FULL METAL JACKASS

Bigmouth Trump avoided Nam, now feels ‘guilty’

POOR Donald Trump.

The GOP presidential hopeful — who once said Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wasn’t a hero because he was captured — whined that he sometimes feels bad for not having served in the military.

“I didn’t serve, I haven’t served,” the billionaire said at a New Hampshire rally Tuesday. “I always felt a little guilty.”

“I had friends that served, and they’re very proud, and some are no longer with us because of the fact that they served,” he said.

Trump was able to use his college enrollment — he studied at Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania — to obtain four separate deferments so he could avoid serving in the Vietnam War.

And following graduation in 1968, he was able to sidestep the draft again with a medical disqualification for bone spurs in his foot.

While Trump’s comments seemed to go over well with the largely supportive audience, a number of veterans said the comments were far too little and too late.

“He thinks there’s a bunch of veterans who are sympathetic to that, but it’s distasteful to even address such a comment from him,” retired Marine Lt. Col. Orson Swindle told the Daily News. “I just find Mr. Trump to be a huckster, and he’s very good at it.”

Swindle was shot down during a jet fighter mission over Vietnam in 1966 and spent more than six years as a prisoner of war.

“Trump, he took the easy way out, suffice it to say,” Swindle said.

Tom Hanton, who also was a Vietnam prisoner of war after he was shot down in 1972, said people could still enter the military even if they had a deferment.

“I had a deferment when I was in college, but you better believe the minute I graduated I was drafted, even though I had already joined the Air Force,” he told The News.

But some other veterans said they could relate to Trump’s guilt over not having been able to serve his country.

“I don’t have a problem with people who followed the law regarding deferments; they exercised their rights as Americans,” said former Air Force pilot Keith Luchtel, who was shot down in 1968 over South Vietnam.

“Had he wanted to serve he, of course, could have, assuming he could pass the physical, but as you know, many people chose not to serve,” added Luchtel, an Iowa native and a graduate of the Air Force Academy.

“I don’t have any problem with those who stayed within the law and didn’t serve. I’m not so keen on those who went running to Canada,” he added. “I don’t really have a grudge against anybody who didn’t serve under the laws.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

I just find Mr. Trump to be a huckster, and he’s very

good at it.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Orson Swindle