WaPo: "Trump is 'making up' for not serving in Vietnam with increased defense funding, he says"

[VOX]

It’s as if we’ve all been pulled into some surreal spinoff of “Dr. Strangelove.” It’s living, real-time satire; unfortunately, it’s killing this country.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/06/05/trump-is-making-up-not-serving-vietnam-with-increased-defense-funding-he-says/%3foutputType=amp
Trump is ‘making up’ for not serving in Vietnam with increased defense funding, he says

<snip>
[Piers] Morgan asked Trump whether he “wished” he had served in the military, particularly in Vietnam, which Trump avoided with a string of student deferments and a medical disqualification for bone spurs.

Those actions have led Democratic challengers to suggest that Trump dodged service because of his wealth. “It’s not like there was just some empty seat in Vietnam. Someone had to go in his place,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said last month.
<snip>
But the United States did not send an army of draftees to Vietnam. Between 1964 and 1973, volunteers outnumbered draftees by nearly 4 to 1. In Vietnam, two-thirds of troops had volunteered to serve. They did so for a variety of reasons: a sense of duty, to avoid dim prospects at home or to have control over their assignments that draftees did not.

“I would have not have minded that at all. I would have been honored” to serve, Trump said, though he did not address accusations of draft dodging with Morgan.

However, Trump added, he has increased the Pentagon’s budget during his tenure, which he said should be considered as an amends to avoiding service.

"I think I make up for it right now,” Trump said, describing a proposed defense budget that will approach $750 billion in 2020. “I think I am making up for it rapidly.”

[trev]

1. Nah.

He's just doing what all Republican presidents do.

Fake patriotism.

[VOX]

8. Wait until his 4th of July hoedown.

So much flag waving, it’ll start a hot-weather front in Australia.

[trev]

9. Yes, it'll turn my stomach.

Fortunately for me, I don't get TV, so I won't have to watch any of it.

[struggle4progress]

2. "Watch me sacrifice bigly by spending your money!"

[Iliyah]

3. Total BULLSHIT

all about him, him, him.

He needs to go bigly.

sad.

[smirkymonkey]

4. Uh, that's not YOUR money, dipshit, and giving OUR money to puff up an

already bloated defense budget - not to veterans or troops - but to greedy defense contractors, is making up for fuck all.

You are just funneling more money to the rich and powerful so they can go on exploiting other nations to get even MORE money for the rich and powerful, while you screw over the enlisted and everyone else.

The only people you are fooling is your idiotic base.

[VOX]

6. On the money, 100 percent.

And, as you say, it’s OUR money!

[BeyondGeography]

5. OPM solves all problems

[ooky]

7. How courageous of him.

[MineralMan]

10. The Trump Family DOES NOT SERVE in the Military.

Period. In Vietnam or anywhere else.

Most members of the military during the Vietnam war did not serve in Vietnam, either. They served wherever they were sent. I was in the USAF between 1965 and 1969. There would have been nothing for me to do, given my specialty, in Vietnam. So, I was not sent there.

Nor did I choose my training or job in the USAF. It was chosen for me. I enlisted in the USAF on the day I was scheduled to appear for a draft physical. That was the end of my choices. After that, someone else decided what I'd do for the next four years.

But, the Trumps do not serve in the military. Such service is not a family tradition, as it was in my family. In fact, the Trump tradition is to avoid such service, by any means necessary.

[Retrograde]

11. "I am the best chickenhawk"

"Nobody bribes the MIC as bigly as me. I support our troops as long as they're not me or mine, and as long as they make cheap backdrops for photo-ops."

[VOX]

12. The best! He's almost at the point where he'd recite your lines, and mean it.

For an idiot so enamored with walls, 45 has utterly flattened the boundary between his “reality” and satire. The bullshit that tumbles from his yawp is so profoundly surreal that it’s absolutely astonishing. ANYONE else (especially a Democrat) would be laughed out of office and shown the exit door.