thebigp wrote:
HERE’S ONE FOR HISTORY BUFFS THAT I’ll BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW.
In 1975, President Ford was left to manage the difficult ending of the Vietnam War. President Ford went to Congress for a relief package to allow American personnel and our allies to evacuate. However, there was ONE US SENATOR who opposed any such support. The result was the embarrassing and hurried evacuation from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon.
This senator reveled in the embarrassment and did everything he could to leverage it politically against Ford. Despite the efforts of this U.S. Senator--President Ford managed to rescue 1,500 South Vietnamese allies prior to the country's fall. Had President Ford not acted quickly, these people would have been targeted and slaughtered for their support for America. When they arrived in America, President Ford asked Congress for a package to assist these refugees to integrate into American society.
That SAME troublesome SENATOR TORPEDOED ANY SUPPORT for these shell shocked, anti-communist, Americans and our helpers, the Vietnamese refugees.
Instead, President Ford had to recruit Christian organizations to offer assistance on a voluntary basis. As he did so, the Senator belittled those efforts. What kind of person would oppose President Ford's tireless work to do the right and humanitarian thing? Who would want to play politics with the well-being of innocent people who stood by America in the tragic Vietnam War?
THAT SENATOR WAS JOE BIDEN
From the book - "When the Center Held." by Donald Rumsfeld in 2018.(biography)
HERE’S ONE FOR HISTORY BUFFS THAT I’ll BET YOU DID... (
show quote)
You right wing trump pleasing sh** heads can never stop lying can you..
Everything the is said by a right winger must be considered a lie as it is uttered..
Claim
In 1975, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden blocked aid to South Vietnam and did not allow admittance of Vietnamese refugees into the United States.
Rating
Mostly False
What's True
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in his biography that in 1975 President Gerald Ford had tried to convince a number of senators to help refugees fleeing persecution and claimed Biden, along with other Democrats, “dissented.”
What's False
Biden did not vote against sending financial assistance to the South Vietnamese government toward the end of the Vietnam conflict, or block either the admittance of refugees to the U.S. or the distribution of funds to help them resettle -- in May 1975 he supported a bill allowing this to occur. His dissent regarding Ford's initiative was taken out of context by critics, as they did not include all of Biden's concerns. He had opposed an April 1975 aid package for South Vietnam because he argued those evacuation funds could be used as military aid and should be sent through multilateral channels. That April bill ultimately died in Congress.
Origin
As U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration took office in January 2021, Biden’s past voting record came under scrutiny, leading to misrepresentations by some partisan critics. Since late 2020, we received inquiries from Snopes readers who pointed us to a section from Donald Rumsfeld’s 2018 book, “When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency,” which they said reported that Biden was opposed to welcoming South Vietnamese refugees into the U.S. and to providing them aid at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
Rumsfeld, who was Ford’s secretary of defense at the time, recounted a meeting on April 14, 1975, between Ford and a number of senators surrounding the resettlement of refugees from South Vietnam:
Biden: What concerns us is that a week ago [Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Philip] Habib told us we would be formulating a plan. A week has gone by and nothing has happened. We should focus on getting them out. Getting the Vietnamese out and military aid for the GVN [Government of South Vietnam] are totally different.
[…]
Kissinger: The plan for American evacuation is in pretty good shape. But we had a report that if we pulled out and left them in the lurch, we may have to fight the South Vietnamese. It was that we were concerned with and that is why we waited to go to Thieu so we didn’t do it in the context of a bug out. The second problem is getting American citizens out in an emergency. Third is the Vietnamese to whom we have an obligation. This is infinitely more complicated and large-scale. It requires cooperation from the GVN and maybe the North Vietnamese.
Biden: I feel put upon in being presented an all or nothing number. I don’t want to have to vote to buy it all or not at all. I am not sure I can vote for an amount to put American troops in for one to six months to get the Vietnamese out. I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out.
[…]
Sen. Hugh Scott (Republican): I agree to the proposal. One thing we haven’t discussed is the amounts. I think we need to discuss a figure.
Biden: I don’t want to commit myself to any precise number. How much money depends on how many we try to get out.
In the conversation, Biden was not arguing against refugees coming to the U.S., but instead was more concerned about details around the plan, particularly the specifics of military aid to the South Vietnamese government and funding for getting both Vietnamese refugees and Americans out.
Given that Biden was opposed to Ford providing more military and humanitarian aid to South Vietnam around the time the conflict was going in favor of the North Vietnamese over his concerns for how it would be used, but not opposed to refugee resettlement in the U.S. as well as aid for the resettlement of these refugees, we rate this claim as “Mostly False.”