As the Biden administration's foreign policy undergoes advanced scrutiny for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Republican former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for what he said was a botched tribute to the late Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.
McCain was famously held captive for years in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, where he was repeatedly tortured and held in unsanitary conditions.
In a recently-concluded visit to Vietnam, Vice President Harris commemorated McCain on the third anniversary of his death by laying flowers at a monument on the spot where McCain's plane was shot down.
Harris said at the site:
"John McCain was an extraordinary American hero. I was honored and privileged to serve with him for a short time in the United States Senate. John McCain, he loved our country."
Gingrich, however, claimed the memorial celebrated McCain's capture and dismissed the tribute as an embodiment of the administration's so-called naïveté.
Gingrich is flat out wrong, and numerous officials have visited the site in years past, including Senator McCain himself, as well as members of the Trump administration.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale pointed this out and even provided pictures.
Others did the same.
They commended Dale for his fact checking.
Gingrich hasn't retracted the claim.
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