Deferments kept Trump step ahead of the draft

A few weeks after his 22nd birthday, Donald Trump received a notice from the US Government. On July 9, 1968, his local draft board had scrawled a “1A” beside his name in its handwritten ledger, classifying him as available for unrestricted military service.

For the previous four years, Trump had avoided the draft — and the possibility of being sent to fight in the Vietnam War — by obtaining four separate deferments so he could study at Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania. With his college days over, he was suddenly vulnerable to conscription.

On September 17, 1968, he reported for an armed forces physical examination and was medically disqualified, according to the ledger from his local Selective Service System draft board in Jamaica, New York. The ledger does not detail why Trump failed the exam — the Selective Service destroyed all medical records and individual files after the draft ended in 1973.

In recent days, Trump, a Republi-

When Trump registered for the draft at 18 in 1964, he had just graduated. Almost immediately, as he enrolled at Fordham, he was granted the first of his four education deferments. In 1968, Trump obtained his medical deferment at a time when the Vietnam War was intensifying and the military needed a wave of new conscripts. To help meet the demand, a national draft lottery was held in December 1969. Men born between 1946 and 1950 were assigned a draft number — based on the order in which their birthdates were pulled randomly out of a jar. Trump, who was born in 1946, and his campaign have given conflicting explanations about how he came to be protected from the draft that year. Trump has cited his medical deferment and the bone spurs in his feet. But his campaign says that he simply lucked out in the 1969 lottery.

The draft board ledger states that his medical deferment remained in place from 1968 until 1972, when it was changed to a similar classification: 4-F, or not qualified for service.