War Hero Donald Trump Was Most Terrific War Hero In Prep School

So good at the military, your head will spin

We finally know why Donald Trump never cared so much for war guys who got captured:  When he was in the military, he never got captured, so why should he think all that much of guys who were? Now, you might think that Donald Trump, who got a bunch of draft deferments during Vietnam, has never been in the military, simply because he never served in the U.S. armed forces in any formal capacity. But hefeels like he's been in the military, because his parents sent him to military school, so shut up already.

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The New York Times informs us that in interviews for an upcoming biography, Trump told author Michael D'Antonio that because his parents shipped him off to a military boarding school, he “always felt that [he] was in the military,” and really, who would know better than Donald Trump what being in the pretend military is like? Unless maybe it was Sarah Palin, who agrees that he was a pretty impressive war hero and a POW, too. So that's one more thing she's been right about.

Mr. Trump said that his experience at the New York Military Academy, an expensive prep school where his parents had sent him to correct poor behavior, gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

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Yes, we'll be reading that book. We also learn that Trump sat down with D'Antonio for six hours of interviews for the book, but abruptly terminated his cooperation "after Mr. Trump learned that Mr. D’Antonio had spoken with a longtime Trump enemy" -- which hardly narrows down the field of people that could have been. If consistency counts for anything, we at least learn that even in his adolescence, Trump was already working hard at being an asshole:

Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with winning — at anything and everything, big or small — dominated his youth. His mentor at the New York Military Academy, Theodore Dobias, called Mr. Trump “a conniver, even then.”

Trump attended the military school from eighth grade through high school, starting in 1959; his parents sent him there after he'd gotten into too much trouble at his previous boarding school, where, he told D'Antnonio, he gave a teacher a black eye “because I didn’t think he knew anything about music.” You don't go around disagreeing with little Donald.

At New York Military Academy, Trump got a real sense of what the military is all about:

[He] wore a uniform, participated in marching drills and was expected to conform to a hierarchy imposed by instructors, some of whom had served in the military.

Despite sitting out Vietnam because of deferments followed by a high draft lottery number of 356 out of 366, Mr. Trump said that he endured the rigors of real military life.

“My number was so incredible and it was a very high draft number. Anyway so I never had to do that, but I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people,” he told Mr. D’Antonio.

Obviously, it was one hell of a good school, and the drills no doubt included a fair amount of head spinning. Also, he got out of Vietnam fair and square, because he had a bunch of education deferments, and then a medical deferment for his feet, and then finally a very high lottery number, so maybe he's a "fortunate son" or something.

In related news, Trump has also been a little defensive about a recent interview where he accused conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt of asking him "gotcha" questions after Hewitt asked Trump if he knew anything about Middle Eastern military leaders. Trump explained that it didn't matter because by the time he's in office, all those guys will be dead anyway:

I’ll tell you honestly, I think by the time we get to office, they’ll all be changed. They’ll be all gone. … But as far as the individual players, of course I don’t know them. I’ve never met them. I haven’t been, you know, in a position to meet them. If, if they’re still there, which is unlikely in many cases, but if they’re still there, I will know them better than I know you.

Besides, who's running the various factions doesn't matter, because whoever the funny foreigners are in the comical uniforms are when he becomes President, Trump will whip them into line: "I will be so good at the military, your head will spin."

So that settles the question of Donald Trump's fitness as commander in chief: We was pretty much in the military, just like Bill O'Reilly was a war correspondent, and he will not be having any of your gotcha questions.

[ France24 / NYT ]