Of all American presidents we Vietnamese Americans have some ideas about, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump may be the best known.
Nixon undoubtedly had a criminal say in the fall of the Saigon regime in 1975. Trump should have gone to Vietnam during the war years, had he not had a “bone spur.” Owing to this, Trump is now the nicest American president Hanoi has ever known.
In a few ways, Trump is comparable to Nixon. In the 1968 presidential election, Nixon sought help from South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu to block Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey’s effort to start early the peace talks with the Viet Cong.