Did Trump Fib About Draft In Philly?

Donald Trump's claims to Fox 5 in New York that he got a high draft-lottery number while living in Philadelphia in the 1960s are being called into question by the Web site The Smoking Gun.

Trump attended the Wharton Business School at Penn in the 1960s and he told Fox 5 on Tuesday he was at Wharton when he saw that he got a "very high" draft lottery number in 1969.

But records apparently show Trump had already left Wharton 18 months before that draft lottery, and Trump received five draft deferments during the 1960s.

“I actually got lucky, because I had a very high draft number. I will never forget, it was an amazing period of time in my life," Trump told Fox 5's Good Day New York show.

"I was sitting at college watching…I was going to the Wharton School of Finance…and I was watching as they did the draft numbers," Trump added.

"I got a very, very high number… It was during the Vietnam War and they had a lottery. If you were drafted number one you were definitely drafted, and I had a very, very high number, and they never got up to that number, so in a certain way, I got very lucky."

Trump then added that he did go to a military school.

However, several bloggers discovered on the Selective Service System’s web site that first draft lottery drawing was December 1, 1969 — more than a year after Trump had graduated from Wharton.

The Smoking Gun made an information request and received official records of Trump's five draft deferments during the 1960s.

The record is an excerpt that shows Trump received student deferments in 1964, 1965 and 1968, and that Trump received a 1-Y medical deferment on Oct. 15, 1968, after he left Penn and went to work for his father.

The 1-Y classification came a month after Trump underwent an “Armed Forces Physical Examination ,” according to Selective Service records, which note the results of the exam as “DISQ.”

On November 26, 1969 President Nixon signed an amendment to the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 that led to the "draft lottery" that was held on December 1, 1969.

Trump: Being Aggressive Is Working: MyFoxNY.com

By The Numbers is a regular MyFoxPhilly feature that looks at key Philadelphia issues behind publicly available numbers and research.
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