On Friday’s episode Joe Rogan‘s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan’s guest, Evan Hafer, was ticking through a list of Vietnam War-era politicians who had never served in Vietnam. But Rogan quickly interrupted Hafer to remind him that President-elect Donald Trump also never went to Vietnam.
Hafer, a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran and founder of the Black Rifle Coffee Company, was sharply critical of the George W. Bush administration and pointed out that many U.S. politicians in charge of military strategy had never been deployed themselves, nor had their children.
“My friends that have gone through the GWOT, which I’m extremely happy for all these GWOT guys that are in, like, getting appointed to these positions,” Hafer said, using the acronym for the Global War on Terrorism.
“You know, you’ve got Pete [Buttigieg], you’ve got Tulsi [Gabbard], J.D. [Vance]. Like, they fundamentally know…what war is,” Hafer said. Buttigieg, Gabbard, and Vance have all served in the U.S. armed forces.
“And when you have decision-makers that have never been to war and their kids will never go to war—Cheney’s kids never went to war,” Hafer added, referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney. George W. Bush’s “kids never went to war … and none of these guys, by the way, they’re all Vietnam-era guys. None of them went to f***ing Vietnam. So it’s really easy—”
Rogan interjected, reminding Hafer that Trump has also never been deployed.
“But nor did Trump,” he said. “Trump didn’t either, right? He got a bunch of deferments?”
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Hafer acknowledged that and added, “I think the difference is, is that when somebody’s saying stop the endless wars, I’m more than happy to go chips in on that narrative than I am to go, oh, we need to invest and put more time, money, energy into creating more chaos and destruction in the American servicemembers’ lives, or the lives of other people.”
Trump was able to avoid being drafted to serve in Vietnam after a doctor diagnosed him with bone spurs in 1968.
The New York Times reported in 2018 that the doctor, Larry Braunstein, gave Trump the diagnosis as a favor to his father, Fred. At the time, Braunstein was renting his office from the elder Trump, the report said.
The president-elect’s one-time lawyer turned rival, Michael Cohen, also testified to Congress that Trump had admitted to making up the injury to get out of being drafted.
Cohen told Congress that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had tasked him with shutting down public criticism of his draft deferment.
“Mr. Trump claimed” the deferment “was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Cohen told the House Oversight Committee in February 2019. “He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters, but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.”
“He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam,'” Cohen testified.
Trump has also drawn sharp criticism for his comments about veterans and service members, including the late Senator John McCain, who was tortured while serving in Vietnam.
Trump, then a first-time Republican presidential candidate, tore into McCain, saying he was only a war hero because he was captured, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.”