Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health.
He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.
But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels.
.. In December, his longtime personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, announced that Mr. Trump had “no significant medical problems” over four decades and that, if elected, he “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Dr. Bornstein made no mention of the bone spurs but did note the appendectomy from Mr. Trump’s childhood.
.. But Mr. Trump had actually graduated from Wharton 18 months before the lottery — the first in the United States in 27 years — was held.
.. Mr. Trump said he had strongly opposed United States involvement in Vietnam.
“I thought it was ridiculous,” he said. “I thought it was another deal where politicians got us into a war where we shouldn’t have been in. And I felt that very strongly from Day 1.”
.. “I was never a fan of the Vietnam War,” he said. “But I was never at the protest level, either, because I had other things to do.”
.. “For all practical purposes, once you got the 1-Y, you were free and clear of vulnerability for the draft, even in the case of the lottery,” Mr. Flahavan said.
.. “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Stephanopoulos. “I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”
Accusing Cruz of stealing votes helps Trump preserve some dignity in defeat. He has run on a platform of promising to win so much that America actually gets sick of winning. Rather than admit that he lost fair and square in Iowa on Monday, Trump can now claim that the system was rigged. That will allow him to deflect criticism that he is in fact a loser. The attack is also guaranteed to tap into the vein of voter resentment that has so far fueled Trump’s rise. It feeds a narrative that Trump is an outsider fighting against political corruption, a story that Trump loyalists love to tell.
.. There’s a reason conspiracy theories resonate with voters. “It’s a way to explain a complicated event in a way that helps people maintain their worldview and protect their own self-esteem in some regard,”
.. Political psychology also helps explain why Trump’s voter-fraud accusations could be particularly powerful for people who already support him. “For people who threw their weight behind Trump in Iowa only to see him lose, how do you explain that?”’
.. The easier thing for people to do, whether you call it a rationalization, a scapegoat, or a conspiracy, is to find a way to explain why their candidate lost in a way that helps them maintain the belief that they’re right.