Melania Trump’s Purple Heart Day tribute gets trolled: ‘How’s Captain Bone Spur?’

Erin Donnelly
·Yahoo Life Senior Editor
Updated

It’s a busy day for Melania Trump, who joined the president on Wednesday to visit Dayton and El Paso following mass shootings. The first lady also took time to pay tribute to recipients of the Purple Heart in honor of Purple Heart Day on Aug. 7.

The oldest military decoration in the U.S., the Purple Heart is given to members of the armed forces — or, posthumously, their next of kin — who have been wounded or killed in combat. The first lady’s tribute on social media reminded some commenters of President Trump’s own military-related injury: the bone spurs that got him a medical deferment during the Vietnam War.

U.S. President Donald Trump and and first lady Melania Trump arrive for the "Salute to America" event at the Lincoln Memorial during Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Melania Trump's post honoring members of the military for Purple Heart Day promoted some ribbing about the president's deferments. (Photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

The future president, who was in his early 20s during the late 1960s, had five military deferments during the war: four for education and one medical exemption on account of bone spurs in his heels. Last December, the daughters of the late doctor who signed off on the bone spur diagnosis claimed that it was done as a “favor” to his landlord, Trump’s father, Fred Trump.

Trump critics welcomed the opportunity to mock POTUS’s lack of a service record.

Some also pointed out that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is a Purple Heart recipient, while one person brought up a 1998 Trump quote in which he and Howard Stern compared avoiding sexually transmitted diseases to Vietnam.

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