What Donald Trump was up to while John McCain was a prisoner of war

[6chars]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Washington Post

It was the spring of 1968, and Donald Trump had it good.

He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire.

“When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000,” he said in his 1987 autobiography “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz. (That’s about $1.4 million in 2015 dollars.) “I had my eye on Manhattan.”

More than 8,000 miles away, John McCain sat in a tiny, squalid North Vietnamese prison cell. The Navy pilot’s body was broken from a plane crash, starvation, botched operations and months of torture.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/20/what-donald-trump-was-up-to-while-john-mccain-was-suffering-as-a-prisoner-of-war/

---

not a pleasant read if you are a donald trump fan. otherwise a pretty thorough takedown of a jerk

[Thor_MN]

1. I'm not a Trump fan, but I read his draft number was 356.

If that's true, one really can't say he avoided the draft (with the implication that he did something), he just got lucky.

OTOH, a certain JE Bush had a draft number of 26, but somehow, he did not serve.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Trump's deferments carried him until the draft lottery was created.

The Donald is a few months older than me. I was drafted long before there were "draft numbers" late in 1969.

[Thor_MN]

3. Thank you for the correction. He received a handful of student deferments.

[Scarsdale]

5. Handsome?

What the hell happened to him, to make him look the way he does now?

[KT2000]

4. before the lottery in 1969

young men (18+) could be drafted unless they had a deferment or 4F. Trump was 23 when the lottery was instituted. Gulf of Tonkin was in 1964 - that is when Trump was 18.

[groundloop]

6. The Donald turned 18 in '64, first draft lottery was held Dec. of '69

So yes, he had a few years worth of deferments to tide him over 'til the draft lottery. First he used student deferments, then there was about a year and a half after he graduated from the 'prestigious Wharton School of Finance' (as his lackeys put it) that he used a "bone spur" to get him medical deferments.

[Sunlei]

7. If Mr. Trump was president, he would share his wealth building tips with us.

Trump's the Grand Negus of Republicans

[underpants]

8. End of this very well done piece

If Trump was used to dining well, the only decent meal McCain had during his five years in prison was the night before he was released.

It was March 14, 1973. McCain arrived back in the United States a physically broken man, but also a hero.

That word has yet to be applied to Trump.

That same year, the Department of Justice slapped the Trump Organization with a major discrimination suit for violating the Fair Housing Act.

“The Government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,”’ according to the New York Times. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.”

Trump at first resisted signing a consent decree, according to the Times. He hired his friend, Roy Cohn, the lawyer and former right-hand man to U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. “Mr. Trump said he would not sign such a decree because it would be unfair to his other tenants,” the Times reported. “He also said that if he allowed welfare clients into his apartments … there would be a massive fleeing from the city of not only our tenants but the communities as a whole.”

[Omaha Steve]

9. Locking analysis

A review by the forum hosts has decided this is analysis. Please repost in GD.

Thank you for understanding.

OS

Statement of Purpose

Post the latest news from reputable mainstream news websites and blogs. Important news of national interest only. No analysis or opinion pieces. No duplicates. News stories must have been published within the last 12 hours. Use the published title of the story as the title of the discussion thread.