When professionals sell out, we get a president like Trump
When he was 16, Friedrich Trump, President Trump’s grandfather, fled mandatory military service in the German Imperial Army. Having decided he was too weak to serve, Trump slunk off to North America around 1885. Now it appears that Trump’s father, Fred, took pains to pass Friedrich’s moral cowardice on to Donald.
In 1968, according to the New York Times, Fred may have struck a draft-dodging deal for Donald with one of his tenants, Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist. Braunstein’s daughters remember their father saying he diagnosed Trump with bone spurs as a “favor” to his landlord. The diagnosis won Trump a medical exemption from the draft during the Vietnam War.
Corrupting doctors is something of a leitmotif ofTrump’s history. Remember Dr. Harold “Sweetheart, this is Watergate” Bornstein? Dr. Ronny “Candy Man” Jackson? They’re not unlike the president’s iffy lawyers: Marc “Watch Your Back” Kasowitz, Michael “I’m Going To Come At You” Cohen, and Rudolph “Truth Isn’t Truth” Giuliani.
Doctors and lawyers, along with clergy, architects and engineers, are members of what used to be quaintly called “the professions.” Unlike a real estate promoter who runs casinos into the ground, heads up a fake university and promiscuously sells his ignoble name, professionals are expected to stand for something higher than profit. Many swear oaths in their fields. And they can lose their standing if they violate their profession’s ethical tenets.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-trump-professionals-20181229-story.html
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