‘Really feel like a courageous soldier’: Trump calls avoiding STDs his ‘private Vietnam’ in previous video

Former US President Donald Trump as soon as in contrast his courting life to the harrowing experiences of troopers within the Vietnam Warfare in an just lately resurfaced interview from 1997. Trump described his efforts to keep away from contracting sexually transmitted illnesses (STDs) as his very personal “private Vietnam,” declaring himself a “courageous soldier” within the harmful battlefield of courting.
In an interview from 1997 on “The Howard Stern Present“, Trump mentioned, “It is superb, I am unable to even consider it.I have been so fortunate by way of that entire world, it’s a harmful world on the market. It is like Vietnam, kind of. It’s my private Vietnam. I really feel like an ideal and really courageous soldier.”

Trump additionally joked that his courting exploits warranted the Congressional Medal of Honor, a extremely revered army award given for acts of bravery in fight. This comparability drew important backlash for trivializing the experiences of Vietnam Warfare veterans.
The 1997 interview was not an remoted incident. In a 1993 look on the identical present, Trump boasted about his promiscuous life-style throughout the AIDS epidemic of the Eighties. He advised that males who didn’t serve in Vietnam mustn’t really feel responsible, claiming that “courting throughout that point was equally as harmful.”
Trump himself didn’t serve within the Vietnam Warfare, having acquired 5 draft deferments—4 whereas in school and one for bone spurs in his ft. His marketing campaign later mentioned that the bone spur situation was minor and non permanent.
In December 2015 nevertheless, whereas campaigning for the presidency, Trump expressed guilt over not serving and talked about that serving to to construct a Vietnam Warfare memorial in New York was his means of creating amends.