but as kate atkinson said, you're never quite you can pull it off until do.l, just to give some perspective from, 1961 until the fall of the saigon government, the us spent more than $141 billion in south vietnam, about $7,000 for each of south vietnam's 120 million people, approximately. $800 billion in today's dollars. how do you that today? well, you know, one of the themes in my book is, all of the corruption that occurred and all of the u.s. that went missing were on the black market or ended up in the hands of the viet cong and was just such an amazing stream of men and materiel that there was no way anybody could keep track of where went. which also plays the plot of this book and any serviceman who was serving there could see that. i mean they were there. the whole premise the war was faulty because instead of declaring war and making it a real national cause that the people were behind. we had a policy that people only served 365 days in the war zone and as a result most soldiers were focused on crossing the days off on a calendar rather than caring

writing a book is hard and you get into it and see what you can do, but as kate atkinson said, you're never quite sure you can pull it off until you do. >> host: well, just to give some perspective from 1961 until the fall of the saigon government, the u.s. spent more than 141 billion dollars in south vietnam, about $7,000 for each of south vietnam's 120 million people, approximately 800 billion dollars in today's dollars. how do you process that today? >> well, in my book, all of the corruption that occurred and all of the u.s. supplies that went missing and sold on the black market or ended up in the hands of the viet cong, it was an amazing stream of men and material, there was no way that anybody could keep track of where everything went which also plays into the plot of this book. and any servicemen who was serving there could see that. i mean, they were -- the whole premise of the war was faulty because instead of declaring war and making it a real national cause that the people were behind, we had a policy that people only served 365 days in the war zone. and as a result, most

holmes is now in atkinson, about 40 minutes where i am, and where trump is going to be campaigning later today, and the weather has been following us, kristen. what are you learning? >> well, kate, it is such a joy to be in this snow and where it is not ice cold. i feel like i could take my coat off right now. you know, i am going to talk to trump's advisers today about where his mindset is. and they got in late last night to new york and in court all morning and this is what is leading up to last night, and this is the result they were looking for. they were hoping that ron desantis would come in second and this is crazy since trump spent the better part of the year attacking florida governor, but they are seeing a lot of momentum for nikki haley going into new hampshire and ron desantis does not have a path in new hampshire, but nikki haley does. so the fact that he came in second instead of nikki haley is good, the trump team believes because they believe it could have slowed down some of her momentum. now, kate, the other thing that we are watching is vivek ramaswamy, and we talked about it when chris christie dropped out of the race, and vivek ramaswamy does not own the vo