Stolen Valor? Nathan Phillips Claimed to be 'Vietnam Vet,' 'in Theater'

We already knew that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was not a Vietnam veteran as the media had repeatedly misreported. Reporters were under that impression because in multiple interviews Phillips had always strongly implied it — without coming right out and saying it. And although the media has misreported his military record for years, he never bothered to correct the record until he was called out on it today.

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The anti-Trump media took the con artist’s word without verifying it because it helped further their narrative that the Covington Catholic boys were hateful bigots. Portraying Phillips as a wise Native American elder and Vietnam veteran made him the perfect foil for the rambunctious MAGA-hat wearing boys.

Phillips in the past had made claims of being a “recon ranger” and a “Vietnam times veteran” who came home and was “spit on” and “called a baby killer,” even though his service record shows that he had zero deployments and never left the United States.

Phillips, who has three AWOLs on his record, was assigned as an 1161 refrigerator technician and discharged as a private after four years of service.

When Phillips’ military record showed that he had not served in Vietnam, most in the media (left, right, and center) reserved judgment on whether Phillips’ previous claims constituted a clear case of “stolen valor” without concrete evidence, and that was the right thing to do.

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Snopes did a half-hearted “fact-check,” and didn’t find evidence that Phillips had mischaracterized his service:

But it was always only a matter of time before the truth came out. American Commitment President Phil Kerpen did some fact-checking of his own and found evidence of Phillips blathering about being a Vietnam War vet in the hundreds of hours of video that is available online.

“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,” Phillips said in an interview posted on the Native Youth Alliance Facebook page.

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Kerpen noted dryly that Phillips’ “I don’t talk much about my Vietnam times” claim needs to be fact-checked too.

Finally pressed on his military experience on Thursday, Phillips didn’t correct Today host Savannah Guthrie when she charitably stated that he had never falsely claimed he was a Vietnam War vet.

“I went to boot camp, I stayed there at the Marine Corps as a reservist guy. So I stayed there in the Reserves for a couple years. That was at the time of the American Indian movement… and there were a lot of things going on during those years — and the Vietnam War was still going on,” he said.

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Pressed further, Phillips said, “What I’ve always said is I never stepped foot in South Vietnam.”

Phillips, who has a violent criminal record, has proven over and over again in interviews that he is not a credible individual. It was clear pretty early on that his evolving stories about what happened at the Lincoln Memorial over the weekend were dubious — yet the media continued to prop him up anyway.

In the Today show interview that aired Wednesday, Guthrie asked 16-year-old Covington High School junior Nicholas Sandmann if he felt like he owed Phillips an apology. To his credit, Sandmann answered that he didn’t think he did anything wrong.

During her cringingly reverent interview with Phillips today, Guthrie asked if he thought Sandmann should have apologized. His bizarre answer: “If there is an apology, there would have to be an apology to a lot of other peoples besides me. I’d be like way down on the list of the people he needs to apologize to.”

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Video evidence has debunked the narrative that the Covington boys mocked and mobbed the “tribal elder,” but the liberal media is still insisting that the teens owe Phillips — who has been exposed as a serial prevaricator and a fraud who targeted them — their utmost reverence.

When is anyone in the MSM going to ask Phillips if he thinks he owes the Covington kids an apology for lying about them?

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