“Yeah, it’s constant. It is constant,” the one-time governor continued. “Can I name anything? No. It — but it’s a constant. It goes on all the time … where I think to myself, ‘Does this person — did this person read this book, did this person hear this fictional tale, does this person believe I’m a traitor to the United States of America and to the military because of what was written in this book?”
Ventura sat for the eight-hour deposition last November after he sued Kyle for defamation. The former sniper’s best-selling memoir, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” contains a brief description of the alleged 2006 punch.
Ventura, himself once a member of the Navy’s special forces, says the punch never happened.
The former governor remarks in the deposition that it is only the second time he has given a deposition. It also appears to be the first time he has given sworn answers to questions about his military service. Some highlights:
- The man notorious for saying, “Until you’ve hunted man, you haven’t hunted yet,” said he was in the “war zone” in Vietnam — and thus earned a Vietnam Service Medal — but admitted he doesn’t have the Combat Action Ribbon the Navy awarded to those who engaged in combat.
- He admitted his co-authors wrote his books and that he minimally read over what they had written, a practice that led to factual errors making it into print.
- He said he hadn’t read the Kyle memoir at the center of his lawsuit because, “I don’t like to read fiction”.
- The man whose higher education consisted of a year of community college said he “loved” the academic year he spent as a visiting lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. “I had the largest classes in Harvard history,” he boasted, adding, “I was kind of like Rodney in ‘Back to School,'” a reference to the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s 1986 movie about an insufferable tycoon who enrolls in college.
- The man who spent 11 years as a professional wrestler said he had a “standing offer” from WWE chairman Vince McMahon to re-enter the world of pro wrestling — maybe even as a wrestler.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get with Vince,” said Ventura, who turned 62 last month. “I mean, there’s guys wrestling for him that are older than me.”
The former governor was adamant that there was no altercation at McP’s Irish Pub, the Coronado, Calif., bar where Kyle said he punched a boorish Ventura.
“Specifically, there’s some dispute what happened or may have happened at an establishment called McP’s, correct?” Borger asked him.
“No, there’s no dispute. Nothing happened,” Ventura shot back.
“You have one account and the defendant has another account,” the lawyer said.
“That may be true, but nothing happened,” Ventura said.
When asked about how the book had damaged him, he said job offers used to come to him, but since the book was published, they’ve stopped.
“I never had to really go out seeking anything until very recently,” he said. “Usually, it came to me. But within the last year they ain’t been coming.”
Read the rest here.
Main image courtesy of Associated Press file photo: Jim Mone
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