GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump likens his time at a military academy to serving in the armed forces — and takes a few verbal hits from two ex-wives — in an upcoming biography, the
New York Times reports.
Trump explains to former Newsday reporter Michael D'Antonio, whose book,
"Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success," is out Sept. 22, that he drew a very high draft lottery number after multiple deferments for Vietnam.
But he says his experience at New York Military Academy gave him "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military," the Times reports.
"My number was so incredible and it was a very high draft number," he says. "Anyway so I never had to do that, but I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people."
Trump attended the academy starting in eighth grade after years at a prep school in Queens that included giving a teacher a black eye "because I didn't think he knew anything about music," Trump tells the biographer, the Times reports.
While at the Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. campus, Trump wore a uniform, participated in marching drills, and was expected to conform to a hierarchy imposed by instructors, "some of whom had served in the military."
St. Martin's Press provided an advance copy of the book to the Times, and D'Antonio provided excerpts from his interviews, according to the newspaper.
According to the Times, Trump's mentor at the academy, Theodore Dobias, said Trump "just wanted to be first, in everything, and he wanted people to know he was first."
Trump came under intense fire early in his campaign this summer for
criticizing Arizona Sen. John McCain's capture as a POW during the Vietnam War.
The Times reports the biography also contains sometimes unflattering remarks from Trump's associates — and ex-wives.
"The little boy that still wants attention," wife No. 2 Marla Maples says, according to the Times.
"He wants to be noticed," first-wife Ivana Trump relates, claiming he once walked off a trail when she skied past him in Aspen, Colo.
"He could not take it, that I could do something better than he did," she says, the Times reports.
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