The Bone Spurs That Launched a Thousand Questions

In the late 1960s, as American helicopters churned the humid air above rice paddies in Southeast Asia and young men from towns across the United States were boarding transport planes bound for the war in Vietnam, a twenty-two-year-old real-estate heir in Queens was confronting a different battlefield: the Selective Service draft board.

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His name was Donald Trump, and the story of how he avoided military service would become one of the most persistent footnotes to his biography. It revolves around a phrase that sounds almost comic in its brevity but has endured as political shorthand for privilege and skepticism: bone spurs.

Between 1964 and 1968, during the height

of the Vietnam War, Trump received five draft deferments from the Selective Service System.

Four were student deferments—routine and legal, granted while he attended Fordham University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance. In those years, college enrollment was a reliable shield against the draft. Thousands of middle- and upper-class young men used the same path.

The fifth deferment, granted in 1968, was different. It was medical.

The diagnosis: bone spurs in the heels, a condition that can cause pain when walking or standing. The classification assigned to Trump was 1-Y, meaning he was considered medically unfit for military service except in a national emergency.

By the time that determination was made, the war was raging. In 1968 alone, more than 16,000 American soldiers would die in Vietnam, the deadliest year of the conflict.

Trump would not be among them.

At the time, the deferment attracted little public attention. Trump was not yet a public figure beyond the orbit of New York real estate. But the episode would resurface decades later when the young man with the medical exemption transformed himself into a national political figure whose rhetoric frequently invoked military strength, toughness, and patriotism.

The story might have remained a minor biographical detail had it not been for the murky circumstances surrounding the diagnosis itself.

The doctor who provided the medical evaluation was Dr. Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist practicing in Queens, New York. Braunstein’s office happened to be located in a building owned by Trump’s father, Fred Trump, a powerful developer whose holdings stretched across Brooklyn and Queens.

For decades, the arrangement attracted little notice. But in 2018, a report by The New York Times added a layer of intrigue. Braunstein’s daughters told the newspaper that their father had once described the diagnosis as a favor to Fred Trump, implying that the elder Trump had asked the doctor to help his son avoid the draft.

The daughters did not claim to have direct documentation of the arrangement; they were recounting what their father had told them years earlier. Braunstein himself had died in 2007, leaving no recorded explanation of his decision.

Still, the allegation was combustible.

The Vietnam draft had long been remembered not only as a wartime policy but as a social dividing line. Working-class Americans and minorities were disproportionately represented among those who fought. Meanwhile, college deferments, medical exemptions, and other legal avenues often shielded the sons of the affluent.

Trump’s case, critics argued, appeared to fit neatly within that pattern.

For his part, Trump has consistently insisted the diagnosis was legitimate. In interviews he has said he suffered from bone spurs in his heels and received medical advice that he should not serve.

Yet his descriptions of the condition have sometimes been vague. In one interview he acknowledged he did not remember which foot was affected. In another he suggested both heels were involved.

Medical experts note that bone spurs can vary dramatically in severity. Some people experience significant pain and mobility issues; others have the condition without noticing it at all. Without the original medical records—never publicly released—the precise nature of Trump’s condition remains unclear.

The bone spurs episode might have faded into historical trivia were it not for Trump’s own political style. During his rise to the presidency, he often framed himself as a champion of strength and martial values. He spoke reverently of the military and criticized political opponents for perceived weakness.

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In 2015, during the early months of his presidential campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, saying he preferred “people who weren’t captured.” McCain had spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

The remark ignited outrage across the political spectrum—and inevitably led reporters back to the story of Trump’s own military record, or lack thereof.

To Trump’s supporters, the bone spurs controversy has always been overblown. They point out that deferments during the Vietnam era were legal and widespread. Trump followed the rules of the system as it existed, they argue, just as countless others did.

But critics see the story differently. For them, it symbolizes the intersection of wealth, influence, and opportunity in America—a system in which connections could shape the trajectory of a young man’s life while others faced the lottery of war.

More than half a century after the Vietnam draft board stamped Trump’s classification card, the episode continues to echo through American political discourse. The phrase “bone spurs” has become something larger than a medical diagnosis.

It is a shorthand, a metaphor, a political Rorschach test.

For some, it is proof of hypocrisy. For others, proof of nothing at all.

But the questions it raises—about class, privilege, and the burdens of war—remain as sharp as ever.

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