John McCain takes aim at Donald Trump over Vietnam medical deferment

John McCain took another shot at Donald Trump on Sunday night, with an angry reference to Americans who avoided the draft for the Vietnam war.

Speaking to C-Span 3, American History TV, the Arizona senator did not mention the president by name. But he said: “One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur.

“That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

Trump received five deferments from service in Vietnam: four for academic reasons and one for bone spurs – calcium buildups – in his heels. In 2015, he said at a news conference he couldn’t remember which heel the bone spurs had affected. His campaign said it was both.

In July 2016, Trump told the New York Times: “I had a doctor that gave me a letter – a very strong letter on the heels.” The problem had been “temporary” and “minor”, he said, adding: “Over a period of time, it healed up.”

He also said: “You know, it was difficult from the long-term walking standpoint.”

Vietnam has been an issue between Trump and McCain since July 2015 when Trump, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, questioned whether McCain was a war hero.

McCain, then a naval aviator, was badly injured in a crash in 1967, captured by the North Vietnamese, held for five years and tortured. He refused opportunities to be released for propaganda purposes.

“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said, at a campaign event in Iowa.

In July this year, McCain announced that he has brain cancer. On his return to the US Capitol, he dramatically sank a Republican healthcare bill backed by the White House. He also refused to support the bill’s successor.

Recently McCain has led calls for greater transparency from the administration over the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger.

Last week, accepting the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia, the senator gave other remarks that were interpreted as an attack on Trump.

McCain criticised “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems”. He also said: “We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.”

In response, Trump told a radio host: “People have to be careful because I fight back. I’m being very nice, very nice, but at some point I will fight back and it won’t be pretty.”

McCain replied: “It’s fine with me. I’ve faced some fairly significant adversaries in the past.”