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Charles Pope, 74, outside his home in Marshalltown, Iowa
Photo: Aleksander Sarovic
Charles Pope leans forward in his chair and looks outside through the window on the other side of the living room.
On the windowsill is a baseball cap sewn on in capital letters "Vietnam", identifying the person wearing it as a veteran of the war that traumatized America in the 1960s and 1970s.
Pope laughs bitterly and says: "Guess I was the sucker."
As "suckers" (loosely translated and politely formulated: naive) and "losers" (losers), according to a report in the US magazine "The Atlantic" two years ago, Donald Trump described US soldiers who died in the First World War and were on one Military cemetery are buried in France.
The President vehemently denies this.
But other media have essentially confirmed the report.
And Charles Pope doesn't doubt for a moment that Trump said it that way.
He himself, says the pensioner, was probably one of those idiot naive people.
"Only I didn't die."
On the lawn of his house in Marshalltown, Iowa, in front of the small porch with the large electric grill, Pope has stuck an unmistakable blue election poster that reads "Biden Harris".
He is white, fit 74, served in Vietnam between 1966 and 1968 and built blast furnaces and air conditioning here in this prototypical Midwest town for 38 years.
Pope sums up the reasons why he will vote for Biden and against Trump in one term: decency.
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