Well, he didn’t admit he lied, but he certainly said he “misrepresented” himself....so I think we can consider it a lie. And Special Forces is Special Forces. And not is not.
It's a more difficult history than that statement:
The Rangers were deactivated following the Vietnam War in 1972. "The third period ended when the Ranger companies were inactivated as their parent units were withdrawn from the war between November 1969 (Company O, 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division), and 15 August 1972 (Company H, 1st Air Cavalry Division)."
This happened while McDonald was at West Point.
As you can see, these Rangers were considered organic to their Divisions, one of which was the 82nd Airborne.
Robert McDonald served on active duty from 1975 to 1980. During this time, the term Special Forces was used interchangeably with the term 'special operations forces' by those who were discussing the entire community.
McDonald complete Ranger school probably between 1976 and 1979.
The modern Ranger Regiment was activated in 1974 and FIRST saw combat in Grenada in 1980.
The 75th Ranger Regiment did not stand up until 1986.
The US Army Special Operations Command did not exist until 1990.
In my mind, McDonald, a West Point graduate who went contrary to his entire culture in going to West Point in about 1971, while Vietnam was still ongoing AND despite the anti-war sentiment of his high school years, 1967-1971, was not an anti-Vietnam protestor, but was instead a patriotic minded young man.
As a leader, he had no doubt associated the Rangers with their history which AT THAT TIME was as an organic unit to a division or as Long Range Patrols.
When they stood up again, there was no 'special operations command' for them to fall under. And while the SF was clearly the green beret, Special Forces, the language at the time of special operations forces was actually shorted to special forces in describing any special operator.
So, I still give McDonald a pass on this one. I'm convinced that if he'd said the same words in 1979 that no one would have blinked.
It is only in our day that we can complain about being 'specific' on this issue. Those specifics would not have been the way these distinctions were thought about when he was a patriotic young man actually going through these things.