McCain: I don't consider Trump to be a draft dodger The former POW had appeared to criticize Trump for draft deferments with a 'bone spur' quip.

Sen. John McCain on Monday said he doesn’t consider President Donald Trump a draft dodger, despite appearing to take a swipe at Trump on Sunday by criticizing people who “found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur” to avoid military service.

“I don’t consider him so much a draft dodger as I feel the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country,” the Arizona senator said Monday morning on ABC’s “The View.”


In a C-SPAN interview broadcast Sunday, McCain lamented the manifestations of economic inequality in Vietnam War-era military service.

“One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” McCain said Sunday. “That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

His remark was widely interpreted as a criticism of Trump, who was granted five draft deferments — four for college and one for bone spurs in his heel — and did not serve in the military. A spokeswoman for the senator, however, said his comments were not specifically directed at the president.

“Senator McCain was referring to one of the great injustices of the Vietnam conflict that led to a majority of poor, undereducated and minority draftees,” McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo said. “Senator McCain has long criticized the selective service program during the Vietnam War, which left the fighting to the less privileged.”

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When co-host Sunny Hostin acknowledged that people thought McCain was “talking about Mr. Trump because he had a doctor’s note that said he had bone spurs,” the senator added, “I think more than once, yes.”

Elaborating on his Sunday comments, McCain said he was trying to highlight “one of the great inequities of the Vietnam conflict,” which he maintained was the fact that people of the lowest income were drafted while the wealthiest individuals were able to get a doctor to excuse them.

“I think that when we ask the lowest-income portion of our public to do our fighting and dying for us, that that’s disgraceful. Nothing makes me more angry than that,” McCain said. “If we were all asked to serve, wonderful. But if some of us are allowed not to because of our income or our position or our influence, then that is a disgrace.”

McCain, a former Navy pilot during the Vietnam War, was a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years, held and repeatedly tortured in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison. Given the opportunity to return home ahead of some who had been captured before him, McCain refused.

The Arizona senator’s status as a former POW — for which he is often revered as a hero by members of both parties — has seemingly not won him much favor with Trump, who has clashed regularly with McCain.

The lawmaker has been among the most vocal GOP critics of the president and was among the Republican senators whose “no” votes scuttled the party’s efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare last summer.

The feud between the two men dates back to the presidential campaign, when McCain said in an interview that Trump “fired up the crazies” in his home state of Arizona. Even more famously, Trump said McCain was “not a war hero” and that “I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain, who simply laughed when asked if he was scared of the president’s threat last week to “fight back,” called for more civility in public discourse.

“We’ve got to lift the national dialogue. Let’s stop insulting each other. Let’s start respecting each others’ views,” said McCain, who told the co-hosts that he has “almost” no relationship with the president. “I think the point is that we need to have a kinder, more respectful but vigorous debate and discussion, but based on what we want the country to do, not whether somebody’s a jerk or not.”