Buttigieg: ‘No Question’ Donald Trump Faked Disability To Avoid Vietnam
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is vying for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, said that he has no doubt in his mind that President Donald Trump faked a disability to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, Slate reports.
“There is no question, I think, to any reasonable observer that the president found a way to falsify a disabled status, taking advantage of his privileged status in order to avoid serving,” the candidate said. His remarks were made during an interview appearance on This Week on ABC News.
Buttigieg, who himself served as a Navy intelligence officer in Afghanistan, has made a number of similar remarks in which he criticizes the president for avoiding military service, in spite of the draft which was active at the time. Also in the interview, he describes Trump as someone who would fake a disability in order to allow somebody else to go to a deadly war in his place.
The behavior mounts to “an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg added.
Trump was excused from military service a total of five times during the course of the Vietnam War, including a medical deferment for having bone spurs. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress that when he asked Trump for the related medical records, Trump did not provide them.
“@PeteButtigieg & Nancy Pelosi have both mastered the art of puncturing Trump…’I don’t have a problem standing up to somebody who was working on Season 7 of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan.’” https://t.co/NvUMCcp69g
— Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) May 25, 2019
In any case, the South Bend mayor hasn’t limited his criticism of Trump’s role as commander in chief to the bone spur controversy. Buttigieg also criticized the president for considering the pardon of multiple service members who have been accused or convicted of war crimes, as The Inquisitr has covered.
For example, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs is preparing to stand trial on charges that he shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a prisoner to death while serving in Iraq. A former Blackwater contractor, Nicholas A. Slatten, was convicted of first-degree murder for a 2007 shooting of unarmed Iraqis. Major Mathew L. Golsteyn is an Army Green Beret who allegedly killed an unarmed Afghan in 2010.
Each of these cases, plus more, are being considered by the Trump Administration for the possibility of receiving a presidential pardon.
“The idea that being sent to war turns you into a murderer is exactly the kind of thing that those of us who have served have been trying to beat back for more than a generation,” Buttigieg said.
“Frankly, his idea that being sent to fight makes you automatically into some kind of war criminal is a slander against veterans that could only come from somebody who never served.”
