Actress Jane Fonda may be greeted by real-life protesters when she gives the send-off speech to
UCLA theater graduates on June 13, a Vietnam veteran told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
Calling Fonda's selection as commencement speaker "inhumane," Nick Callas, a California chapter president of Vietnam Veterans of America, told "America's Forum" that most soldiers of his era still "hate this woman" for her 1972 visit to Hanoi.
Fonda criticized U.S. soldiers and posed for pictures with enemy troops in an encounter that angered veterans and has shadowed her public life ever since.
"She's the wrong person, and it makes me wonder what she's going to tell these graduates at that school," Callas told "America's Forum" host J.D. Hayworth.
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Fonda, in 2013, apologized for the trip in a televised interview with
Oprah Winfrey. Callas said he doesn't accept the apology or consider it sincere.
"She's an actress and that's her profession — that's her chosen trade, " he said. "I don't believe a word of it."
"She knew what she was doing [in 1972]," said Callas, "and again, it was to attract an audience back home and because it was not a popular war."
Callas said attitudes toward U.S. troops have thankfully changed since Vietnam.
"Look at how we came home and got treated," he said, adding, "Thank God people have wised up, and boys and girls coming home today from Afghanistan — these are welcomed home. They're the heroes. So, it's OK to hate the war, but not the warrior."
Asked about the possibility of a UCLA campus protest against Fonda next week, Callas said, "Well, I believe there will be. I don't know what size."
Whatever the turnout, he said, "In the hearts of those few will be the hearts of many, because we want to make a stand, and we don't stand with a traitor."