The family and friends of a local fallen soldier participated in last night’s Commander in Chief Forum on MSNBC from the comfort of Big Catz BBQ.
Marcy Gorsline is the mother of Army PFC Caleb Lufkin, who died as a result of injuries sustained in Iraq in May 2006.
MSNBC’s Cal Perry reached out to Gorsline about a week ago to see if she along with some of Caleb’s friends from Knoxville and the Army would watch last night’s forum and give some responses.
“I thought, ‘that’s a great idea,” Gorsline says. “Because I’m so for the veterans and I wanted to hear each side.”
The forum itself had NBC’s Matt Lauer asking questions of both candidates for President, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on topics related to the military, national defense and veterans.
Gorsline says the responses were “diverse” and she was interested in hearing military personnel takes on the issues.
She tells WGIL that she felt Clinton spent most of the evening defending her handling of classified emails, whereas Trump tackled important topics.
“He was very supportive of our troops about not launching ground troops and so forth,” Gorsline says. “He actually swayed me more last night than Hillary did.”
The MSNBC crew stuck in town today for a while to visit the Knoxville Fire Station where Lufkin once served, his memorial at the high school baseball field and to his grave.
