Hmmmm.....
He was 6 feet tall and had an athlete’s build. He played football in high school and was active in sports throughout college. He spent one summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.
Opinion
Michael Graham
InsideSources.com
But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968 and became eligible for the draft and — possibly — combat duty in Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that let him avoid military service.
No, not bone spurs. Asthma.
And his name was Joe Biden.
Just a few months before Donald Trump received his now-infamous diagnosis of “bone spurs in the heels,” former high school football star
Biden got the same 1-Y draft deferment for “asthma as a teenager.” It was one of
five deferments Biden received (the same number as notorious GOP “draft dodger” Dick Cheney) and allowed him to avoid being drafted at the height of the war. The year 1968 was one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam conflict with 296,406 Americans drafted into military service —
the second-highest during the war.
Fifty-one years after the Summer of Love, the draft records of the sitting president, and at least one of the Democrats who want to replace him, are issues in the 2020 campaign. In recent weeks, two of the military veterans in the race —
Mayor Pete Buttigieg and
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — have been highlighting Trump’s draft record and their own military service.
“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,”
Buttigieg told ABC’s “This Week.” He served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.
Veterans Running on Their Service Records Isn’t New
Moulton, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq, also accused Trump of dodging the draft. “I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,”
Moulton said. “I hope he’s still alive.”
“Seth is running to take on Donald Trump and has been leading the field in challenging him directly as commander in chief. There’s nothing more to read into this than Trump is a draft dodger and Seth is a decorated four-tour combat veteran who is calling the president out.” —
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton
Military veterans running on their record of service is nothing new. And criticism of an opponent’s military background — or lack thereof — isn’t unusual either, as the Bill Clinton and John Kerry campaigns can attest. But by highlighting Trump’s record, they’re also turning a spotlight on other candidates who were eligible for service during the Vietnam War, including Biden.
In fact, some Democratic strategists believe that’s their true goal.
“They’re not talking about Donald Trump. They’re talking about Joe Biden,” one longtime Democratic activist said.
The Moulton campaign, which was the first to highlight the draft issue, denies any intra-party purpose. “Seth is running to take on Donald Trump and has been leading the field in challenging him directly as commander in chief,” Moulton campaign representative Matt Corridoni told InsideSources. “There’s nothing more to read into this than Trump is a draft dodger and Seth is a decorated four-tour combat veteran who is calling the president out.”
The Biden and Buttigieg campaigns declined repeated requests for comment. But it’s naive to think that raising the issue of Trump’s Vietnam-era behavior isn’t going to blow back on Biden.
There’s no denying that, by all appearances, the Joe Biden of 1968 was the picture of health. During his time at Archmere Academy, Biden excelled at sports. And while he once falsely claimed he played for the University of Delaware football team, he considered playing on the team (he chose to focus on his double-major in history and political science instead, he says) and he was active in intramural sports.
https://gvwire.com/2019/06/07/bidens-draft-record-looks-a-lot-like-trumps-do-democrats-care/