Newly surfaced video shows Native American activist Nathan Phillips explicitly claimed he was a “Vietnam Vet” — not merely a “Vietnam times veteran” or a “Vietnam veteran times” as he’s stated in the past.
In a video Phillips shared to his Facebook page on January 3, 2018, he stated plainly, “I’m a Vietnam Vet.”
“I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76,” he said. “I got discharged May 5, 1976. I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes shows peacetime or, what my box says is that I was in theater. I don’t talk much about my Vietnam times.”
Phil Kerpen shared the video late Wednesday night on Twitter:
🚨Nathan Phillips, January 3, 2018🚨
"I'm a Vietnam Vet. I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5, 1976. I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes shows peacetime or, what my box says is that I was **in theater**. I don't talk much about my Vietnam times." pic.twitter.com/nIoYxGoPqM
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 24, 2019
More Phillips:
"I got a relation. A sister, or a niece, she gave me that Vietnam colors flag. You know the yellow, red, black one with some tobacco on there. She wanted me to carry it around because you know her dad, a Vietnam vet too like that." pic.twitter.com/aZGuVAiHwx— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 24, 2019
As Kerpen notes, Phillips also shared a picture with a “Vietnam War Veteran” medallion on Veterans Day 2018:
Here's the post with the "Vietnam War Veteran" medallion in context, posted to his page on Veterans Day 2018. pic.twitter.com/JJ0HAwYRjh
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 24, 2019
Also fact check "I don't talk much about my Vietnam times" is extremely false.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 24, 2019
The timing for this to come out is absolutely hilarious considering the Washington Post several hours before ran an article with the assertion that “there’s no evidence that [Phillips has] ever claimed to have served in Vietnam.”
Lamothe acknowledged the video on Twitter but The Post has yet to update their article as of 1:21 AM EST.
This video shows Nathan Phillips making statements that simply are not true. https://t.co/Cmo44AyDSq
— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) January 24, 2019
As I reported yesterday, the first reporter to break the story of Phillips and the Covington Catholic students interaction, Indian Country Today’s Vincent Schilling, stealth-edited his viral article on the incident to erase claims about Phillips’ alleged service in Vietnam:
https://twitter.com/infolibnews/status/1087811186396155905
He also edited an old article from 2008 which said Phillips “described coming back to the U.S. as a veteran from Vietnam” to say he “described coming back to the U.S. as a veteran of the Vietnam era.”
Yes absolutely I did edit it to reflect the fact that when I wrote this article ten years ago, I misunderstood the situation in which he was spit on.
I changed it after receiving an email alerting me – this is why the article reflects "edited" I am not trying to hide this fact.
— Vincent Schilling (@VinceSchilling) January 21, 2019
Retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley obtained Phillips’ military records and it reportedly showed he was trained as an electrician and worked as a refrigerator mechanic stateside in Lincoln, Nebraska and later moved to a marine base in El Toro, California where he “went AWOL a few times.”
As Cassandra Fairbanks at The Gateway Pundit reported on Tuesday, $6,000 was raised as part of a GoFundMe campaign to make a film about Phillips which included the claim that he was a “marine in Vietnam.”
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