavyweight” would be a politician of some substance, some political clout and personal gravity.

Al Gore — the Democratic presidential nominee who won 543,895 more votes than George W. Bush in 2000 but ended up losing the election in a 5-4 Supreme Court split decision — was regularly dismissed for being so unexciting that his favorite color was beige. The line at the time was, “Al Gore is so dull that his Secret Service code name is Al Gore.”

That was cute but inaccurate. I once asked then-Sen. Gore of Tennessee why he — almost alone among his Harvard 1969 classmates — volunteered to join the U.S. Army to go to Vietnam. Gore’s answer was revealing: “I come from a small town (Carthage) of 3,000 people. I concluded that if I didn’t go, somebody else would have to go. And I knew just about everybody else who was going to have to go in my place…For me, that sort of reinforces the sense of community and nation that is at the root of why you have a duty to serve your country.”

View the complete June 16 article by Mark Shields on the National Memo website here.

Trump is ‘making up’ for not serving in Vietnam with increased defense funding, he says

Exactly 75 years ago Friday, Allied soldiers stepped on a deadly shore to liberate people they did not know, in a war they did not choose.

President Trump said he would have preferred to serve in that kind of war. One that stirred feelings of deep pride in a U.S. victory and righteousness against a clearly defined enemy.

But his generation got Vietnam.

“I thought it was a terrible war,” Trump told Piers Morgan on “Good Morning Britain” on Wednesday. “I thought it was very far away, and at that time nobody ever heard of the country. So many people dying, what is happening over there? So I was never a fan — like we’re fighting against Nazi Germany, we’re fighting against Hitler.”

View the complete June 5 article by Alex Horton on The Washington Post website here.

Why Trump Can’t Stand Anything That Reminds Him Of John McCain

The guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain, “Big Bad John,” was christened in 1992 in honor of the U.S. Navy’s first father-son duo of four-star admirals, “Slew” and Jack. On July 12, 2018, their son and grandson respectively, retired Navy captain and U.S. Senator John S. McCain III was added to the official namesake of that Navy ship in a ceremony in Yokosuka, Japan. This American destroyer and its crew, as reported by The Wall Street Journal‘s Rebecca Ballhaus and Gordon Lubold, were told by Navy and Air Force brass — in response to a directive from the White House — that during President Donald Trump’s Memorial Day weekend visit to Japan, the USS John S. McCain needs to be kept “out of   sight.”
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), West Point graduate, a major in the 82nd Airborne Division, and McCain’s erstwhile colleague on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the White House’s actions to avoid a presidential tantrum at the sight of the Navy destroyer honoring the American war hero and frequent Trump adversary “beyond petty” and “disgraceful.” Yielding to few in my admiration for senators McCain and Reed, I believe the actions of up-to-now anonymous White House staffers, feverishly working to avoid the wrath of their insecure boss, were entirely logical and even predictable.
Think about it: McCain’s biography is a public rebuke to all the values and the life of Donald J. Trump. In June of 1968, when Trump was graduating from the University of Pennsylvania — only to miraculously be found afflicted with bone spurs, which would prevent the athletic Trump from answering his country’s call to serve in the U.S. military — Navy pilot McCain, having sustained a broken leg, broken shoulders and cracked ribs at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, was in solitary confinement being tortured in a Hanoi prison.

View the complete June 2 article by Mark Shield on the National Memo website here.

Pete Buttigieg lays into Trump: A draft dodger who ‘used his privileged status to fake a disability’

Pete Buttigieg launched a series of attacks against President Donald Trump Thursday morning, accusing the Commander-in-Chief of faking a disability to evade military service and being a racist.

“I have a pretty dim view of his decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam,” Buttigieg, a top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa during a live, on-stage forum. “I think that’s exactly what he did.”

Costa had been asking Buttigieg if he’d be able to handle Trump during a debate on stage. The South Bend mayor reminded Costa that not only is he gay but he grew up in Indiana, so he has experience with bullies. Buttigieg said Trump needs to be managed like a crazy uncle.

View the complete May 23 article by David Badash from The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Duckworth slams Trump: I won’t be lectured on military needs by a ‘five-deferment draft dodger’

The following article by Brandon Carter was posted on the Hill website January 20, 2018:

Iraq war veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Il.) said she will not be lectured by President Trump, calling him a “five-deferment draft dodger” on Jan. 20.(Reuters)

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) tore into President Trump on the Senate floor Saturday, calling him a “five-deferment draft dodger” and slamming him for his comments toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“Does he even know that there are service members who are in harm’s way right now, watching him, looking for their commander in chief to show leadership, rather than [trying] to deflect blame?” Duckworth said. “Or that his own Pentagon says that the short-term funding plans he seems intent on pushing is actually harmful to not just the military, but to our national security?” Continue reading “Duckworth slams Trump: I won’t be lectured on military needs by a ‘five-deferment draft dodger’”