Who decided and documented Trump's 1968 draft deferment and which records are publicly available?

1. How the decision process worked and who made the call

Draft classifications during the Vietnam era were administered by local draft boards and the Selective Service system, which recorded reclassifications after physical exams and made final determinations about a registrant’s eligibility; Trump’s record shows entries reflecting student (2‑S) deferments while in college and then a medical reclassification following an Armed Forces physical in September 1968 ^{[2] [6]}. The practical decision that prevented immediate induction was the Selective Service’s medical ruling—documented as a disqualification after the September 1968 exam and entered as a 1‑Y classification in October 1968—meaning the Selective Service physician/board apparatus, not an individual politician, made the administrative classification ^{[2] [3]}.

2. What the public record actually documents

The clearest public records are Selective Service forms and a classification ledger that have been made available by the National Archives and republished by news organizations; these show Trump’s four student deferments between 1964 and January 1968, an entry marking him 1‑A in July 1968, the September 1968 physical with result “DISQ” and the 1‑Y reclassification in October 1968, with a later administrative conversion to 4‑F in 1972 after the 1‑Y category was abolished ^{[1] [2] [6] [3]}. The Smoking Gun originally obtained and published Selective Service summaries via FOIA and those documents underpin most subsequent reporting ^{[4] [7]}.

3. Where reporting and claims diverge — the bone‑spurs story vs. administrative records

The Trump campaign and some statements have attributed his medical deferment to bone spurs in his heels and have emphasized a high 1969 lottery number as decisive, but the contemporaneous Selective Service entries indicate a medical disqualification occurred in the autumn of 1968—months after graduation—and that the lottery in December 1969 cannot explain how he was kept out of the draft during the intervening 18 months ^{[8] [3] [2]}. Reporters at The New York Times, Politico and the Los Angeles Times used the archived Selective Service records to show the timing mismatch between public claims and the administrative record ^{[8] [3] [9]}.

4. Gaps in the public record and why questions persist

While classification forms and ledger entries are available, detailed medical documentation that would show the exact clinical basis for the 1968 disqualification is largely absent from public archives—many Vietnam‑era draft medical records were not preserved or released—so although the Selective Service recorded a disqualification, the precise clinical paperwork proving bone spurs (or other specifics) is not publicly available and therefore cannot be independently confirmed from primary medical files ^{[5] [2]}. This archival gap explains why journalists and fact‑checkers describe the medical deferment as “unclear” or “controversial” even while citing the Selective Service classification entries ^{[5] [10]}.

5. Bottom line: who decided, what’s documented, and what remains unknown

Administratively, the Selective Service system—via local draft board notations and the results of an Armed Forces physical—decided and recorded Trump’s October 1968 medical classification and later status changes; those Selective Service forms and classification ledgers are publicly available through the National Archives and have been published by outlets like The Smoking Gun, The New York Times and the Washington Post ^{[1] [4] [11] [8]}. What the public archives do not contain are detailed contemporaneous medical records that would provide a definitive clinical explanation beyond the Selective Service’s “DISQ” notation, so precise medical facts underlying the deferment remain unverified in the public record ^{[5] [2]}.