Trump boasts ‘I would have won Vietnam very quickly’ as Iran peace hangs in steadiness
Donald Trump boasted that he “would have won Vietnam very quickly” had he been president during the conflict as the U.S.-Iran peace deal hangs in the balance.
The president joined CNBC’s Squawk Box by phone Tuesday morning where he spoke for more than 30 minutes about the Iran war, his pick for Fed chair Kevin Warsh, oil prices and the White House ballroom.
The Vietnam digression came as Trump compared the Iran conflict, which began nearly two months ago, with the length of other wars that America has been embroiled in.
“I just looked at a little chart: World War One, four years and three months. World War Two, six years Korean. War Three years Vietnam, 19 years, Iraq, eight years — I’m five months [in Iran],” Trump said.
“I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president.”
Unlike most American men of his generation, 79-year-old Trump avoided military service in Vietnam despite the U.S. having a mandatory draft at the time.
In 1968, a podiatrist who rented New York office space from his father, Fred Trump, told a draft board that the future president had bone spurs in his heels, rendering him ineligible to be conscripted into service.
He was granted four student deferments during his time as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. But when he became eligible to be drafted once more upon his graduation, he quickly obtained a medical deferment that kept him from being conscripted, thanks to one of his real estate mogul father’s tenants.
According to The New York Times, Trump presented the draft board with a letter from Dr. Larry Braunstein, a Queens-based podiatrist, which stated that he had bone spurs in both heels. Braunstein’s daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, told the Times that her father had told her that he’d given Trump the letter as a favor to his father.
Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress in 2019 that Trump never provided him with any documentation to support the diagnosis of bone spurs when he was questioned about Trump’s medical deferments during the 2016 presidential election.
“Mr. Trump claimed (his medical deferment) was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Cohen said.
“He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.”
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Source: independent.co.uk
