Sen. John McCain Mocks Trump’s ‘Bone Spurs’ Draft Deferment Without Saying His Name

Sen. John McCain appeared to mocked President Trump in a new interview with C-SPAN3’s American History TV about the Vietnam War.

Without saying his name, the Arizona GOP senator called out the president for avoiding the military draft by claiming a medical deferment for “bone spurs.”

Trump received four student deferments from military service between 1964 and 1968. After he graduated in 1968, however, Trump would have been drafted but got a 1-Y medical deferment for what was diagnosed as bone spurs in his heels, reports USA Today.

“One aspect of the (Vietnam) 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,” Sen. McCain said. “That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

TONIGHT – @SenJohnMcCain talks about the Vietnam War’s legacy on C-SPAN, at 6 & 10pm ET. pic.twitter.com/WnZT0n8Mcn

— American History TV (@cspanhistory) October 22, 2017

On Tuesday, Trump said that he would “fight back” after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered a blunt denunciation of nationalist forces that was widely seen as a thinly veiled attack on the president.

“People have to be careful, because at some point I fight back,” Trump told WMAL radio host Chris Plante. “I’m being very nice. I’m being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it won’t be pretty.”

Trump, asked about McCain on @ChrisPlanteShow: “I’m being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it won’t be pretty.”

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) October 17, 2017

McCain fired back at Trump’s threats saying that he has “faced far greater challenges than this,” according to CNN.

In response to Trump’s threat, McCain had this blunt response: “I’ve faced far greater challenges than this” https://t.co/nFo24e0dDe

— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) October 17, 2017

The public feud comes after McCain delivered a speech late Monday blasting the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in the United States.

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history,” McCain said after receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal.

In a fiery speech, Sen. McCain criticizes “half-baked, spurious nationalism,” & warns against American imperialism https://t.co/BTtpmRAOvS pic.twitter.com/CTJHstOgGo

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 17, 2017

Trump has repeatedly attacked McCain after the senator voted against a GOP bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare earlier this year.

McCain, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in July, served in the Navy for more than two decades and spent five-and-half years in a notorious North Vietnamese prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was repeatedly tortured. He spent two of those years in solitary confinement.

In 2015, then-candidate Trump attacked McCain, saying: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”