Last week in his press conference with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, President Barack Obama had this to say:

…we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.

Obama waxed on in this vein for quite a bit in that press conference.

Here’s how Ho used his…inspiration:

• October 1945…Ho ordered the slaughter of his political opponents, including 50,000 of the then-powerful Trotskyist communists.
• …butchery of peasant farmers who resisted his brutal taxation in the early days of Ho’s regime.
• …killing of landlords and bourgeois-class merchants….
• Estimates…as high as half-a-million killed in Ho’s effort to consolidate power….
• Following…US retreat from Vietnam, untold thousands of Vietnamese, deemed collaborators by the regime, were put to death.
• [Ho]…used VI Lenin’s tactics: murder, terror and “reeducation” to obtain, maintain, and expand power.

Keep in mind that Obama is a highly trained lawyer and politician.  In the former capacity, knowledge of history was part of his training (he went to Harvard, after all), and in both capacities, words are his stock in trade.

Obama knew exactly what he was saying in the press conference.

Hmm….