McCain mocks Trump’s Vietnam draft deferment

Sen. John McCain doesn’t have to speak President Donald Trump’s name to excoriate him. (Criticize is too tame a word.) He didn’t just call the president a draft dodger.

But he sorta ... did. On C-SPAN3, American History TV, McCain was interviewed about the Vietnam War. The money shot comes after McCain discusses the mistakes made in getting into the war and the lack of a strategy for victory. Then he gets to the Vietnam-era military draft. And Trump.

The president, as you may know, received several student deferments during the war. After he graduated in 1968, however, Trump got a medical deferment for what a doctor called bone spurs in his heels.

On C-SPAN McCain says, “One aspect of the (Vietnam) 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. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

Trump isn’t the only politician of his age to have avoided service in Vietnam, of course. President Bill Clinton didn’t serve. President George W. Bush served, but within the United States in the Air National Guard.

For his part, Trump received student deferments while enjoying a healthy athletic life. When he graduated, Trump got a medical deferment for what he called heel spurs. Trump told

The New York Times, “I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels.”

Meantime, as a candidate Trump attacked McCain, who spent 5½ years in a prisoner of war camp, saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

When Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States he was challenged by Muslim-American Khizr Khan, whose son Humayun Khan was killed in Iraq in 2004 while serving with the U.S. Army.

At the Democratic National Convention Khan said, “If it was up to Donald Trump, he (Humayan) never would have even been in America… Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution?”

Khan held up his own pocket copy of the Constitution and offered to lend it to Trump, saying, “You have sacrificed nothing, and no one.”

Trump went on the attack, criticizing Khan on Twitter and on TV. But he was rebuked even then by McCain, who said of Trump, “Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.” Now, McCain is reminding Trump about real sacrifice.

Trump’s Vietnam-era heel condition was, apparently, temporary.

McCain has become a more permanent spur in the president’s … saddle.