U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an event at The Villages Charter School at The Villages, Florida, U.S., May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump was reportedly sent to military school when he was just 13 because his parents felt like he had a "wise guy" attitude, was a bully to other students and had impulse control issues.
“He talks about it as almost this, you know, rite of passage,” Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation told PBS Frontline in 2020. “He said to me that when he arrived at the military academy, for the first time in his life, someone slapped him in the face when he got out of line.”
One of Trump's classmates spoke to the Daily Beast about his impressions of the would-be president when he was young. Art Davie, Trump's bunkmate, recalled Trump as playing the victim from a young age.
“He was very upset and frustrated that the school did not recognize that he should have been promoted faster,” Davie recalled in the interview.
Trump would also constantly claim that he was the best at everything.
“He was an egomaniac when he was 16,” Davie said. “He was a great flag-waver for himself. He wanted everyone to recognize he was the GOAT in everything he did out there.”
While Trump was a decent baseball player, soccer was not his game.
“I remember Trump and I getting in an argument about the fact that he’s the GOAT when it came to soccer,” Davie recalled. “I said, ‘No, in baseball, you could say you’re the GOAT.’”
But that wasn't acceptable for Trump. “He said, ‘I should have been a captain this year. I’m not a supply sergeant,’” Davie remembered.
Trump then grew fascinated with the Kennedys, Davie explained.
“Kennedy had become a media star, and Trump once said something to the effect of, ‘He doesn’t even have to boast,’ meaning that the media picked up on the fact that he [had] a star quality," Davie recalled.
Their quarters became an obsession of Trump's because if they passed periodic inspections, they'd get a silver star on their right sleeve.
Trump took it "seriously," said Davie.
Their bunk was also where the M1 rifles — minus their firing pins — were stored.
“[The lieutenant colonel] was teasing us about the fact that we had the guns, and I said, ‘Yeah, but only pop guns,’” Davie remembered. “Trump thought that was irreverent. He was furious with me. He said, ‘You were talking to them like they were on the streets in Brooklyn.”
He said it became a serious argument between the two and has always wondered if that's why they were separated when school resumed after the holiday break.
“What I do know is that they separated us, and I went down to Section 9, which was behind the main barracks, and everybody down there was kind of an oddball. We all got single-bedroom rooms," Davie told the Beast.
Davie finished school in Manhattan. But there was one detail that Davie recalled after his time at the academy: Trump's five draft deferments. He noted that Trump earned a nickname among the academy alumni: “Cadet Bonespurs.”
Trump's father managed to get him the deferments to keep him out of the Vietnam War. The mockery has followed him throughout his presidency, with even members of the U.S. Senate using the term to ridicule Trump. Eight years ago, Stephen Colbert opened his show with a new fake G.I. Joe doll called "Cadet Bone Spurs."
Davie ultimately joined the Marine Corps and was shipped off to Vietnam for just under a year.
“I think that Trump was always looking for something to glorify what he’s doing,” Davie said. “Now they’re talking about maybe making it some sort of a permanent Lincoln Memorial type of structure, which I think is crazy.”
A 2018 interview with the daughters of the podiatrist who gave Trump the diagnosis revealed that their father would recall the "favor" he did for Fred Trump to keep his son out of Vietnam.
"Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment," the New York Times reported.
“But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said.
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (R-Neb.) has called on Trump to reveal the X-rays that would prove he had bone spurs.