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Good morning! If you're just waking up in the US, here's what President Trump said overnight about why he wouldn't have wanted to serve in Vietnam: "Well, I was never a fan of that war. I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war, I thought it was very far away..."
"Nobody ever, you know, you’re talking about Vietnam and at the time, nobody ever heard of the country... What are we doing? So many people are dying. What is happening over there? So I was never a fan. This wasn’t like, I’m fighting against Nazi Germany."
.@piersmorgan asks him, would you have liked to have served in the military, generally? Trump: "I would not have minded at all. I would have been honored. But I think I make up for it right now." And talks about military spending budget.
Trump was also asked to explain why he banned transgender people from serving in the military. Part of response: "In the military, you’re not allowed to take any drugs. You take an aspirin."
Put aside the fact that the military's reasoning for banning trans people has centered around troop cohesion and morale (although many current and former military leaders have said that's bogus)
Military policy is zero tolerance against drug *abuse* but not drug *use* in general. That's why, as @piersmorgan pointed out, the military spends so much money prescribing service members (including active duty) Viagra.
Here's a study from 2017 that looked at many different prescription drugs that military members use -- and are at risk of abusing. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
In other words, it is erroneous to say that trans people would be breaking military rules because some of them *take medicine* which is what Trump is effectively saying -- plus not all trans people take medicine or have any sort of surgery.
Here's the link to the full interview:
It's worth noting that some military leaders did express concerns about troop cohesion, and some members of Congress were concerned that there hadn't been enough research into lifting the transgender ban during the Obama administration. But Trump didn't mention any of that.
