WaPo Correction: Nathan Phillips NOT A Vietnam Vet
Tom Pappert
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In the newest twist in the fake news fiasco that led to the Covington Catholic teens being doxxed and receiving death threats, the Native man at the center of the controversy, Nathan Phillips, is not a Vietnam veteran.
The Washington Post, one of the first mainstream news publications to seize on the narrative of racist teenagers harassing an elderly veteran, published a correction to its story today, noting that Phillips is not a Vietnam veteran.
Correction: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips served in the U.S. Marines from 1972 to 1976 but was never deployed to Vietnam.
Many began questioning the media’s reporting that Phillips served in Vietnam when his age, 64, became known. Assuming he enlisted at 17, Phillips would have had to be deployed to Vietnam in 1972, and the last Marines left Vietnam in 1971.
Phillips, who Big League Politics painstakingly exposed as a left-wing fundraiser and media darling who appeared in an anti-police music video and previously accused a different group of students of anti-Native racism, never specifically called himself a Vietnam veteran. Instead, perhaps seeing this revelation coming, Phillips carefully used the phrase “Vietnam times veteran”, a vague expression that seemingly means he served in the military during the Vietnam war.
While it seems this fact should have been easy to check, it did not stop the entire mainstream media from referring to Phillips as a Vietnam veteran.
Quick research reveals most mainstream media is still mistakenly referring to Phillips as a Vietnam veteran even after The Washington Post’s correction, with Inside Edition, CBS News, Rolling Stone, Yahoo! News, and Fox News all still describing him as such. Perhaps the worst is Vogue, which specifically refers to Phillips as a veteran “who served as an infantryman in the Vietnam War.”
The fake news narrative surrounding Phillips and the Covington Catholic teens continues to crumble, and the teens are being identified as the victim of a horrendous smear campaign. As Republicans seek to rectify the situation, the group of teens have now been invited to visit President Donald J. Trump at the White House.
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