Donald Trump is pretty sure he got out of being drafted for the Vietnam War because of heel spurs, but he can't seem to remember which heel it was that gave him problems, when the injury finally cleared up, or how serious the heel spurs actually were.
While Trump's explanations for why he deferred the draft have varied — sometimes it's a lucky lottery number, sometimes it's a health problem despite his "astonishingly excellent" health — the Republican nominee assured The New York Times that it was, indeed, due to heel spurs. "I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels," Trump said, though he never ended up providing that letter to the Times and could not remember the name of the doctor who had written it.
Trump explained the heel spurs, which are caused by a calcium build-up, were "not a big problem, but it was enough of a problem" to exempt him from the draft. At another point in the interview, he said the heels were a "minor" injury, but he also claimed the spurs made things "difficult from the long-term walking standpoint."
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And after all that, the heel spurs weren't "enough of a problem" to appear in Trump's record of health released by his physician in December. Head over to The New York Times for more details on the murky circumstances surrounding Trump's Vietnam deferment.
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