Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain continued his criticism of wealthy Vietnam War draft dodgers in a somewhat veiled criticism of President Donald Trump on Monday.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” to celebrate the birthday of his daughter Meghan McCain, a co-host on the program, McCain said the ability for the wealthy Americans to avoid the Vietnam draft with bogus doctor’s notes was “disgraceful.”
“Those where were wealthy enough to have a doctor to say you got a bone spur or you got migraines or whatever it is, then they were excused,” McCain said. Trump was excused from the draft in 1968 after being diagnosed with bone spurs.
“I think when we asked the lowest income portion of our public to do our fighting and dying for us, that that’s disgraceful,” McCain continued. “Nothing makes me more angry.”
McCain avoided calling Trump a draft dodger, but rather criticized the process and tried not to mention Trump’s name. Early in the program, host Whoopi Goldberg praised McCain for not mentioning Trump’s name during his remarks in Philadelphia after receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal.
“You’re like me, you don’t use you-know-whose name,” Goldberg said. “You know why,” McCain replied, eliciting laughs from the panel and audience.
Host Sunny Hostin asked if McCain considered Trump to be a draft dodger. “I don’t consider him so much as a draft dodger as I feel the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country,” McCain said.
“Isn’t it galling when he casts aspersions because of your service when he got off because of bone spurs?” co-host Joy Behar asked. “It ticks me off and a lot of other people.”
McCain didn’t take it personally because he is “in the fight” politically, he replied. But when Trump attacks other veterans and other prisoners of war, he gets offended. “There’s an individual [who] lives in Phoenix. He’s 92. He weighed 110 pounds when he got out of a German prison camp. He said to me, Senator McCain, why does the president not like me? That’s hard to explain to a 92-year-old man,” McCain said.
It’s was wrong for the wealthy to be excused from the draft for getting doctors notes for potentially bogus conditions like bone spurs, McCain said during a C-SPAN special that aired Sunday.
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