How Long Has Eric T. Schneiderman Been In Public Service

(CNN)President Trump's world-famous bone spurs, which kept him out of the military draft during the Vietnam State of war, are dorsum in the news. The New York Times tracked down daughters of podiatrist Larry Braunstein, who diagnosed Trump in 1968, and reports that the President's father, Fred, may have arranged for the medical report, providing circumspect service as the md's landlord in return. Notably, Braunstein'south daughters, both Democrats, are non supporters of President Trump.

"What he got was access to Fred Trump," Elysa Braunstein told Steven Eder of the Times. "If there was annihilation incorrect in the building, my dad would telephone call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got."

A former colleague said Dr. Braunstein "spoke very highly of the Trumps, and they were very open up to negotiating with him and letting him stay in the space at a rent he was comfortable with."

At that place is, however, no documentation to back upwardly these accounts. (The Braunstein daughters did non return my calls seeking comment.)

Trump's superpower: the 'Invisible President'

Then there is the question of how a os spur diagnosis past a podiatrist might have been enough to convince military doctors that Trump was medically unfit to serve.

The bone spur story is something I discussed with Trump when I interviewed him for my biography of him, "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success," published in 2015.

Equally with so many things we explored in many hours of interviews, this i required a painstaking dissection of Trump's record in order to sort out. In the past, he had noted student deferments and a high number in the draft lottery, which was based on the birthdays of eligible men, to explain why he never served in the military machine. He even talked about watching the lottery on TV while he was at the University of Pennsylvania to see how he fared.

Having learned to check and double-check everything Donald Trump claimed, I had done the inquiry to determine that the lottery had nothing to do with his Vietnam draft status. According to his Selective Service record, he was granted a medical deferment a year before his lottery number was assigned in December 1969 (though his precise diagnosis was not included).

Few issues mattered more than to Americans of the Vietnam era than who served and who didn't. Theoretically, every male of a sure historic period was field of study to beingness drafted. However, there were exemptions granted to higher students and those who could obtain the right kind of letter from a doctor -- and those exemptions contributed to a bang-up divide betwixt those who fought and those who stayed home. Add the anti-state of war sentiments that grew into campus protests and the expiry toll that mounted among those who shipped out, and the division became fifty-fifty more bitter.

In my interview with Trump, I broached the subject with care, merely insisted on getting to the bottom of things:

Interviewer: I desire to get this resolved, and I want you to help me figure it out and deal with information technology.

Donald Trump: Go ahead.

Interviewer: The draft thing.

Trump: OK.

Interviewer: Your (lottery) number was very high.

Trump: Right.

Interviewer: But that was 18 months afterward you lot became eligible (for deferment).

Trump: I don't know. I'chiliad going to have to go the facts because they have a whole thing written down. I will get yous facts, merely it's very, very piece of cake. Number one, the good news is I had a very, very high draft number.

Everyone should read John McCain's speech

Interviewer: Permit me stop, considering I really want ...

Trump: Because I take it written down. I'd rather give you exact dates and details. I have it written downstairs.

Interviewer: I don't practice the gotcha thing. I come to you lot.

Trump: Right, I understand that.

Interviewer: And then you did have a medical deferment.

Trump: Anxiety.

Interviewer: What was it for?

Trump: The medical deferment is feet.

Interviewer: So what was going on with your feet?

Trump: I have spurs on the back of my feet, which at the time, prevented me from walking long distances.

Interviewer: Then you couldn't march?

Trump: Information technology would accept been very difficult to march long distances. Very healthy, but in the back, in fact it is hither. You can see it on both feet. I have spurs.

As he explained his condition, the human being who would go president took off his shoes and pointed at his right heel. He asked me to have a expect for bumps, which I didn't actually see, just I gave him the benefit of the doubt because that's what a polite person does. He blamed misunderstanding well-nigh the outcome on his off-the-cuff style, which left people with the impression that he was the lucky beneficiary of the lottery picks and not someone who had sought to be excused for a pocket-sized medical problem.

In our interview, I thought matters were settled and that he had acknowledged the truth, but very little stays settled where Trump is concerned. Just weeks earlier my book was published, and so-candidate Trump revisited the topic and reverted to his one-time story, "I had a modest medical deferment for feet, for a bone spur of the foot, which was small-scale," he said. "I was fortunate, in a sense, because I was not a believer in the Vietnam War. ... But I was entered into the draft and I got a very, very high typhoon number."

Why did Trump do this? I don't think it's because his story is better or less complicated than the actual facts. I think it'due south because going with the facts would crave him to back downwards from his original tale about how he was saved by the lottery number. And, as anybody knows, the President never backs down.

For the record, I believe Dr. Braunstein's daughters, who think the bone spur diagnosis was fabricated every bit a favor for the powerful Fred Trump that paid dividends for many years. Favors, like loyalty, loom large in the Trump family's scheme of things. (Recently, he explained that he hired his 1-time lawyer Michael Cohen, who has turned confronting him in court, because he had washed him a significant favor.)

And at that place's also the glaring fact that when Trump showed me his feet, as if expecting me to come across some blazon of visible abnormality, they looked pretty standard.