Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Presidential podiatry

Well, looks like they've tracked down the podiatrist who helped Donnie make that false claim of "bone spurs" -- a claim he used to avoid service in Vietnam.
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.

“I know it was a favor,” said one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, 56, who along with her sister, Sharon Kessel, 53, shared the family’s account for the first time publicly when contacted by The New York Times.

Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment. “But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said.
“What he got was access to Fred Trump,” Elysa Braunstein said. “If there was anything wrong in the building, my dad would call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got.”
Democrats should not let this go. At every opportunity, confront Trump. Force him to defend himself. Call him President Bone Spurs -- to his face.

Do unto Trump as Trump would do unto his enemies. After all, he still refers to Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas -- and he always will, regardless of what any DNA test says. The man won his office by being repetitive and puerile, and thus deserves precisely the same treatment. Bone spurs! Bone spurs! Bone spurs!

Even after VT Day, Dems should bring up this humiliating truth every single time they get into it with a Republican. ("VT Day" = "Victory over Trump" day.)

Now we have to track down the guys who took tests for Trump when he was at Wharton.

In case you are wondering: I was born too late for the draft. Yes, I could have volunteered -- and probably should have. When I was a young man, Reagan seemed set on sending in troops to fight the Sandinistas, toward whom I was more-or-less sympathetic, or at least neutral. Thus, I was not inclined to volunteer, although I would not have dodged a draft, had one existed at that time. That said, I now feel ashamed about my lack of military service, especially when I think of my father, who interrupted college to serve in Korea.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hear! Hear!

Bone Spurs Don!

Michael said...

I quit school and lost my deferment the year they instituted a national lottery. My birthday drew a very high lottery number. As the war wound down the following year, they never reached my number. But they did make me take the physical in Baltimore. After reading my BP, the examiners pulled me out of line and made me wait a few minutes for a retake.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Low blood pressure," came the reply.

"Does that mean I'm going to get out of the Draft?"

"No. It just means you'll live longer."

Fred said...

Nobody should have gone to Vietnam. Joseph, when did you become such a jingoist?

joseph said...

I had petit mal epilepsy when I was a young kid. I used the eeg to stay out of the Army. The difference was that I didn't want anybody else to go either. In fact, I was in Chicago during the 1968 convention on the side of the protesters. Trump, Bush, Cheney and the rest of the right wing nutjobs didn't want to go but wanted everybody else to go. That is hypocrisy.

Joseph Cannon said...

A jingoist? Never been called that before!

I know I would have been a terrible soldier. When I saw "Saving Private Ryan," I identified with Upham, the translator -- a decent, bright guy who had NO place being anywhere near a serious fight. "Yeah, that would've been me," I thought.

But now that the beard is grey, there are regrets. A lot of guys went through a lot of shit, and I didn't. It's a haunting thought.

Besides, when I was a young man, there were no wars. Just rumors of wars. I should not have been scared off by rumors.

Alessandro Machi said...

Are we saying that the North Korean War and the Viet Nam War were justified? Regretting missing a war that was not justified seems, strange.