Tom Kirby-Smith: Inexplicable Trump
Future biographers of Donald Trump will document the following with footnotes and other citations. Future historians of North Carolina may succeed in explaining why Trump could ever have been endorsed by the current governor and senators of our state; I can’t.
Trump, in a 1997 interview with Howard Stern, said that the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases was his own “personal Vietnam.” Trump talked about how fortunate he was not to have contracted such diseases: “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Trump avoided the Vietnam draft with student deferments, followed by getting a doctor to diagnose him with debilitating bone spurs on his heels. The “bone spurs” subsequently disappeared. He has never served his country in any capacity, seeking only to exploit whatever opportunities were afforded him by the system he claims to be able to reform.
Tom Kirby-Smith
Greensboro
This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Tom Kirby-Smith: Inexplicable Trump."