During the Great Depression, my parents learned about sacrifice. My paternal grandparents had a farm in Minnesota, where my grandmother would often sacrifice some of the family dinner to a wayward traveler or two. She would stretch out a meal with fillers, oftentimes feeding a family using nothing but a ham bone, navy beans, and bread. When World War II started, she sent her sons off to war, putting up a flag with three white stars on it in the front window of the farmhouse. All of her boys came home unscathed. During the war, my grandmother and grandfather had to run an 80-acre farm alone while their sons were at war, and their only daughter was off to California to build airplanes for the war effort.
They knew what sacrifice was, and is. After my dad passed away, I found GI Bill paperwork, filled out and ready to go, with notes on majoring in agriculture, and taking over the family farm—my dad never went to college. He met my mom, and his path in life was altered. My parents scrimped and saved, raised three children, put off vacations, and put dreams on hold. My dad worked hard his entire life, only to have the rug pulled out from under him when his boss broke the union. Yet I would not know until years later how precarious their financial situation was. The sacrifices they made to ensure I would never miss out on anything.
My parents’ sacrifices were small compared to those of some of their contemporaries in the Greatest Generation. Many men never came home from WWII; left behind were families that suffered in silence, their sons having made the ultimate sacrifice to this nation. Those men who did come home then sent their own sons off to war in Vietnam, and some 58,000 of them did not come home.
The man currently leading this country did not go to Vietnam, even though he could have.
Trump received five deferments from the draft for military service during the Vietnam War. He received four education deferments while he was a college student and a fifth deferment in 1968 for a medical exemption after he graduated.
That medical exemption was for bone spurs:
For 50 years, the details of how the exemption came about, and who made the diagnosis, have remained a mystery, with Mr. Trump himself saying during the presidential campaign that he could not recall who had signed off on the medical documentation.
Now a possible explanation has emerged about the documentation. It involves a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Mr. Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump, and a suggestion that the diagnosis was granted as a courtesy to the elder Mr. Trump.
The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, died in 2007. But his daughters say their father often told the story of coming to the aid of a young Mr. Trump during the Vietnam War as a favor to his father.
Donald J. Trump and his family have never sacrificed anything. No one in his family has ever served in the military. In fact, his grandfather was kicked out of Germany by royal decree for refusing to serve in the military.
On Sunday, May 19, Donald Trump tweeted:
I would like to ask the president: Which of your children will be first in line at the recruiting office to sign up to be in the Infantry? After all, both Tiffany and Eric are still eligible to enlist, and it is not outside the realm of possibility that Don Jr. and Ivanka could get age waivers to join. Are you willing to sacrifice your children to fight a war with Iran?
The answer to that question is no—he would not sacrifice his children. He has no idea what sacrifice is. He has never known hunger; he has never wondered how he was going to pay his rent; he has never wondered if his car would start, or if he would lose his job for being late for work because his car would not start. It is a good bet that when he and Ivana got divorced, he did not have to eat Ramen noodles for months at a time to make sure his children would not go hungry. He does not have to wonder if he has enough money to retire on, or if he can afford to pay his copay when he goes to the doctor, and then hope he does not get prescribed anything expensive.
And yet a man who has never worked a day in his life, one who has never had to make the sacrifices we all have made, is willing to sacrifice our children for a war none of us wants, a war there is no need to fight.