Is Donald Trump A Draft Dodger For Avoiding Vietnam War?

In a contentious policy decision issued Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced transgender individuals would no longer be allowed to serve in the United States military. Trump’s controversial decision brought the spotlight back to Trump’s own lack of military service. The president has been called a “draft dodger” for not serving in the Vietnam War as a young man, but the oft-debated term and Trump's deferments themselves are more complex.

“The term ‘draft dodging’ is a characterization that does not reflect any legal category, but rather somebody’s view of the assiduousness and honesty with which a draft registrant seeks to avoid service,” Michael Tigar, a professor of law emeritus at Duke Law School and the author of an analysis on the Selective Service System, told PolitiFact in 2015. “Many people who might have sought exemption or deferment from the draft decided to volunteer. Many others sought ways around participation in the military conflict.”

Trump himself received five official deferments from the military draft during the Vietnam War, according to a New York Times report. Four were educational deferments while one, perhaps most notably, was a medical exemption for bone spurs in the heels of his feet.

Trump told the New York Times last year a doctor provided him a letter to give to draft officials stating that his bone spurs would exempt him from the war.

“I had a doctor give me that letter,” he said. “A very strong letter on the heels.”

Instead of heading to war, Trump was able to enter his father’s business. Trump has also said his draft lottery number enabled him to skirt the war, though experts say his medical exemption would have made the lottery number null.

“He was already classified and determined not to be subject to the draft under the conditions in place at that time,” Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, told the New York Times last year.

Trump is not alone in his deferments from the war—an estimated 15.4 million men received such deferments, exemptions or disqualifications that allowed them to stay home, according to PolitiFact. But a deferment does not a draft dodger make. Of the 15.4 million, only an estimated 210,000 people were charged with draft violations, often for burning their draft cards or fleeing the country.