Trump's Veterans Day Special

Donald Trump has an unusual relationship with military service. He managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, but that doesn't mean he didn't experience the horrors of war. He had his own battlefield, his own dangers and, by his own account, his own heroic exploits.

In a 1997 appearance on Howard Stern's radio show, Trump explained that navigating the sexual battlefield, with all its potential exposure to sexually transmitted diseases, was his personal Vietnam. He described himself as a "great and very brave soldier." When Stern suggested he was braver than actual Vietnam veterans because he was sleeping with so many women, Trump didn't exactly disagree. He even joked about receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

One can only imagine the welcome he'd have received at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial had he stopped by to share his war stories.

Of course, Trump's actual military record consists of five draft deferments: four for education and one for bone spurs. The latter apparently proved sufficiently debilitating to keep him out of the military but not sufficiently troublesome to interfere with his golf game.

He wants the medals without the service, the glory without the sacrifice and the admiration without having earned it.

Trump was apparently quite impressed with his own "wartime heroics." He was considerably less impressed by those of John McCain.

McCain spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam after his plane was shot down. He was tortured, suffered permanent injuries and refused an offer of early release.

Trump's assessment?

"I like people who weren't captured."

And then there were the "suckers" and "losers."

According to reporting by The Atlantic, Trump used those words to describe Americans who died serving their country. Trump denied the allegations, but his former White House chief of staff, retired four-star Marine General John Kelly, subsequently confirmed the substance of the reports.

Kelly spent decades in military service. His son Robert, a Marine lieutenant, was killed in Afghanistan.

During a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery in 2017, Trump reportedly asked Kelly, while standing near his son's grave, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"

Kelly later confirmed the remark.

Kelly also recounted Trump's objection to including wounded veterans in a military parade. According to Kelly, Trump didn't want military amputees on display because "it doesn't look good for me."

Yet Trump has never been shy about surrounding himself with military pageantry, displaying the symbols of American power or presenting himself as the ultimate patriot.

And now, on Veterans Day 2026, the country finds itself with a commander in chief who once compared his sexual exploits to combat in Vietnam, mocked a prisoner of war and, according to his own former chief of staff, disparaged Americans who gave their lives in military service.

Perhaps that's the secret to his particular brand of heroism.

He wants the medals without the service, the glory without the sacrifice and the admiration without having earned it.