Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Lincoln and thinking, you know what this needs? My first and last name, preferably in enormous letters before Lincoln's.

Go to the Vietnam Memorial.

Now, you know what? It should be the Donald J.

Trump Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

I could not get it out for quite a while.

Uh, I walked over to the Vietnam Memorial, and I sat there, um, before I walked home.

Uh, I, I don't think I've ever had a feeling of uselessness or powerlessness in the face of this extraordinary event.

And, uh, I'll, I'll never forget it, which is why I think it's really important that we do fundamentally come to terms with some of the lessons that were learned and the ones that, uh, may, may actually have been unlearned during the course of the last twenty-five years.

And it was a, a sort of a blinking red light.

The Washington Post, uh, in its great wisdom, buried this story [chuckles] in the back of, uh, you know, the A section somewhere, uh, back into print newspapers.

But I heard from one reader, someone I never had the privilege to meet in person, and the one reader whom I received an email from was David Halberstam, uh, the famous chronicler of the Vietnam War.

And David Halberstam sent me a very brief note, and he said, "This is the most important story, uh, you know, that anyone should read today, and it is the truth, and it is what's going to happen." Uh, and I think it was, it was written in, in, in the history of, of our overreach and in all overreach, and Donald Trump is learning it again today.

And we were there actually for the opening of a memorial.

And for all of his love of being able to celebrate, all of his love of World War II, all of his love of being of the country, the one place that my dad couldn't go was the Vietnam Memorial.

And that's because he had people he loved and people he had served with.

in that space.

But so as I'm speaking about some of these things with 9-11, I understand those who just move forward.

And I understand also those where it is beyond pain and comprehension to go back into certain spaces.

And so when I think of the 9-11 memorial, I know that it's a version of It's a civilian version of the Vietnam Memorial in the sense of the names.

Even though it's a space of remembrance and love for many, it's also a zone of terrorism and loss and unimaginable things.

They were civilian women of the American Red Cross, and they provided entertainment and a connection to home.

And we're really beloved, it sounds like, as a team of morale boosters, right? And there's much more information if you want to learn more at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation website, which has tons of great stuff.

Some of the women

I listened

But I had no business as a young man being able to decide the fate of whether a person, a young man, was going to go to Vietnam or not in Vietnam.

And I really realized that when I was walking through the Vietnam Memorial late one afternoon and I saw all those names on those walls and I was walking with a couple of members of parliament from England that were visiting me and I realized that those names of young men who had gotten killed in Vietnam was a very sad thing indeed and what a great price that those people had paid And, you know, I don't want to be critical of anybody that didn't want to go to Vietnam and wanted to get in the National Guard.

That's a matter between them and their individual conscience.

But it was not right for me to have that much power, and I regret that I did that.