Trump’s Brutal Military School Nickname Revealed

Long before Donald Trump became president, long before the rallies, the gold-plated brand and the never-ending obsession with putting his name on everything, he was a teenage cadet at the New York Military Academy who already believed he deserved to be treated like a star.

At least, that is how his former roommate remembers him.

Art Davie, the future founder of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, shared a room with Trump in 1962, when the two were cadets at the private military school north of New York City. Trump was 16, already in his third year at the academy, and serving as supply sergeant. Davie was 15, a new private from Brooklyn.

According to Davie, Trump showed up first and claimed the top bunk. Davie took the bottom.

More than 60 years later, the memory is suddenly back in the spotlight as Trump prepares to mark his 80th birthday with a UFC championship event on the White House South Lawn — inside the very kind of eight-sided cage Davie helped create.

But back when the two first met, Davie said Trump was not yet a towering political figure. He was a frustrated teenager from Queens who believed the academy had failed to recognize his greatness.

“He was very upset and frustrated that the school did not recognize that he should have been promoted faster,” Davie told the Daily Beast.

Davie said Trump already had a habit that would become familiar to Americans decades later: he nursed grievances, bragged about his own abilities and insisted he was the best at almost everything.

“He was an egomaniac when he was 16,” Davie recalled. “He was a great flag waver for himself. He wanted everyone to recognize he was the GOAT in everything he did out there.”

Davie said Trump was genuinely talented at baseball. But when Trump allegedly claimed he was also the greatest at soccer, Davie pushed back, telling him that other cadets from South America were clearly better.

Trump, according to Davie, was not happy about the challenge.

“I said, ‘No, in baseball, you could say you’re the GOAT,’” Davie recalled.

Trump then allegedly returned to what Davie says was one of his biggest frustrations at the academy.

“He said, ‘I should have been a captain this year. I’m not a supply sergeant,’” Davie said.

Davie also said Trump was captivated by President John F. Kennedy, not just as a politician but as a media figure. Trump, he claimed, admired Kennedy’s ability to command attention without seeming desperate for it.

“He was enormously impressed with John Kennedy,” Davie said, adding that Trump once noted Kennedy “doesn’t even have to boast.”

That fascination now has an ironic twist. Trump has since fought to attach his own name to the Kennedy Center, while critics have accused him of repeatedly trying to turn public institutions into monuments to himself.

Davie said one of his sharpest memories of Trump came during a military inspection at the academy. Their room also stored M1 rifles used for drills, though the weapons had their firing pins removed.

When U.S. Army officers visited for an inspection, Davie joked that the guns were “only pop guns.” Trump, he said, was furious.

According to Davie, Trump scolded him for speaking too casually to the officers.

“You were talking to them like they were on the streets in Brooklyn,” Davie remembered Trump saying.

The two were separated as roommates after the Christmas holiday, though Davie said he never learned exactly why.

Trump remained at the academy and eventually became a captain before graduating in 1964. Davie left after the year and later enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in Vietnam for 11 months and nine days.

That difference in paths reportedly helped inspire a cutting nickname among some academy alumni after Trump later received multiple draft deferments, including a medical deferment tied to bone spurs.

Davie said some former cadets called him “Cadet Bonespurs.”

The nickname hits at one of the most politically sensitive chapters of Trump’s biography. While Davie went to Vietnam and came home an actual sergeant, Trump avoided military service during the war.

Davie eventually went on to build a very different legacy. After returning from Vietnam, he became involved in Brooklyn Democratic politics, learned how to write government funding proposals and later moved west, where he entered the car business and built a reputation as a showman.

His appetite for spectacle eventually helped lead to the creation of the UFC. Davie helped design a brutal new kind of combat event that was not scripted like professional wrestling and did not rely on the familiar ropes of boxing.

The octagon became part of the drama. The cage was designed to keep fighters inside and prevent them from slipping out to buy time.

“There’s no escape from the octagon, right?” Davie said.

Decades later, Trump has become one of UFC’s most famous political fans, forging a close relationship with UFC chief Dana White and frequently appearing at events.

Now, Trump is reportedly bringing that spectacle to the White House itself. UFC has been preparing a massive structure known as “The Claw” for the South Lawn event, a dramatic setup that reportedly rises higher than the White House.

Trump has even suggested the structure could remain permanently, comparing the idea to the Eiffel Tower staying up after the World’s Fair.

Davie, who says he voted for Trump three times despite his Democratic political roots, still called the idea extreme.

“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.”

For Davie, the story has come full circle in a way almost too strange to believe.

The teenage bunkmate who once complained he should have been captain is now president. The former private who slept beneath him went on to create the cage Trump now wants at the White House. And the nickname whispered by old cadets still cuts through the pageantry.

Cadet Bonespurs.