Trump’s One-Week Vietnam Claim Misidentified Saigon — SkimNews
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- Trump said at a rally ahead of the U.S. midterms that he could have won the Vietnam War in a week and resolved the Afghanistan crisis in the same timeframe.
- Saigon was Ho Chi Minh City’s wartime name and capital of South Vietnam, America’s ally; critics and internet users said Trump had targeted the wrong capital, with Hanoi in North Vietnam as the enemy capital.
- U.S. forces directly targeted North Vietnam through Operation Rolling Thunder, bombing the region from 1965 to 1968.
- Trump criticized the use of Agent Orange and said the U.S. should instead have gone after Ho Chi Minh and other cities.
- Trump had made a similar claim around one-and-a-half years earlier, saying he could have won the war in three to four months; in a Fox News interview, he said he would have had it done in three or four months.
Why it matters: Critics gain a concrete rebuttal to Trump’s military-history boast: U.S. bombing campaigns directly targeted North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968, while the city he named was allied Saigon. The geography error undercuts his one-week claim and recalls his earlier three-to-four-month version.
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