Precious Freedom from the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Flags of our Fathers

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Hey, good morning, and welcome Bill Martinez here. Great to have you with us. And we've got a guest that I've been looking forward to talking with. He's the author of Flags of Our Fathers, New York Times best selling author as well because of the book, and also he's got a new novel called Precious Freedom. It's a novel of the war in Vietnam. James Bradley, welcome to show.

0:59 Good have you with us. Thank you for having me Bill. Hey, Uh, before we get into the book Precious Freedom about Vietnam, Uh, I am a Vietnam era vet A marine, and so obviously this relates sincerely with me and and this novel that you've written about Vietnam, because you bring out some things that people have long been confused about. So you've you've done this a big service here, James, I'm gonna tell you that number one, okay. And before we get into that, if it's okay with you, I want to talk a little bit about your background. I mean, you yourself. You're a son of two you know, Jim mccorman, Doc Bradley, and and let me see here now, did you caddy for coach Lombardier or was it one of your relatives that did?

1:52 No, I did. It's all your fault, right, okay. My dad was John Bradley, and we lived in Annigo, Wisconsin. We had a cottage up at bass Lake and at bass Lake Country Club. Bart Star and Fuzzy Thurston and Zeke Brakowski and those guys lived up there, and they brought up coach Lombardy and little dumb me, you know, carried the coaches clubs around. You know. It wasn't like I was some big caddy giving the coach direction. I was lugging clubs. But we called it caddy, yes, right exactly. But it's it's amazing to have that kind of memory, right to think about, you know, you and and coach Lombardy, you know, crossing paths like this, and if you would have known now you know, and you know and then what you know now, I'm sure it had been interesting and he probably would have kicked you off the back because you would have had all kinds of questions for the coach.

2:53 Right. Well, you know that there's I bring up Lombardi in the beginning of the book because the America narrative of the Vietnam War, if you listen to the vets and you read the books, it's. We could have won. If only if only the press, if only the Congress, of only the media, if only, if only, if only Johnson and I went to Vietnam and I looked around, and it's like, hey, the Vietnamese won this war. I thought, like Vince Lombardi it you know, the story about the Ice Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys was not that the Dallas Cowboys lost. We didn't read a hundred books about how they lost. We only read the books about how the Packers won. So I thought the Vietnamese won. I want to read all these books by Americans about how the Vietnamese won and I couldn't find any It's all about how we could have we could have won, you know.

3:49 So I just I'm a Vince Lombardi guy, so I'm like, you know, hey, they won. So the shocking thing about this book bill is that I'm the only American author who went to Vietnam and asked the winners, how did you win? Right? Exactly? Yeah, because when you think about the dynamics, the narrative that we were being fed here in America was totally different than what was happening at the ground level. Right. Well, see, it was this convoluted idea of. The crossover point. We were going to search and destroy and we were going to kill so many Vietnamese that there would be a crossover. After we kill this many, then they're just going to give up. They're going to say, boy, America is really powerful. But war has never been War has always been about territory.

4:38 You know. I asked the Ewo Jima Vets my first book, Flags of our Fathers, I said, how did you know that you won the island? And he said, we took the territory. All war is about taking the territory. But the generals in the early nineteen sixties, said well, we. Can't conquer the territory in Vietnam. So what we'll do. We got these grasshoppers is called helicopters, and then we'll just jump from place to place, and we can't take the territory, but we'll just jump and kill so many of them that they'll just give up. Well, the Vietnamese had been fighting invaders for two thousand years and they never gave up. And the Americans never thought about that. And I interviewed Vietnamese who said to me when they were little kids fifteen sixteen, when they were in the war, they said, oh, man, every time we saw a helicopter, we said, oh, thank God for the helic I said, what do you mean and he said, well, Uncle Ho taught us that the Americans used the helicopter because they can't take the territory, that they can't come down and fight.

5:41 The Americans are flying over us, but they can't come down here because we would tweed them out right. And then they said thank God for the helicopter. And I said what do you mean? And they said, mister Bradley, you know, the Vietnamese air space would be completely quiet, and then a would come, oh bo, drop a bomb. Well, that was to make a landing zone for a helicopter. So they announced in advance a helicopter was coming, and then twenty minutes later, oh wow, it's going to land right here. And you know, we were fifteen years old with sandals and old French rifles, and we knew where the helicopter was going to land, and the helicopter would come.

6:26 We'd have our rifles and it would land right there. It was the only place to land, and then we just shoot the bejeebers out of him. So Bill, my brother, trained as a marine. He enlisted, He trained Okanawa to Danang donghuh, And years later after he came home all shot up. I said, what happened to you, Steve? He said, whoa? I got on a helicopter from my first mission. We landed, I stepped out and I got shot right next to the heart. Well, he probably got shot by a thirteen year old girl who was notified when he was coming. Exactly the Marines announced when they were coming. It was this crazy search and destroy idea that could.

7:09 Not work right well, and what a bizarre way to conduct a war, I mean, and hearing you just even relate in the initial description of the of the strategy or lack thereof, you know, in not capturing territory, because I can I can remember I was in public relations for the Marine Corps, so I got information, I got stories. I talked to the soldiers when they came back, you know, from being in country, and the frustrating thing for them repeatedly I got to tell you, James, is they would say, you know, one day we would fight, we'd lose our best friends that were right next to us winning this hill, and then we would recede, only to come back the next day to go and win that same hill over again.

7:53 How frustrating do you think that is for a soldier? And you know the Marines and soldiers always. Say, well, you know, we got together and we got in the group and we went out and then we got ambushed and they got some of our guys and we came back. No, no, no, no, it wasn't ambush. That was a strategy. Pa Chi Minh said, you're never going to confront the Americans head on. You're going to lose. He said, what you do? He said, the Americans moving bunches, and when you see them go moving in bunch one way, you know where they're going. And he said, what you do is you ambush them. He said, you never get together with more than ten or fifteen, and so you can hide behind the trees, in the brush and whatever, and you nick them.

8:37 He said, if you cut off the pinky, just nick off the pinky of one marine in a platoon, that blood will be seen by everybody. There will be a report, they will be spooked. He said, that's a victory. But Bill, could I could I say something that the key to a boxing match is initiative. An initiative is I hit you first and you react, and then I hit you again and you're you're reacting. I have the initiative. And the key to a football game is to get the initiative. Control the ball, the plays, you know, throw a pass, do a run, mix it up, initiative, initiative. And when I went to Vietnam, and well, when I was in America and interviewed Marines, I never heard the word initiative.

9:24 I heard, you. Know, our guns and our armor, and they moved out in groups. There was no initiative. When I went to Vietnam, they said, oh, uncle Ho said, never fight without the initiative, Look for an look for you know, look look for the corner in the alley when the Marines come around that you'll be able to surprise them. That's called initiative. Look for the valley where you're on the other side and the Marines come and you can surprise them. That's called initiative. And if you can't get the initiative, don't fight. So they were always looking. Well, the statistics show that the Marines initiated only ten percent of the battles and view unbelievable, so you can't win, so the Vietnamese and then the Marines would complain, you know, we got ambushed and we started shooting, and then they disappeared and they you know, dragged their wounded. Well, no Vietnamese grabbed the initiative, drew first blood, and then they got out of there.

10:28 Quick attack, quick retreat, quick and they were taught as kids, quick attack, quick retreat, quick attack, quick retreat, get out of there. And so the Marines were stunned and the Vietnamese got out of there. They weren't looking to fight any battles the Marines. The Vietnamese didn't want to fight a battle. They just wanted to ambush. And surprise exactly. James Bradley, We've got to go to quick break. Stay with us. We've got more coming up right after this. Hey, we're back with you. I'm Bill Martinez. It's fourteen minutes before the top. They are James Bradley, New York Times best author of Flags of Our Fathers. We're talking about his new book and what was behind it. I mean, gosh, I think you're the only author I know of that actually went to Vietnam, went there and actually had conversations with the Vietnamese to find out what the heck happened.

11:16 And I got to tell you, your book is going to be, you know, disturbing in many regards for Vietnam vets who were in country, they knew kind of what happened. I think they have an idea of what happened. Like you said before, you know, should have, could have? Would it didn't happen. We weren't gaining territory. They thought, well, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, here's this, you know, powerful military force. In fact, we just won World War two, and many wondered, said, why didn't we just drop a nuclear bomb on Vietnam and just take care of it, right. You know, I still have military people saying, oh, we could have genocided them, you know, no, no, jeez. The Vietnamese beat the Chinese for one thousand years. That Chinese tried to destroy the Vietnamese, right, the French, the Japanese starved them to death. We put in chemicals naypalm agent orange to deform them. We dropped more bombs on a little tiny area of Vietnam the size of Delaware than we did in all of Germany.

12:16 You know, we really. Really really tried, and you know what, drop some nuclear weapons. I went to school in Japan. If you go to Hiroshima where we dropped that bomb, there's a children children are playing on a swing set there. You know, Nagasaki, there's flowers growing there. So you can drop nuclear bombs and as like Mio said, you're going to rearrange some dirt on some farms. You know, Vietnam had no big industrial capacity for a nuclear bomb to effect. What are you going to do dropping up? You know, like, I mean, it's ridiculous, but the no, see, I don't I feel like I'm going to bring comfort to the American vet because they were told look at our aircraft carriers, and look at our helicopters, and look at our guns. We should have won, you know, they didn't look at the strategy of People's War and say this is why we lost. The Packers won because they had us a better strategy, and the Vietnamese won because they had a better strategy and they had better tactics.

13:22 But the Americans, not the service people were fine. It's the generals and the ladily. Yeah, the ones that were in the Pentagon that weren't in country and trying to orchestrate this war from a distance. And unless we forget, the Vietnamese also had the hometown advantage, didn't they in much the same way in the Revelation and the Revolutionary War, when we took on the British, we knew, you know, we knew the forest from the trees, you know, so we had the advantage of locality, and I believe the Vietnamese had that advantage as well. I was in Afghanistan before America invaded Afghanistan, and I was in the villages of Afghanistan, and I'm like, wow, man, I can see why the British lost here, why the Russians lost here.

14:12 Nobody is ever going to beat the Afghanis. Nobody. They've been invading Vietnam for over two thousand years, and the Vietnamese built. The Vietnamese today have the largest army in the world if you include reserves, the largest army today. But they're watching all their borders. See, they're not invading other countries. If Vietnam invaded Texas tomorrow, they would lose. The Texans would fight to the death to protect their homes. We invaded Vietnam, and they had a strategy how to trip us up. The females fought. I had women say to me, mister Bradley, the Chinese came, we beat them. The Mongols came, We beat them. The French came, we beat them. The Japanese came, we beat them.

14:58 Americans came. You know why, I'm as Bradley. I said why. They said, because you only send half your strength. You only send your men in Vietnam. The women fight, and I was asked if I wanted to meet a top sniper, a bemetaled sniper. So I thought I'd meet this grizzled old guy. I opened the door and it's a sixty five year old female school teacher she's the sniper, she said, mister Bradley. When I was fifteen, I saw marine shoot my father to death, and that's when I promised myself I would kill every American I ever saw. Well, at that point, she was a little farm girl. She had no intention of fighting a war, but she knew who the enemy was. He was a Marine.

15:41 He killed my father. I'm going to fight. She went to the forest. Oh, she men had a plan. He trained her, I mean, his people trained her. She came back and boom, boom boom. Five of the Marines whose names are on the Vietnam Wall. She got shot by little girl up in a tree, you know, with their feet with no sandals on, with their feet gripping the street, you know, waiting. For her shot. So you can't. I'm from Wisconsin, and if you invaded Wisconsin, you know what a joke. All us kids, we'd trip you up in the backyards. We knew all the nooks and crannies. Yeah, exactly, if I can take a sidebar, just you know, just take a little detour here for just a moment, because I want our audience. I mean, you've referred to some of the things in your life. I mean your life is almost like Walter Mitty. I mean, you know, as you mentioned, you're you know, you're carrying a golf bag for Lombardi. You've traveled around the globe self funded.

16:46 You visited I guess now it says twenty two countries is probably more than that by now, No, no. No, I was in twenty two countries by the time I was twenty two. All right, so by the time you're twenty two, you're visiting all these I mean, this is amazing. I mean, what motivated you to go and travel the globe like this? James, you're old enough to remember the number one best selling novelist of our youth with James Mitchner and what I was a kid. Mitchner wrote about Asia, and I didn't know where Asia was. I was in northern Wisconsin. And then I saw he wrote an article for college kids. He said, when you graduate from college at twenty two, they'll ask you, what do you want to do with your life?

17:29 He said, it's a great question. Answer it. When you're thirty five, he said, go full around, travel the world, live it up, you know, do what you want. And then at thirty five, so I thought of that, and I started hitchhiking around my hometown. I eventually hitchhiked across the United States, and then I went to school in Japan and Tokyo, and I hitchhiked around the world. I went on the Hippie trail. I was in Afghanistan. I lived in the Gulf of Siam on An Island with I was the only foreigner. I met the Shah of Iran's wife, and Iran taught English in Iran. You know, it was up in the Himalaya. So I had traveled.

18:13 Here and then and you danced with Tina Turner while you're in Tokyo, and. So Tina Turner in Tokyo, and yeah, I had drinks without John. There are very few foreigners in Tokyo. Back then, I hitchhiked around the world for two thousand dollars. You know, that was a lot of money. Back in nineteen seventy four, I sold pots and pans in Italy and Germany. And then I eventually got a degree in Wisconsin, went to New York, got into the entertainment business Tony Bennett, Elepanzgerald, Jay Leno and then but eventually I realized I wasn't a good businessman. And I and I sold out and I went up to Mount Everest with three acts and a tent and I said, I'm not coming down until I figure out what to do. And up at Mount Everest there's no oxygen, there's hardly enough food, you know.

19:06 And I found one grimy book slammed against this wall of this sooty tea house, and it was a book by Dick Francis, the English author. He's Queen Elizabeth's favorite author. Writes about horses, and he wrote that he was a jockey and he got hurt and he picked up a pen and started writing books. And you can too. So I'm up in the middle of nowhere looking for a second wind of my life, and I thought, well, maybe I can be an author. So from that day when I decided to become an author, it took me ten years, twenty seven turndowns. But my first book was Flags of Our Father. Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood made the movie. And now This Precious Freedom is my fifth book.

19:54 Wow, what a journey and all. And there you are a on top of the mountain and just you're almost like, are you like stubbornly looking to God and saying, I'm not getting off this mountain until you tell me what it's all about and what I'm supposed to do. I kind of sense that, is that what you did? Yeah, I'm more like stubbornly, like I really tried do really well and. It didn't work out. So I decided that, you know, you can try to. I was My dad had been a businessman, so I became a businessman and I hadn't become myself. And I realized I had to find my own path, but I didn't know how to find it in the noise of New York. So I just went up to Mount Everest where there's nobody, you know, there's nobody to talk to, and all you have is the sun and the moon and the water and the slag heaps and the cold and the snow. And I thought, if this is if I If I can't get inspiration here, it's not going to happen. But I'm not coming down to get another job and do things that I don't want to do.

20:59 And then this book came and I thought, you know, I could be an author, I could work alone. I could be creative. I wasn't a good manager. I wasn't a good businessman. If you manage people, you should be a good businessman. I wasn't. And if you're an author, you don't have to do business. You have an agent. So I thought I could be creative work alone. I had never imagined being an author, but you know, I thought I'll give it a try. Well that took ten years, and you know, as a shirt wore out, I had one last shirt. When I sportcode wore out, I had one last sport code. You know, I completely go and broke. I had twenty seven turndowns on Flags of Our Fathers. Twenty seven publishers wrote me letters saying that Flags of Our Fathers was a dud.

21:49 And I was pitching it. This will be New York Times number one, not because of me, but the flag raising photos, the number one most reproduced photo in history, right, And I was calling everybody, this is going to be great. My wife at that. Time, you know, oh my god, my friends flew in for a intercession. It was like I was an alcoholic who needed what do you. Call that intervention? In? James, my friend Peter, James, don't you think the publishers know what they're talking about? You got to give it up James get a job, you know. But I kept going because it wasn't because of me. I just thought, this is a good story and people are interested in it. See, the flag raising has six humans, and nobody ever wrote a book about those humans because those families wouldn't talk to anybody. But they had to talk to me because my dad was involved. So I broke down their doors and said, tell me the family stories. And they said, well, you know, my brother wasn't a hero. And I said, don't give me that. I heard that from my dad.

22:56 What I want to know did he ever kiss a girl? Did he have a girlfriend, and you know, did he play football? I wanted the family stories to rebuild these guys's that's the book. But it's the same thing that happened in Vietnam. I went Bill, I must have read two hundred books about Vietnam before I went there the Vietnam War, and I interviewed and I interviewed American veterans of Vietnam War, one of them my brother. And then I go to Vietnam and what the Vietnamese are telling me what happened. I can see they're taking me out to the battlefields, and I'm like, Wow, this is the opposite of what Ken Burns and Walter Cronkite told. Us, exactly exactly, Well, James, I'll tell you, I cannot thank you enough Precious Freedom and novel. I know that Vietnam vets are going to be greatly blessed by this because you bring a fresh needed perspective on this. And though it is a novel, and I understand because some people, you know, I guess this would be in the category of fiction, but there's so much in the novel that comes from real life experience, and I know that the soldiers are going to see it and discern it for themselves.

24:09 So again, thank you for coming on the show. James Bradley, author of a Precious Freedom. The book available now in all the usual places and the website they can go to James. James Bradley dot com. Visit me there. Gave you the last word. That's perfect. Thank you, James, Take care, have a good one. Good morning America. Six minutes after the top of the hour, right now, Dol Martinez here along with James Bradley. Yes, he is back with us. He's the author of course Precious Freedom, and we had I'll tell you It was really an honor, James, to talk to you and get to know you a little bit more of the last time, and talk about your background and of course your dad. Who was associated.

24:49 He was EWO. G. Mccorman, right, Doc Bradley himself, right. Yes, sir, brought to the screen by Steven Spielberger and Clint Eastwood, Plague La bar fathers. Yeah, there it is, yeah, exactly, and of course all inspired because of your book Flags of her Father's and and of course this new book about the Vietnam War, a Precious Freedom. It's a novel New York Times, you know, from the New York Times, number one best selling author, one and only James Bradley. And hey, he's acquiesced and join us now to talk about you know, what's going on with Zelensky and Putin. You know, James, My assessment is that it seems like Donald Trump wants peace more than Zelensky or Putin does.

25:35 Right now? Am I misreading something? You know? In Precious Freedom, this book about the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson never said he wanted war. He wanted peace all the time. He was always it was always peace and peace plans. And we're reaching out and we want them to come to the negotiating table. But all along he was upping the military equipment and giving more money to Lockeed, Bell, helicopter raytheon. So you know what we've We're after peace in Ukraine, and we've given them what three hundred billion. Dollars at least or at least Yeah. So Trump has increased the national debt two trillion dollars since just last year. So I don't know, Americans have to wake up. We've got the best economy in the world, but we can't afford to pay our bills.

26:28 We have to borrow money. And then we want peace, but we're sending money out. See what I've learned is we're not sending money to Ukraine. We say we send money to Ukraine, and then we send it next we send it next door to Lockeed. Exactly exactly. That's the way the bill, the wheels on the bus go round and round. James, you just follow the money, right. Well, we got told by Eisenhower that we accidentally built the system where the military industrial complay was. You know, I've been in the White House a number of times. If you look at Donald Trump standing behind him, as a statue, and the tallest guy on the statues my dad.

27:10 If you look at the statue, you can see my dad's acne. My dad posed for the statue. And you know, to Trump, that's all about courage and bravery. But I've been in the White House in the Oval office, and my idea of the president is he sits at his desk and outside, right outside, there's seven lions out there with big mouse, and those are military industrial contractors, and he's got to throw meet. They're the ones that pay the big It costs a billion dollars at least to become a president. Who's paying those bills. It's huge government contractors. And you know. People think missiles and bullets, No Apple, computer, Levi's, Burger King, Starbucks.

27:56 These are major military industrial contractors that are on the government tit and you got to feed them because they get everybody elected. Yeah. Well, and that's exactly right with Trump. Trump has probably been one of the most independent presidential candidates in our lifetime. He didn't necessarily rely on corporate money. But unfortunately, the thing that operates in DC, as you say, are all these individual interests, these elected officials that are tied to all these corporations that number one must get re elected. That is their mission du jour. It is not serving the American people. It's about getting re elected. So yes, the hounds of DC are constantly barking around that oval desk.

28:43 I wish Americans could have lived with me over the past ten years. You know, I lived in Saigon, and Saigon has a higher quality of life than San Francisco. So my friends in San Francisco say, look at our GDP. Look at the Vietnamese GDP. They must before we must be rich. In Vietnam, a girl in a miniskirt can walk around at two am in the morning. She's not going to get harrassed. So, you know, I wish Americans could come with me to Beijing and Moscow. Moscow is an art filled, beautiful, safe city. Beijing, man, they are not stealing federal Express packages off of people's back porches in Beijing like they are in America.

29:29 You know, I wish Americans would look at the system that we're in and the quality of life. How's your quality of life? There's no homelessness in Vietnam. I'm in the island of Mauritius right now. This is part of Africa. I've been here two years, haven't seen a homeless person, you know. But what about drug What about drugs? Well, drugs are everywhere, but not on the street, sleeping in the street, drugs. Not being zombied out. No, no, no, no, no no. See, Vietnam has the largest military in the world if you include reserves. It does. I can send you the stats, and that military is watching the border.

30:10 So you're an illegal alien or you're bringing in. Drugs, you're going to talk to the Vietnamese military. So, yeah, there's some drugs everywhere in the world, but not sleeping on the street drugs. And I don't think Vietnam worries about a two tap offensive, right if they do a second tap on somebody who's going to try to criminalize their population. Right, But they're inside the borders. If you look at Eisenhower and Patent, where did they spend most of their career inside the United States? Guarding the American borders, watching the Mexican border. We should have the US. Military instead of one thousand bases around the world, we could have that military up on the Canadian border, up on the Mexican border.

30:58 Shut this drug down, the illegal immigration. Down have a nice, clean, safe country like the one you and I grew up in. Exactly. No, it's a matter of commitment, and there's no doubt, James, you and I talked about this before. The nefarious forces that have come in and have influenced policies in our country have brought us to this level, and so the American people need to decide is it worth it? And as you say, you wish you could take Americans with you to these other countries and their perception will think, well, Vietnam's got to be some kind of loser country now, or you know whatever, and then they go wow, you know, the women get to walk around late at night and have a sense of safety. You know, Okay, what's operating in Vietnam that's not operating here in America. That's a good point.

31:47 So my book Precious Freedom really shows the change in America. You know, when you and I were kids, we trusted our government because they basically told us the truth, right, you know, and we weren't out building this EPI. We had media also that would hold them accountable to keep the truth. But unfortunately, the media is surrendered and they sided with the Democrats and they started they turned it into a propaganda machine. Well, it's propaganda. It is definitely propaganda. And you know in my book, the US Marine Commandant David Shoot Medal of Honor winner Tarawa says in the book, you know, the media and the government has convinced Americans that communists means bad. And he said, that's why everyday communist China, the CCP, communist China.

32:40 Well, I don't know, really, if you look around. China, go to Shanghai, Beijing, go to these cities I've been on. I wrote a book about China. Wow, the quality of life in China, what their money buys, the safety of the city. So they have a different system. Maybe it's not a system that we would like, but the idea that there's this good. Results, the results are there, right. Anyway, we got to go to quick break. We got more from James after this, stay with us. Welcome back, Bill Martinez here with the New York Times best selling author of Flags of Our Father. James Bradley's with us his new book, Precious Freedom. It's a novel and a great story about Vietnam. I'm telling you you've got to get your hands on it. It will enlighten you, and especially you know for Vietnam friends, Vietnam vets. You know, my friends who served during Vietnam as I did. I as admittedly as I say, I didn't go in country. I stayed here bayside, but you know I was there during the Vietnam era, so I saw a lot of the residual up close. Not quite as personal as my brothers did who were in country, and of course my other friends and other Marines, particularly because they served in the Marine Corps. But you know close that includes the Army, everybody else, the Air Force that was involved as well. But anyway, James continues with us, and James, as you said, you know, you look at what you know the Communists have done, and you like

34:11 the outcome. But how do you fit what the Communists have done in terms of outcome with a constitutional democratic republic. You don't, because they're not communists. They have an emperor's system. They have a family emperor system, you know, to get into the Communist party. I mean, how is China communists when it's creating more billionaires than anybody in the world, You know what I mean. But I wanted to make a comment on this, on you talking about the press. You know, I went back to Vietnam and I interview people who got shot, you know, by the Americans, fought the Americans, and they said, oh, welcome, we love Americans.

34:52 And I said, you know, I mean I look like the guy who's shot you. And they said, oh. Uncle Ho said not to hate the as. I said, how do you not hate the Americans? They killed your father and your sister. And they said, oh no, no, no no. Uncle Ho said the American soldier, we should feel sorry for him because his government is lying to him. Uncle Ho said, these soldiers, Americans, they don't want to come to Vietnam and fight, but the governments line them into Vietnam. And so we are a victim of the US government and so are they. So they made an empathy bond with them. It's unbelievable. Yeah, if you go.

35:33 Back to America, you know, a guy looking like you and me, we look like the enemy. Oh my god, we're the most popular foreigner in Vietnam. Yeah, that's incredible. But again, you know, I sant people understand here, because it's not like you're being an advocate for communism, are you? I mean you are. No. What I'm saying is it's not communism. We're putting the name David Shup. The Marines said, we put this word communism on it. They have an emperor system. It's an Asian family system. Look back to the emperor system. So the emperor is the emperor for some reason and has a bunch of advisors, you know, and then these advisors. Okay, well, the people have the mandate of heaven. And what that means is if the emperor is screwing up, if there's war and poverty and things aren't going right, they can kick them out.

36:24 It's not communist control. In China what the ruling party with the word communism, But take that off of there. If you look at the emperor, the emperor. Has a deal with his people. I'll increase your quality of life. I will make more people come into the middle class. And has ever happened in the history of the world. I will make the streets clean. I'll give you four hundred kilometer in our trains. I'll give you this, I'll give you that, and then I'll rule. But you'll stay out of politics. My job is politics. Your job is being a citizen and be a good citizen. But in America, we think freedom is the right to stand and yell about the president on a street corner. But where is it getting us? But anyway, we have different systems. But China communists. The Vietnamese personal income doubled in the ten years I was their bill.

37:18 That's a communist country. No, it's an emperor country and it's been run like it has for thousands of years. And China. The same thing with President g is what you're saying is that we're malinformed. Let's say, let's put it that way. You're there on the ground and you've seen it in operations, so you're telling us something you know different than what you know. We have come to understand. And like you said, we've all put it under that title of communism, but not necessarily. So I'll tell you a story. My friend one day came and slammed her fist. We're not going to let the Chinese take our country. And I'm like, what what? And then there were riots.

38:02 And the police were pushing back the rioters, and they were flipping police cars over in the middle of Vietnam, you know, catching them on. Huge riots all over Vietnam. Why Because the Hanoi government said to China, you can have three economic zones and these will be Chinese, and the Hanoi government agreed. The people rioted, hit the streets, and guess what, the Hanoi government backed off and said no to China. So you know there's a mechanism that they have to listen to their own people. Yeah. I saw the riots, Bill, I saw the people demonstrating they are not shy about telling the government what they think, and the government better listen.

38:45 Yeah, even at the peril of their own lives, as we've seen at times. Right. Well, I mean we're shooting don't you remember Newark? We're shooting them dead in the street, Bill, I mean, we got China and Vietnam don't have ice agents all over the United States. You know, military guys with big Imagine if we every day you turned on TV and you saw Beijing with military guys with huge rifles. You know, you think, oh, that communist system, but we put up with it. In that's a demo. I mean, that's a democratic system with troops in the streets. I don't like me to see that. I don't like that's because you're right, Because that's because you didn't do your job in the first place. Because you didn't do your job in the first place. Now you're cleaning up after the fact. And here we are, I mean, the numbers that we've heard in terms of illegal immigration, I mean it started a ten million, now it's fifteen. Some are saying, you know, twenty millions, many twenty million illegal immigrants. These are new immigrants, James, these aren't you know, this isn't even counting the probably the twenty five million that we're already here.

39:49 So it's just one big hot mess. But anyway, I want to get back to again what's going on with Russia and Ukraine, because I read this morning that Zelensky hasn't even read the peace proposal. And here, you know, we think we're coming, you know, to the final chapter of this of this conflict. There's war between Ukraine and Russia. And as you said, you know, billions of dollars, not only America three hundred billion, but you got Europe's billions is well thrown into the mix. And so you know, it's just unless it gets to the point where Russia and Zolensky want peace more than Donald Trump, more than Europe, then you know this is going to be ongoing.

40:31 You know, Zelensky has nothing to do with this. Zelensky is a cocaine attict who's worried about his mansions in Miami and Monaco. And Putin is not going to negotiate with Zelensky. There's no Ukraine. Ukrainian armies on its last legs. They're taking teenagers off the street. You know. Ukraine is a hollowed out mess. And Putin could have taken all of Ukraine in one day. That's not what he's interested in. He's interested in that in those Russian republics right there that became party, Yeah, he wants to protect them. The Ukrainians were bombing. I had a friend go into a Ukrainian hotel and the Ukrainians bombed, you know, this.

41:14 Russian speaking hotel. I mean, you know. So it's a long story, but Obama overthrew the Democratic government in twenty fourteen. This is all CIA to push NATO up against Russia. Russia said stop or we'll have to do something. I mean, Bill, if you take a gun to my front porch, I'll say back off. And if you don't, you know, so, Russia had to come out. Russia could have eliminated everybody in Ukraine in one day. They have hypersonic weapons better than ours that have nuclear effect without the radiation, but they didn't. They're not interested in taking Europe. But Europe is imploding financially, and the European leaders have no excuse, so they're jinny up this war fever, and that's what they're going to blame it on the system. The Fiat money system is falling down.

42:09 That's the key. And then we're going to go to war, and the Federal Reserve and all the central banks are going to say it wasn't our fault we went to war. So they're going to take everybody's pensions away. If you have dollars and you don't have gold and silver, you're in trouble. The stock market's going to go down, and this is all going to have to be blamed on war by our incompetent leaders in the West. But how come this is This isn't happening in the East. In China, there's deflation. That's a good point. Prices prices are going down in China, personal incomes are going up in Vietnam. The Mercedes and BMW's are popping up in Vietnam like tulips, you know. But Paris they're rioting.

42:56 There were riots all over Germany. Yesterday. We got American tru hoops. Son. It's our financial The Western financial system is imploding and they won't admit it. Interesting they tune for details. James Bradley number one New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers. His new book, Precious Freedom, a novel. It is a must read. And James, thank you so much. You bring so much to the conversation and experience because you've been there and you've been on the ground, and it's not theoretical, you've seen it for yourself, so thank you so much for sharing it with us. James Bradley, thank you, Take care, have a great one.