‘Draft Dodger Trump’: Vietnam Veteran SUES Trump Over Memorial, ‘Fallen Soldiers Disrespected’

And I would feel the hurt, the anger, the pain, the trauma to begin to recede. That's why this means so much. And I have a duty as a Vietnam vet, as a survivor, to my buddies buried there, to honor their sacrifice and protect their memory from this vainglorious monument. I went to Vietnam in September 1967 as a 21-year-old. Army helicopter pilot, warrant officer. I flew in combat for 13 months. Big Tet, Little Tet, you'll all remember that in your history books. Then I came back and went on to my next posting, which was in Germany. I finally came back to the U.S. in May 1970. While some of you were old enough, most of you don't look like it. May 1970 was not a hospitable time for a Vietnam vet in America. Now, I didn't experience directly any abuse. Other than the sort of quiet avoidance, the polite dismissal of you as an inconvenient reminder of a war that was fading from popularity and they wanted it to fade from the mind. So like most of my buddies, I put my head down, plowed forward, trying to leave Vietnam behind. Went year-round through University, took the Foreign Service exam, came in and I had a 34-year career. But when I came back from my first posting in Moscow, I was in the State Department and I attended the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and I had some of my Vietnam flight school buddies who came down to join me. And I can't tell you how emotional it was, emotionally cathartic for some of them who were carrying that memory and that burden and they had been basically ignored and dismissed. You're inconvenient, you know, go away, get on with life. I would then walk over from the Vietnam Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial and look across Memorial Bridge at Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery. God, by then I'm in my late 30s. And I would feel the hurt, the anger, the pain, the trauma to begin to recede. That's why this means so much. And I have a duty as a Vietnam vet, as a survivor, to my buddies buried there, to honor their sacrifice and protect their memory from this vainglorious monument. This is not just, I'm sorry, another park. This is something profoundly important and incomparably different. And we have to remember that, respect it, honor it, protect it. Thank you. In my life, I've never seen a project with such profound, widespread opposition from my community. Men and women, old and young, Republican and Democratic. My Army Colonel father and mother, who is a military spouse. My Army Major grandfather and his wife, a 50-year federal servant. My sister, born in a U.S. Army hospital overseas with an intellectual disability. They're all buried there. Thank you, thank you for all of you who are fighting against this sacrilege. Thank you to the brave veterans who filed the lawsuit to stop the arch. Thank you to the relentless advocates who filed the lawsuit against this arch and who are helping to stop it. And thank you to the community who is speaking out against it. We will have many dozens, maybe hundreds of people across the river in a couple of hours who are just fighting it. If they ever put a shovel in the ground, we'll have hundreds here every single day. And thank you all who are fighting Donald Trump's hand-picked commission that's holding the hearings this afternoon to rubber-stamp the arch. I'll join them, and I'll tell the commission exactly what I think of the arch, that it is a disgrace. Trump's arch will create a permanent blight in the viewshed of Arlington National Cemetery. I'm always moved when I remember that every grave over there, admiral, general, seaman, private, they're all exactly alike. There's no one special. They're all there who served their country. But this monumental abomination of one man's ego disrespects every service member who's buried there. It'll harm dozens of irreplaceable historic sites. And it's not only a disgrace, it's a danger. The president knows the Arch is illegal, so he's throwing everything he can at the idea. He says the Arch will be a sniper and a military drone base. That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. We have the busiest airport in the country just down the river, and thousands of tourists and commuters within feet of the site. Nobody in the administration can defend this or explain it, but we know why he's trying to rush it through. Because he knows that the Congress we just elected two days ago will reassert its constitutional authority and stop him pushing forward with this disgrace. Because Trump knows the Arch is illegal and unauthorized. I've introduced a bill to block it, 80 co-sponsors, soon to have 200 co-sponsors. Our leadership is determined to stop Trump from stealing the power of the purse to build this arch. We're not going to let him get away with this, because we know this arch has nothing to do with national security. And it certainly isn't about celebrating our country or celebrating our fallen heroes. It's about building an arch, a dramatic enduring structure to the only thing he cares He cares about himself. And that's why we're fighting him. We have the law, we have the moral right, we have the good of our country on our side. We're going to win this, and thank you for all who are fighting the Arch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We reject corruption in our processes that block The worship of a single man over the 400,000 the voices of the people. that have earned the right to be remembered, We reject the vanity. that have earned the right to keep an eye over our nation as they look towards the Lincoln Memorial. And then we reject weakness. And I say that because every act that it took to give those votes, every act that is taken from the veterans and the people standing behind me here is the strength that we should be celebrating on this 250th anniversary of the country. The unity that you see, the civilians, the military coming together, the thousands of people that have taken action, the organization that I get to represent of 3.5 million people who has declared that this is something that matters. This public land is just as important as Yosemite. This public land represents the heart of the nation, just like it does in Big Bend, Texas, where we're looking at right now, and the diversity that comes with that. And I'll leave you with why this is important to me personally, because there's a lot of people here with experiences that I'm never going to be able to replicate, and I just respect. So all I can do is offer you what the 400,000 people behind me did and what I did several years ago is, one, a recommitment to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and raise our hands to do that again. Subscribe to One India and never miss an update. Download the One India app now.