Trump at his Iowa rally calls Agent Orange “whatever the hell that red crap is”

The man who got five draft deferments during the Vietnam War has finally shared his plan for winning it.

At his Iowa rally in Dubuque, Trump said he had “a chart” of America’s long wars and announced: “I could have won the Vietnam War in a week.” The problem, as he sees it, was the herbicide, “whatever the hell that red crap is,” which he said they kept dropping in the forest. Someone in the crowd shouted the name for him. Trump took the assist: “Agent Orange, even though it’s red. Agent Orange, they drop it in the forest for years and years and years,” instead of “going after Ho Chi Minh City.” Then, for emphasis: “I would have won that war in one week.”

Some notes for the war room. Agent Orange got its name from the orange stripe painted on the drums it was shipped in, per the VA. There was no Ho Chi Minh City to go after during the war: it was Saigon, capital of the US-backed South, and was renamed in 1976 after the North won. And the commander with the one-week plan sat the whole thing out with four college deferments and one for bone spurs, per the New York Times.

He also said he could have won in Afghanistan “in a very short period of time.” The chart did not survive contact with the transcript.