TONIGHT – @SenJohnMcCain talks about the Vietnam War’s legacy on C-SPAN, at 6 & 10pm ET. pic.twitter.com/WnZT0n8Mcn
— American History TV (@cspanhistory) October 22, 2017
As Donald Trump’s botched handling of the four Green Berets killed in Niger continues to escalate, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) added another notch to the ever-expanding belt of their ongoing war of words. In an interview with C-SPAN 3 (otherwise known as American History TV) for a discussion of the Vietnam War’s legacy in American culture and politics, the veteran and former prisoner of war took a thinly veiled swipe at the president’s draft deferments. And by “thinly veiled,” we mean that McCain essentially called out Trump without mentioning the president’s name
“One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” the senator said on Sunday night. “That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.” Again, McCain doesn’t specifically name Trump here, but his specific reference to using a “bone spur” for a draft deferment is enough to reveal who the senator had in mind for his insult.
Soon after he officially garnered the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Trump found himself in the crosshairs of a New York Times investigation into his five draft deferments. The article, which also consisted of short interviews with Trump himself, revealed the political hopeful had obtained five separate draft deferments during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Four of these were for college, but the fifth was for bone spurs in the heels, which Trump described as “temporary” and “minor.”
(Via C-SPAN 3 and Washington Post)