https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/12/27/trump-vietnam-war-bone-spur-diagnosis/2420475002/WASHINGTON – Two daughters of a New York podiatrist say that 50 years ago their father diagnosed President Donald Trump with bone spurs in his heels as a favor to the doctor's landlord, Fred Trump, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Trump received five deferments from the draft for military service during the Vietnam War. He received four education deferments while he was a college student and a fifth deferment in 1968 for a medical exemption after he graduated.
Larry Braunstein, who died in 2007, rented a ground floor office in a building owned by Trump in Jamaica, Queens. His daughters, Elysa Braunstein, 56, and Sharon Kessel, 53, told the Times that their father's role in Trump's diagnosis had become "family lore."
"It was something we would always discuss," Elysa Braunstein told the Times. She and her sister are both Democrats who oppose Trump, according to the newspaper.
Elysa Braunstein said their father made the diagnosis to gain access to the landlord and that she didn't know if her father even examined the junior Trump.
"I know it was a favor," Elysa Braunstein said.
"What he got was access to Fred Trump," she told the Times. "If there was anything wrong in the building, my dad would call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got."
The women did not offer any documentation to back up their claims. They said their father's story also involved a second podiatrist, Manny Weinstein, who died in 1995. Weinstein's landlord was also Fred Trump.
The White House did not make Trump available for a follow-up interview to the New York Times and did not respond to written questions about his service record.
In October, the Times reported on how much Fred Trump helped his son through the years, giving him what today would be more than $410 million.
