JD Vance Confronted on Donald Trump Avoiding Service in Vietnam War

Ohio Senator JD Vance was confronted by CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday morning about former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, avoiding military service in the Vietnam War.

In a pre-recorded interview released on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday morning, Bash asked Vance, Trump's running mate, "Donald Trump didn't serve in the military. He received a medical draft deferment for bone spurs to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, reportedly as a favor to his father. Do you find that shameful too?"

Trump has faced criticism for his medical deferment from the Vietnam War draft, which he attributed to bone spurs in his heels. In 2018, the daughters of the podiatrist who diagnosed the then-22-year-old Trump said that the diagnosis was made as a favor to his father, Fred Trump, according to a New York Times report.

Vance replied to Bash: "I think Donald Trump didn't serve in the military, but he didn't lie about it Dana. I've known Donald Trump for a long time. He really honors our veterans, he honors me for my service," taking an apparent jab at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The Ohio senator continued: "Donald Trump didn't lie about serving in the military. He didn't say that he went to Vietnam when he didn't. This is the problem. I don't criticize anybody. Whether they served in our country or not. I think it's honorable to serve, but obviously a lot of people have reasons for not serving. I criticized somebody for embellishing their record, for lying saying 'I went to war.'"

When reached for comment by Newsweek on Sunday, the Harris-Walz campaign referred to comments U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made on CNN's State of the Union on this morning: "There's something much bigger at play here. I watched that interview and watched JD Vance present himself as suddenly very particular about precision in speech and very concerned about honesty. He's running with Donald Trump—somebody who has set records for lying in public life."

"He just gave a press conference where fact-checkers estimate that he told 162 distortions or lies," Buttigieg, who served as a Navy intelligence officer in Afghanistan, said, referring to Trump's news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thursday.

Newsweek reached out to spokespeople for the Trump-Vance campaign via email on Sunday morning.

Ohio Senator JD Vance is seen during a campaign rally on August 6 in Philadelphia. Vance was confronted by CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday morning about former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, avoiding... Ohio Senator JD Vance is seen during a campaign rally on August 6 in Philadelphia. Vance was confronted by CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday morning about former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, avoiding military service in the Vietnam War. More Drew Hallowell/Getty Images

Walz made a comment about being in combat in a resurfaced clip from a political event in 2018, although the governor, who previously served 24 years in the Army National Guard, never went to war.

Speaking about gun control, Walz, who was a U.S. representative at the time, said in the 2018 clip, "We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at."

Walz has acknowledged that he never saw combat in the National Guard. Speaking to MPR News in 2018, he said: "I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that. I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI Bill to leadership opportunities to everything else."

The Harris-Walz campaign, meanwhile, said the Minnesota governor "misspoke" at the time.

Vance himself served in the Marine Corps for four years, and also never saw combat. He worked as a combat correspondent in Iraq between August 2005 and February 2006. The senator has fiercely criticized Walz for his 2018 comments, claiming that he was lying about his military record.

Earlier in his interview with Bash, Vance said, "It's not right to mistake or to embellish what you've done, and I think that's what he did."

Update 8/11/24, 10:08 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.

Update 8/11/24, 10:14 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.

Update 8/11/24, 11:52 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from the Harris-Walz campaign.