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| Young Joe Biden dodged the draft 5 times with Asthma excuses |
According the report, after he graduated college in 1968, Biden became eligible for the draft, which could have landed him in combat in Vietnam. What saved him, what earned him a 1-Y draft deferment, was asthma… Asthma, y’all. Asthma.
Don’t get me wrong, asthma can be debilitating. Chronic asthma is the worst; it can disable a person. If Biden legitimately suffered a serious asthma problem, his draft deferment is perfectly legitimate.
Here’s the problem, though… While Biden was scoring a deferment for “asthma as a teenager,” he was — get this — also scoring touchdowns as a teenager. Biden played football in high school and once went so far as to lie about playing football for the University of Delaware — even though he didn’t, but Biden is the kind of liar who lies about such things.
What’s more, InsideSources points out that in his autobiography, Biden makes no mention of asthma, but brags about being “active in intramural sports” while in college, and “recounts an active childhood [and] football exploits in high school.”
Worse still, during one summer home from college, as Biden himself has admitted, he worked as a lifeguard, which requires vigorous health in order to pass that test, including a very healthy set of lungs.
And then there’s this: One incident from that summer stands out: How Biden had to wrap a six-foot length of metal chain around his arm to face off against a knife-wielding local tough who went by the name “Corn Pop.”
“You might cut me, Corn Pop, but I’m going to wrap this chain around your head before you do,” Biden told him. Strong words, but he was a healthy, high school football player who could back them up. Biden and Corn Pop resolved their differences without violence and, according to Biden, became poolside friends.
Just six years later, at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, that same poolside athlete avoided mandatory military service due to “asthma as a teenager.” Yep, healthy enough to play football and qualify as a lifeguard, which is no easy task, but still 1-Y when swimming is one of the most strenuous exercises around.
Trump haters can laugh all they want at Trump’s “bone spurs,” the reason behind his 1-Y classification, but snickers and cheap shots don’t contradict a bone spur diagnosis. It’s not like Trump was out running marathons at the time.
But there was Slow Joe playing football in high school, playing even more sports in college, and qualifying as a lifeguard, all while claiming to suffer the debilitating asthma that meant someone else would have to take his place in Vietnam.
Back in 2008, while he was running for vice president, it was reported that Biden received a total of five deferments for asthma. Naturally, the same media that crucified then-Vice President Dick Cheney for his five deferments didn’t care about Biden’s deferments. And we all know why: The media were desperate to make Obama president. After all, why would a media that didn’t care about Obama’s 20 years in a racist church, his associations with domestic terrorists and Louis Farrakhan, care about Biden’s asthma?
This time will be different. Biden is running for president, the establishment media see a whole bunch of extreme left-wingers they would like to see beat Biden, and since the dark days of 2008 when the fake news media still held all the levers of information, a whole new media infrastructure has been erected. In other words, we have not heard the last of this, not by a long shot.
Joe Biden’s Draft Record Looks a Lot Like Donald Trump’s. Do Democrats Care? He was 6 feet tall and had an athlete’s build. He played football in high school and was active in sports throughout college. He spent one summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.
But after he graduated college in the spring of 1968 and became eligible for the draft and —possibly — combat duty in Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that let him avoid military service. No, not bone spurs. Asthma. And his name was Joe Biden.
Just a few months before President Donald Trump received his now-infamous diagnosis of “bone spurs in the heels,” former high school football star Biden got the same 1-Y draft deferment for “asthma as a teenager.” It was one of five deferments Biden received (the same number as notorious GOP “draft dodger” Dick Cheney) and allowed him to avoid being drafted at the height of the war. The year 1968 was one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam conflict with 296,406 Americans drafted into military service — the second-highest during the war.
Fifty-one years after the Summer of Love, the draft records of the sitting president, and at least one of the Democrats who want to replace him, are issues in the 2020 campaign. In recent weeks, two of the military veterans in the race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — have been highlighting Trump’s draft record and their own military service.
“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg told ABC’s This Week. He served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.
Moulton, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq, also accused Trump of dodging the draft. “I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,” Moulton said. “I hope he’s still alive.”
Military veterans running on their record of service is nothing new. And criticism of an opponent’s military background — or lack thereof — isn’t unusual either, as the Bill Clinton and John Kerry campaigns can attest. But by highlighting Trump’s record, they’re also turning a spotlight on other candidates who were eligible for service during the Vietnam War, including Biden.
In fact, some Democratic strategists believe that’s their true goal. “They’re not talking about Donald Trump. They’re talking about Joe Biden,” one long-time Democratic activist told InsideSources.
The Biden and Buttigieg campaigns declined repeated requests for comment. But it’s naïve to think that raising the issue of Trump’s Vietnam-era behavior isn’t going to blow back on Biden.
As the Associated Press noted in 2008, “Promises to Keep,” Biden’s best-selling memoir, “never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.”
Biden frequently tells the story of his decision to spend a summer home from college working as the only white lifeguard at a pool predominately used by black residents. His goal was to learn more about the community, in part because he already had political ambitions.
Just six years later, at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, that same poolside athlete avoided mandatory military service due to “asthma as a teenager.” Does this prove that Biden was dishonest or made a false claim? No. But a similar story from Donald Trump was enough for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D- Wis.), who was wounded while serving in Iraq, to label President Trump a “coward.”
Based on the lack of media coverage and interviews with Democratic primary voters, it appears that few potential Biden supporters even know about his draft deferments. And even if they did, would it matter?
“The Vietnam War is ancient history in the Democratic Party,” veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told InsideSources. “The war was unpopular then and it’s unpopular now. The idea that someone didn’t want to go or [like Sen. Bernie Sanders] was a conscientious objector, that’s not going to keep them from winning the nomination.”
And a new Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered Democrats found that more than half didn’t believe it was important for their party’s nominee to be a veteran. Only a third of Democrats said military service by their nominee was important at all.
Until recently Keane was head of the influential New Hampshire Young Democrats, who’ve been wooed by the young military veterans in the race like Buttigieg, Moulton and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. At the same time, military issues have thus far taken a back seat to both economic issues like Medicare For All and social issues like abortion.
And Shrum adds one more data point to ponder: “No Vietnam veteran has ever been elected President of the United States.”
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| Some young American men who had to take Joe Biden place could have been killed in Vietnam. |
