2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told ABC's Martha Raddatz on Sunday that "there is no question" President Trump faked a disability to escape the Vietnam draft, calling it "an assault on the honor of this country."
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told ABC's Martha Raddatz on Sunday that "there is no question" President Trump faked a disability to escape the Vietnam draft, calling it "an assault on the honor of this country."
BUTTIGIEG: "There is no question, I think, to any reasonable observer that the president found a way to falsify a disabled status, taking advantage of his privileged status in order to avoid serving. You have somebody who thinks it's all right to let somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled in order to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country."
The big picture: The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, who himself is a veteran of Afghanistan, has been a frequent and vocal critic of Trump's decisions related to the military. In the same ABC interview, Buttigieg blasted reports that Trump is considering pardoning military service members accused or convicted of war crimes.
"For a president, especially a president who never served, to say he's going to come in and overrule that system of military justice undermines the very foundations, legal and moral, of this country. Frankly, his idea that being sent to fight makes you automatically into some kind of war criminal is a slander against veterans that could only come from somebody who never served."