America 'being ripped apart': Vietnam vet removes U.S. flag in Trump protest

02 June

Veterans attend the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

Vietnam marine Morgan Akin, 84, has taken down his American flag, and he’s outspoken about his opposition to the White House in his conservative California community.

“He’s just tearing the country apart. The whole fabric of the country is just being ripped apart,” Akin said of President Donald Trump. “The worst part is the people that are getting hurt – the migrants that came here in earnest.”

The Guardian reports Akin took down his flag after flying it for decades. He says this is an official stand against a nation that has become unrecognizable to him over the decades. He says it “won’t fly again until things get straightened out down the line and administrations change.”

He told reporters the Trump administration is risking many elements of his life and the lives of his family. As a disabled veteran he personally receives care from the local VA facilities. He describes it as some of the best health services he’s experienced, but Trump’s mass layoffs in the system, the canceled contracts and hiring freezes have imperiled veteran patient care. He told reporters his daughter works as a teacher for Head Start, an early childhood education program for low-income families, which the administration recently proposed cutting.

“What happens to me is immaterial because I’m 84 years old. My lifespan is decreasing daily, so it’s probably not going to have a big impact on me overall. But I have two children. I have three grandchildren. I’ve got now four great grandchildren,” he said. “How is that impacting their future?”

Akin’s home near Redding, California is a red spot in a largely blue state, and some of his conservative neighbors have asked him why he doesn’t move. He told the Guardian people have asked him to remove anti-trump signs in his yard, and someone even threw a rock through the back windshield of his truck.

His community does not appear to care about White House attacks on the judiciary or attacks on freedom of speech, however. Nor are they alarmed when the Trump administration detained legal resident Rümeysa Öztürk, seized by masked immigration agents over an opinion she wrote in the school newspaper.

“They don’t want to be shown, which indicates to me, they know they’re doing the wrong thing, but they’re doing it anyway,” he said, adding he will not buckle to requests to move.

“When I move, I’m going to Igo, that’s it. Nowhere else,” Akin said, making a reference to the veterans’ cemetery in the nearby town of Igo.

Read the full Guardian report here.

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