President Trump avoided serving in Vietnam by claiming he had bone spurs. He trashed America’s most famous veteran for getting captured in battle.

He has only visited America’s troops serving overseas once, much less often than his predecessors.

Through it all, Trump continues to portray himself as the greatest defender of our men and women in uniform.

On Monday morning, the president was set to kick off a Veterans Day parade and to give a speech at a soldiers memorial in Madison Square Park in Manhattan.

While Trump will undoubtedly tout his decision to pour billions of dollars in additional spending into the Pentagon, the conservative commander-in-chief who wraps himself in the flag has a strangely contentious relationship with members of the armed forces.

A strong anti-Trump sentiment has been brewing among veterans nationwide even before he was a candidate because of what they see as a continuing pattern of disrespect — and using his supposed support for the military as nothing more than a photo op.

Will Goodwin, a U.S. Army veteran and the director of government relations at progressive advocacy group VoteVets, said Trump’s New York visit is par for the course for a president “obsessed with parades and strongmen.”

Goodwin pointed out presidents typically visit the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Veterans Day to lay a wreath on the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.

“It’s a very solemn day that’s supposed to be about respect,” Goodwin told the Daily News. “It’s of course right up his alley that he would go to a parade in New York instead. We’ve seen this show before where Donald Trump makes everything about Donald Trump ... it’s him not being able to just be respectful.”

A spokesman for Common Defense, a grassroots veterans group opposed to Trump, told The News that he always “makes everything about himself, even our most sacred events, and it is absolutely obscene,” adding that members are planning to protest his appearance in New York Monday.

“Yet again Trump is exploiting veterans as his political props.”

Veterans with a disdain for the president point to a laundry list of bad behavior that goes back more than 50 years. As a young man, Trump obtained five deferments to avoid being drafted into uniform at the height of the Vietnam War, including one after his college graduation in 1968 that cited a diagnosis of bone spurs.

In the early 1990s, while Trump was a high-rolling real estate baron in Manhattan, he pushed New York state legislators to put a cap on how many veterans should be allowed to hawk hot dogs and other foods outside his eponymous condo tower on Fifth Ave.

“While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” Trump wrote in the 1991 letter. “Do we allow Fifth Ave., one of the world’s finest and most luxurious shopping districts, to be turned into an outdoor flea market, clogging and seriously downgrading the area?”

Trump won restrictions on vendors on Fifth Ave. and repeated the argument in a 2004 push to renew the regulations that target disabled vets.

Since announcing his presidential run, Trump has attacked veterans in an even more aggressive manner.

Then-candidate Trump drew national outrage when he mocked late Arizona Sen. John McCain in late 2015, claiming the Vietnam veteran who spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam wasn’t really a “war hero” because he was captured.

“I like people who weren’t captured," said Trump, who has never apologized for the remark.

In a settlement announced last week, Trump acknowledged that a 2016 Trump Foundation event he claimed was a fundraiser for veterans charities that raised $2.8 million was actually a fundraiser for his presidential campaign, which was improperly allowed to disburse the cash in violation of New York state laws governing non-profits.

His foundation has since agreed to disband itself and Trump paid $2 million to charities to settle the case.

Trump also repeatedly mocked Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Gold Star parents of a Muslim Army captain who died in a 2004 car bombing in Iraq, after they denounced him as an Islamophobe at the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

Since winning the White House, Trump has had other embarrassing incidents involving the military and veterans.

Days later, he failed to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, claiming he was “too busy.” His schedule had no events and he found time to tweet eight times.

Unlike Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him, Trump has also been oddly reluctant to visit troops serving overseas, usually considered a relatively easy way to show solidarity with the men and women in uniform — and their families and supporters back home.

“I don’t think it’s overly necessary," Trump said in October 2018. "I’ve been very busy with everything that’s taking place here.”

Last week as the impeachment noose tightened, Trump attacked the integrity of a decorated U.S. Army officer who gave damning testimony during the House inquiry, calling the Iraq War vet a “Never Trumper.”

“Yet again Trump is exploiting veterans as his political props," said the Common Defense spokesman. "Regular working-class veterans like us aren’t going to let him get away with it. No matter where this corrupt president goes, he’s going to see Veterans For Impeachment banners, because veterans like us put honor and integrity above Trump’s selfish political ambitions.”

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