ABC News
Pete Buttigieg in an interview with ABC News.
- Mayor Pete Buttigieg - 2020 presidential candidate - said that there is "no question" that President Trump faked a disability to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
- Buttigieg, who is a veteran of Afghanistan, has been critical of Trump's decisions related to the military.
- He also criticized Trump for considering pardons for troops accused and convicted of war crimes.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
In an interview with ABC News, which aired on Sunday, 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said that there is "no question" that President Trump faked a disability to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
"There is no question, I think, to any reasonable observer that the president found a way to falsify a disabled status, taking advantage of his privileged status in order to avoid serving," he said.
He continued: "You have somebody who thinks it's all right to let somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled in order to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country."
Buttigieg first surfaced the rebuke earlier in the week when talking with The Washington Post.
Trump was exempted from Vietnam after receiving a letter from a doctor that said he had a bone spur ailment in his foot, which made him unfit for service.
Buttigieg, who is currently mayor of South Bend in Indiana previously served in the US Navy Reserve and is an Afghanistan veteran.
In the same interview, Buttigieg criticized Trump for considering pardons for troops accused and convicted of war crimes.
Read more: Retired US generals are lining up to tell Trump why pardoning troops accused or convicted of war crimes is a really bad idea
"The idea that being sent to war turns you into a murderer is exactly the kind of thing that those of us who have served have been trying to beat back for more than a generation," Buttigieg said.
Troops are protected "morally and physically" by knowing that "if anybody in uniform does commit a crime, they will be held accountable."
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