Harris Faulkner Walks The Footsteps Of Her Father
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. This week on Live in the Bream, first of all, to any dads out there, families who are listening, we want to wish you a happy Father's Day this Sunday and this week. And we have the perfect guest and the perfect topic to walk us through this. Please welcome the anchor of the Faulkner Focus. She leads the charge in Outnumbered every day, and she's an amazing host.

an amazing new series on Fox Nation. And it's all about her father, Vietnam, footsteps of my father. He is a hero. We're going to get into that. Please welcome Harris Faulkner. Thank you, Shannon. And you know what? My dad's birthday is June 14th.

And Father's Day, of course, is upcoming this weekend. They are very close together. And so I will be missing him. But my recent travels to Vietnam have helped me to understand the stubborn patriot inside me. And I think of my dad and my mom for planting those seeds of loving this country. So I will miss him both on Father's Day and his birthday, which is also the birthday of the U.S. Army.

for which he served. And it's the birthday of Flag Day. So I will never not think of him on this day. I took his flag, actually, his military burial flag with me to Vietnam. And I got to tell you, this trip and this series, it's a limited series, three short parts, really have put some things into perspective for me.

It's interesting when you go back as an adult yourself to now look at your parent and to see and the thing that I love about this beautiful series called Vietnam Footsteps of My Father right now available on Fox Nation. The imagery is beautiful but you uncover things you didn't even know about your father. You talk to people who knew things and

And what a gift to give you an even fuller picture of this man that you respected, that you loved, that you called dad. So before we went, I had done some homework, you know, historical facts. I worked with a military historian who served. His father served contemporaneously with mine in the war. And Brian Detoy is a wonderful military historian who also taught at West Point.

So we both had a good idea of some of the places that we wanted to go. We got, you know, military information on where my dad had served and all of that. We didn't get some of the details, though. And things that the Pentagon could not have told me had to do with the type of leader that my father was and his daily missions and how they shaped him as a human being and would further shape

My mother, offspring, myself, my sister. It really is fascinating. So we had a mission plan. The minute we hit the ground, we realized the mission was bigger than we are. And we talked with locals. At one point,

I had a really eye-opening and emotional interview with a former fighter of the Viet Cong who killed... Well, at first as a child, he started out spying for the North Vietnamese Communist Army and the Viet Cong. And then as he grew older, he served in that military. Couple him with a U.S. military veteran, and we had Vietnamese sweets and tea, and we're sitting at this little cafe, and we had a translator there.

And this is in the series. The conversation was unbelievable. And it was important to have an interpreter, but I have to be honest with you, Shannon, some things don't need a lot of translation. And how you go from ultimate killing machines to friends is only God's miracle at work. Absolutely. They are among those who are showing us the way on the other side of things, how you get to peace. War is hell.

You'll hear me say that often on the Faulkner Focus as we cover a lot of stories that have to do about war right now, particularly Israel fighting Hamas savages. But I will say that war is also a period of time when people decide who they're going to be if they survive. Who will I be on the other side of this deadly moment? And my father always wanted to be someone who would unite people who were honest, honest about situations, honest

honest about who they were. So when he went off the war, his younger brothers, who I also for the first time talk about his Vietnam war experiences, I flew to Dallas to get them. That's the third part of the series, a little bit. But he would tell people before he left, I'm going to fight because I do it in the name of a country I love. I know it's, I know what time it is in America. We're

The civil rights movement was, we don't talk about it much anymore, but he faced racism. Everybody he knew who was black faced racism. And other diversity groups were dealing with all sorts of things because once discrimination and hate are on the march, there but by the grace of God go we for people in those groups. But my father said that time was different than this time. And what he would say to his younger brothers and people around them who questioned his going off to

secure freedoms for others who wanted a government like ours, a democracy and a republic that had a U.S. Constitution to lead it. They wanted to be like us, the South Vietnamese. He said, I believe people on both sides of this civil rights issue love America. He said, I don't have a doubt about that. They just love it differently and they think protecting it looks different and they want to show everybody that they're right.

He said, we've had a lot of struggles like that in our history. In our short history, we're a young country. And he would tell people, I would rather go and fight for a country with the most promise of any other on the planet than not. Maybe I can, through my actions, get people to see me, an American military, see me for my merit rather than only my skin color. Maybe I can be part of a solution moving forward. Now, he didn't think he could single-handedly do that.

But he said, maybe I can be part of what that looks like. Once he got home from the war, the first time, he did two tours of duty. Once he got home, the reception for our veterans at the time, military fighters in Vietnam, was different. Once he got home in 1971, toward the end of the war, I mean, Kent State, I mean, so many things had happened to prove more than protesting. People had...

violent reactions to the war. You know, I think most readily people think of Jane Fonda and others setting flags on fire. And my dad said, you know, we fought for their right to do all of that to a certain degree, not the violence, obviously. He said, but I was in a special position because I was a trusted military leader when I came home. And while my heart broke at the reception that we all got,

He said, I had to continue on with my purpose and I had to stay steady in that. And that purpose was to be part of a solution for a divided nation. Now we fast forward to me and my Fox Nation crew touching ground in Saigon. And we go down one of the paths of his first missions where his plane was turned into Swiss cheese, but he managed to land it.

flying over the Saigon River. We took a boat. It had a huge communist flag on the back. By the way, Shannon, there are, I mean, just an inordinate amount of communist flags. And I guess I'm sensitive to that because I know how much I love the American flag. Right. That red flag is on every building. I mean, it's everywhere. And it was on our boat. So when you watch the series, you'll see it flapping in the wind.

We go down the river path that he would have flown down in his plane that the Viet Cong were shooting at. He survives that mission, and we tell all the rest that we could learn about. And at each time, I take out his flag, and I explain the moment and how he continues to make a difference by setting the example that the future is also worth fighting for. And the future has turned out to be

a Vietnam and a United States of America that are trade partners and people who understand that peace is valuable. So I know that there will continue to be war on the planet. And if my father and others had it to do all over again, they would answer the call that their government put on them. We have to trust that our leaders think things through. And my dad was one of those people before he passed who,

that I had fancied as a great president of the United States. And my mom would tell me, no, you don't want that. She didn't want to be first lady, but maybe everybody was okay with your dad being president. Yeah. Those are two different things. No, and she told me, she goes, you don't want to be a first kid either. That's true. There's a lot of spotlight on you. But one of the things that I learned when I was in Vietnam, which guide me every day now, is this idea that your values go with you.

And if you trust in the Lord, they expand and return with you. My father led with his faith. And I think that that's been an impact that we've left on the Vietnamese people, our religious freedom in this country. Because there it's about 95% Buddhist and a tiny bit Taoist and then everybody else. And there in Vung Tau, which sits on the South China Sea, which, by the way, was amazing to stand there and like report from the banks of the South China Sea. Mm-hmm.

Behind me is one of the tallest statues of Jesus Christ in the world. And in a place where religious freedom was not in existence when my dad was there, I'd like to think that that sliver of Christianity maybe came from some of our fighting forces. That we showed them through our acts and through who we were as people, as Americans, that we had faith. We really thought we could help those people, Shannon.

My dad didn't talk about it much when I was growing up. So when I wrote my book, Nine Rules of Engagement in 2018, it was all about me growing up military brat. And I finally convinced him to tell me a few of his mission stories. And my husband actually interviewed him and got him on tape. What a gift. It's in the special. I put my dad's voice in there. And one of the lessons that I learned is stay true to who you are when you know God has put a purpose on your life.

As a journalist, it's been a gift to my entire family. My curiosity about getting the facts right and getting the details and all of that drove me to get my father's voice on tape about one of the seminal moments in his life and in a generation for millions of people. And there were only four short recordings. But if it had not been for me pressing, I

I would never have gotten that because two years later on Christmas Day in 2020, he was gone. And I'm true to myself. You know me. I'm annoying when it comes to asking questions. Oh, we love it. You're the expert. You know what? I love you. And you know that...

I am like crazy when it comes to historical stuff, too. So I don't know if the Vietnamese appreciated that as much as you do about me because I had questions for everybody. But I'm glad I'm like that because it made me put into perspective the storytelling that would be necessary for Vietnam Footsteps of My Father. It was not just going to be a memoir. It was not just going to be

about the war. It was going to be about American history and a role that my family and other families played in that. I'm so proud of the fact that I hear, and this makes me tear up, I hear from veterans who were there, they're in their 80s now. One gentleman sent me a picture from the same unit that my dad was a commander. Another gentleman sent me

I don't know if you remember the show MASH, but the big tents that our guys were in sent me a picture inside of one mess hall that had a ping pong table in the back and a very skinny version of my dad was back there and winning, no doubt, because he was very competitive. Of course. But these were the men that he led, that he fought alongside of and also ended up leading as a commander. I never knew...

that rising through the ranks, the service that landed him in the Pentagon, a service to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began in Vietnam, that he made major there. I never knew that. He was right. If you serve the nation that you love as much as he did love America and its Constitution, he knew it. He was so right that if you serve America,

People will begin to see you for your merits and not just the color of your skin. Thank God for that journey. And I know it was tough. War is hell. Simultaneously to that, it's a part of our history that we should not ignore.

We should press in and understand it. We'll have more live in the bream in a moment. I'm Guy Benson. Join me weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers and guests. Listen live on the Fox News app or get the free podcast at Guy Benson show dot com. I mean, that's how we avoid repeating mistakes.

is to really do these deep dives and to be honest with ourselves about what went right, what went terribly wrong. And you do that, as you said, this isn't just a journey about your dad. That's probably to me the most powerful part of this, but it's about all of those veterans. It's about the war and what Vietnam is like now, the people there. I mean, one of the things I love is that

You are an adventurous soul. So along with asking all of your questions, you're doing things like crawling through Viet Cong tunnels, you're hiking mountains, you're, you know, fording down rivers. It's a beautiful look physically at the country too, while you're informing us about the history, about what has become Vietnam.

and of the impact on people all over the globe because of what people like your father, Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Harris, did there and how they served there. It's interesting that when you mentioned the others who served, when I meet a Vietnam War veteran, I'm in a different category now of responding to them.

Because I've had so many. I met other U.S. veterans who were on the ground visiting in Vietnam, just happened to be there at that time. And I now know what to say to them. And I share this with everybody. It is more than just thank you for your service when you take part in a war and don't come home a hero. But everybody else comes home a hero from every other conflict. That's like fighting a battle on home turf with your heart every day. So when I see a Vietnam veteran, I am grateful. And I express that.

But I begin with welcome home. Thank you for loving our nation so much that you would go so far in her name. That's powerful because I think a lot of us struggle with what to say that could possibly be adequate to what these people have been through. Well, and they're not caught up in the politics. You know, you mentioned the political mistakes and all of that. They they have a mission.

And by the way, their mission had better be readiness right now. And we know that it has to be because we have a lot going on in our country. There are a lot of fronts. Yeah, on a lot of fronts. And, you know, I just look at the breaking news of recent days with eight people on a terrorist who crossed our border that they had to arrest because, I mean, they were terrorists.

They're killers and potentially would have carried out that behavior here. And there are suspects. Yeah, we have no way of knowing as we cover the numbers all the time about how many other people just like that. And it only takes a small group, as you noted, to really carry out some disastrous events. It's true. So I look at our military irrespective of politics. We need men and women in this country who are willing to

to give everything to protect us. We need them to be dispassionate about the politics on the battlefield. And we need to thank them and welcome them home. Because the decisions that are made to dispatch them are ones that we hope we put people in office who are making the right decisions. But you don't want somebody fighting on your behalf who's taking out the litmus test on politics to decide if they're going to kill a killer.

It's tough. And I was raised with a very open idea of patriotism. And that is to be a real patriot, you must know the history of the country. And my dad used to tell me, you know, you're lucky we're a young country. It's less reading for you. Less to get through. Yeah. And he said, be open to being knowledgeable about the United States of America.

If you have some time, and I can only imagine what he'd be saying now.

Stop scrolling and start reading unless you're scrolling historical sites that haven't been tainted by AI turning different people into different, you know, George Washington. Wasn't he black on one of the sites, I think? I think a lot of the founding fathers, I was going to say founding farmers because we have a restaurant here called Founding Farmers. Yeah, well, the AI couldn't even determine. We might have had females too. I mean, it's just, it's, you know, it is what it is and we'll get through it.

the next wave of whatever technology brings us, I have all faith. But dad was right. He said, don't be afraid in this time of technology to pick up a book. Yes, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Don't you feel like you just fold in and escape? And so... I do. I do. You go to another place. I'm hoping when... And I think this is true because I'm hearing from so many people who've...

I'm bowled over by so many people who've watched this on Fox Nation. It's about 25 minutes, no commercials each part. So it is delicious viewing in terms of you don't have to do anything and you can watch it whenever you want. So I watch I tend to watch more like that now than I even do television. Me too. But, you know, in a book, your brain forces you to transport information.

And to be in that moment. And that's the kind of storytelling that I wanted to do for Fox Nation. And it wasn't hard because even though my dad hadn't talked much about it, other than the four little recordings we got from my book in 2018, my husband then took it a little bit farther and asked him about, you know, who he was as a man when he joined the military. So I got some tidbits about him.

that informed me about what he would have had an eye for when he was in Vietnam. And something happened accidentally. He had taken a picture, I don't know, I think in maybe 1968, in a village outside of Saigon. It was a farm. You mentioned farming. It made me think of this. And the symbol, the national symbol of Vietnam is a water buffalo. So we'll just set that aside.

One afternoon after traveling hundreds of miles, we put on some serious flights and boats and cars and all the things to get all over the country.

One afternoon, we decided to go through the farmlands of Saigon, which were kind of the back roads to get from my dad's old military base there, where the tunnels were. You know, they tunneled under the base. That's a story that's in the series. Pretty amazing. They kept like, why do these guys keep popping up out of the ground? Anyway. Where are they coming from? We see water buffalo on the side of the road.

And I'm like, oh, guys, come on, let's get out. Let's go meet the water. And they're huge. And the owner comes over. He's smiling. We've got cameras. I can imagine he probably thinks, ah, TikTok. Right. In this day and age. Right. So everybody's got a cell phone, a GoPro, a camera crew. He was so sweet. He then takes my team and walks them over to these enormous creatures and starts talking in his language.

And we almost understood. We're like, is he telling the story of the water buffalo? I think he is. It was great. Anyway, my editor back here in New York captured just a still frame of that. Because you see some of the conversation in the series. Do you know it looked identical to the picture my dad had taken? Oh, my goodness. Because we were, because I am his. My dad used to say, it's not who you are, it's whose you are.

You belong to your mom, me, and the Lord. There will be things that you'll learn about yourself that you didn't even know you knew or could know. We were fascinated by certain things. We loved symbols and history that we just had a curiosity about, well, why is it this way? What is that over there? And so much of that...

Yeah, I mean so much of that comes from the place that you come from, the people that you come from. And I've always loved hearing you talk about your parents because they clearly are such special people to give you such deep faith and patriotism and curiosity and intelligence and all of these things that now you do every day for our Fox family that gets them information and educates them and takes them around the world.

And this is just that on steroids. And I love that this comes at the time as it does with your dad's birthday and with Father's Day. What a beautiful tribute and adventure that you take everybody on. It is now available on Fox Nation Vietnam, Footsteps of My Father with Harris Faulkner on an incredible journey. And Harris...

I want to thank you, first of all, for being on Live in the Brain and sharing the story. It's such an honor. And I'm so grateful for the time with you, Shannon. Well, we love it. It just makes me even more fascinated about all of these things that you covered. And so we're going to leave people with a clip so they can hear a little bit as we go and then check it out on Fox Nation. God bless you, Harris. God bless you, Shannon. And God bless our listeners today.

Amen. Oh, man. This is like the width of my hips. Did women get in here? Yeah. M.G. Oh, my goodness. How could they stay in here? Dad, this one's for you. All right. I'm going to try to climb back out. Arms out first. And you can turn sideways. Turn sideways. Okay.

I see the step. I think I got this. There you go. Okay. Another step. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Made it. It's really hot down there. Think about being an American soldier who's, it's his turn to go down in there. And go hunting the Viet Cong in that hole. Special breed of soldier. A special breed indeed.

We got a lot of heroes. Our warriors are amazing. America really needs to thank them. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. In these ever-changing times, you can rely on Fox News for hourly updates for the very latest news and information on your time. Listen and download now at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.