I don’t have a problem standing up to somebody who was, you know, working on season 7 of Celebrity Apprentice when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan,” Buttigieg quipped By RACHEL DESANTIS
2020 Democratic contender and war veteran Pete Buttigieg slammed Donald Trump, saying the president exploited his privilege and “fake[d] a disability” to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
Buttigieg addressed the president’s five deferments from service, focusing mainly on his 1968 diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels, which earned him his lone medical exemption.
“I have a pretty dim view of his decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam,” Buttigieg told The Washington Post during a live forum.
“Do you believe he has a disability? At least not that one. That is actually really important, because I don’t mean to trivialize disability, but I think that’s exactly what he did.”
The South Bend, Indiana, mayor alluded to Trump’s mocking of a reporter with a disability, and doubled down on his claim that the president took advantage of his father’s wealth to scheme his way out of serving.
“If you were a conscientious objector, I’d admire that,” he said. “But this is somebody who… took advantage of the fact that he was the child of a multi-millionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place.”
Buttigieg continued, “I know that that dredges up old wounds from a complicated time, during a complicated war, but I’m also old enough to remember when conservatives talked about character as something that mattered in the presidency.”
The 37-year-old served in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and earned a Joint Service Commendation Medal for his counterterrorism work.
