In amongst all the chaos sparked by his military operation in Iran, US president Donald Trump has taken the time to pop onto his Truth Social platform and share a photo from his time at military academy, showing him in uniform next to his parents Fred and Mary Trump.
Except, this hasn’t gone down too well over on X/Twitter, given Trump famously had five military draft deferments during the Vietnam War, meaning he didn’t serve in the military during the 1955 to 1975 conflict.
Journalist Aaron Rupar branded the post “unspeakably pathetic”:
Media outlet MeidasTouch called Trump “Cadet Bone Spurs”, referencing a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels which resulted in one of the five aforementioned deferments:
The Lincoln Project, which stands “against Trumpism”, said the picture was “stolen valor” – referring to the act of falsely claiming to have served in the military:
Republicans Against Trump shared the tweet and commented: “5 times draft dodger (‘Bone spurs’) says what?”:
Trump had previously addressed the controversy by saying he could not recall which heel was affected with the bone spurs, but that the issue was “temporary”, “minor” and “over a period of time, it healed up”.
And in 2019, when he was challenged on the matter by Piers Morgan, the Republican said: “I was never a fan of that war. I thought it was a terrible war, it was very far away.
“Nobody had heard of Vietnam… this wasn’t like fighting against Nazi Germany or Hitler. I wasn’t out on the streets marching or saying I would move to Canada, but I wasn’t a fan.”
He added that he would have been “honoured” to have served in the US military, and has since “made up” for not having done so by increasing defence spending.
The White House has been approached by indy100 for comment.
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