00:00And I would feel the hurt, the anger, the pain, the trauma to begin to recede.
00:16That's why this means so much. And I have a duty as a Vietnam vet, as a survivor, to my
00:29buddies buried there to honor their sacrifice and protect their memory from this vainglorious monument.
00:39I went to Vietnam in September 1967 as a 21-year-old Army helicopter pilot, warrant officer. I flew in
00:50combat for 13 months. Big Tet, Little Tet, you all remember that in your history books.
00:57Then I came back and went on to my next posting, which was in Germany, and finally came back to
01:02the U.S. in May 1970.
01:06Well, some of you were old enough. Most of you don't look like it. May 1970 was not a hospitable
01:13time for a Vietnam vet in America.
01:16Now, I didn't experience directly any abuse other than the sort of quiet avoidance, the polite dismissal of you as
01:32an inconvenient reminder of a war that was fading from popularity, and they wanted to fade from the mind.
01:41So, like most of my buddies, I put my head down, plowed forward, trying to leave Vietnam behind, went year
01:52-round through university, took the foreign service exam, came in, and I had a 34-year career.
02:01But when I came back from my first posting in Moscow, I was in the State Department, and I attended
02:09the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
02:13And I had some of my Vietnam Flight School buddies who came down to join me, and I can't tell
02:21you how emotional it was, emotionally cathartic, for some of them who were carrying that memory and that burden, and
02:32they had been basically ignored and dismissed.
02:35You're inconvenient. You know, go away. Get on with life.
02:41I would then walk over from the Vietnam Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial and look across Memorial Bridge at Arlington
02:52House and Arlington National Cemetery.
02:59God, by then, I'm in my late 30s, and I would feel the hurt, the anger, the pain, the trauma
03:15to begin to recede.
03:22That's why this means so much.
03:26And I have a duty, as a Vietnam vet, as a survivor, to my buddies buried there, to honor their
03:39sacrifice and protect their memory from this vainglorious monument.
03:47This is not just, I'm sorry, another park.
03:55This is something profoundly important and incomparably different.
04:02And we have to remember that, respect it, honor it, protect it. Thank you.
04:11In my life, I've never seen a project with such profound, widespread opposition from my community.
04:17Men and women, old and young, Republican and Democratic.
04:21My Army colonel father and mother, who is a military spouse.
04:25My Army major grandfather and his wife, a 50-year federal servant.
04:30My sister, born in a U.S. Army hospital overseas with an intellectual disability.
04:36They're all buried there.
04:38Thank you for all of you who are fighting against this sacrilege.
04:42Thank you to the brave veterans who filed the lawsuit to stop the arch.
04:47Thank you to the relentless advocates who filed the lawsuit against this arch and who are helping to stop it.
04:52And thank you to the community who is speaking out against it.
04:55We will have many dozens, maybe hundreds of people across the river in a couple of hours just fighting it.
05:02If they ever put a shovel in the ground, we'll have hundreds here every single day.
05:07And thank you all who are fighting Donald Trump's handpicked commission that's holding the hearings this afternoon to rubber stamp
05:15the arch.
05:16I'll join them and I'll tell the commission exactly what I think of the arch, that it is a disgrace.
05:23Trump's arch will create a permanent blight in the viewshed of Arlington National Cemetery.
05:28I'm always moved when I remember that every grave over there, admiral, general, seamen, private, they're all exactly alike.
05:36Everyone, there's no one special.
05:39They're all there who serve their country.
05:41But this monumental abomination of one man's ego disrespects every service member who's buried there.
05:48It will harm dozens of irreplaceable historic sites.
05:52And it's not only a disgrace, it's a danger.
05:55The president knows the arch is illegal, so he's throwing everything he can at the idea.
06:00He says the arch will be a sniper and a military drone base.
06:03That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
06:06We have the busiest airport in the country just down the river.
06:10And thousands of tourists and commuters within feet of the site.
06:15Nobody in the administration can defend this or explain it, but we know why he's trying to rush it through.
06:20Because he knows that the Congress we just elected two days ago will reassert his constitutional authority and stop him
06:27pushing forward with this disgrace.
06:30Because Trump knows the arch is illegal and unauthorized.
06:33I've introduced a bill to block it, 80 co-sponsors, soon to have 200 co-sponsors.
06:38Our leadership is determined to stop Trump from stealing the power of the purse to build this arch.
06:44We're not going to let him get away with this.
06:47Because we know this arch has nothing to do with national security.
06:50And it certainly isn't about celebrating our country or celebrating our fallen heroes.
06:55It's about building an arch, a dramatic, enduring structure to the only thing he cares about himself.
07:03And that's why we're fighting him.
07:04We have the law, we have the moral right, we have the good of our country on our side.
07:09We're going to win this.
07:11And thank you for all who are fighting the arch.
07:15We reject corruption in our processes that block the voices of the people.
07:20We reject the vanity, the worship of a single man over the 400,000 that have earned the right to
07:30be remembered.
07:31That have earned the right to keep an eye over our nation as they look towards the Lincoln Memorial.
07:37And that we reject weakness.
07:42And I say that because every act that it took to give those votes, every act that it's taken from
07:50the veterans and the people standing behind me here,
07:52is the strength that we should be celebrating on this 250th anniversary of the country.
07:59The unity that you see, the civilians, the military coming together, the thousands of people that have taken action,
08:06the organization that I get to represent of 3.5 million people who have declared that this is something that
08:11matters.
08:12This public land is just as important as Yosemite.
08:14This public land represents the heart of the nation, just like it does in Big Bend, Texas, where we're looking
08:19at right now,
08:20and the diversity that comes with that.
08:21And I'll leave you with why this is important to me personally,
08:25because there's a lot of people here with experiences that I'm never going to be able to replicate, and I
08:30just respect.
08:31So all I can do is offer you what the 400,000 people behind me did and what I did
08:37several years ago,
08:38is one, a recommitment to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,
08:46and raise our hands to do that again.
