All Episodes
Previous Next
June 16, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
58:14
Echoes of Sacrifice: Unveiling the Truth Behind Veteran Care and Political Deception
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well folks, we've hit that time of year again.
The time of year where we start to see and hear all kinds of bullshit.
All kinds of bullshit about what's coming as far as election goes.
And all kinds of skeletons and the president and the guy running against him.
All the skeletons in their closets.
Biden's got all kinds of them.
Trump's got all kinds of them.
It all just depends on who you ask.
But the question has been raised.
Which one of these guys has done the most or has done the best by veterans in this country?
Today we're going to take a little look at that.
Although I will say that the...
Information I found is not verified.
It's all opinion articles that I found online.
But it's pretty interesting to see the differences in the way that people see the accomplishments or the failures as it relates to veterans from Donald Trump when he was in office his first term and Joe Biden in his current term.
So today we're going to have a talk about that, see where that goes.
Stick with us, don't go away.
We start now.
Hello everyone and welcome here to the next installment of the Richard Leonard Show.
Before we get started, the one thing I got to do is apologize for the The putrid appearance of my hat.
This is my riding and this is the hat I wear when I ride my motorcycle.
So it's got some sweat marks on it, but it's a blue collar, well-worn, well-used hat.
And it provides me a lot of comfort when I'm riding, by the way.
Anyway, before we get started, I know that you're not going to mind me telling you about how this show is made possible.
And that is Cortez Wealth Management.
Get yourself on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Sign up for the webinars.
They happen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
Let Carlos and his staff help you find, plan, and execute a tax-free retirement plan.
This is an opportunity for you to learn how you can possibly set yourself up to enjoy whatever years and days and months you have left to walk this earth once you decide to quit working into your retirement.
Hopefully it is Long into the sunset.
But you're never going to know if you don't check it out.
So get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Once you get all the information...
If you have any comments, questions or concerns, make sure that you approach Carlos and or his staff by whatever means is best for you and let them help you get over those hurdles.
They are more than willing to do that and they are waiting for those questions, so feel free.
AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com, get on over there.
Alright, so I was perusing as I usually do and I like to browse the opinion articles, right?
So when you search a topic, and it'll bring you to, for example, the one that we're going to review today was from military.com.
It's been my experience that military.com usually publishes more left-leaning of center stuff, which is whatever.
It is what it is.
But, you know, you always come across, most of the time, you come across some pretty interesting perspectives.
A lot of them that you disagree with, some that you do agree with, and some that you're kind of middle of the road on.
And now that we are in full swing of election season and the candidates are on the campaign trail, they're in court, being convicted, family members are being convicted, facing prison time, all kinds of stuff.
There's all kinds of craziness going on.
We still have people in the country that find the time to write opinion articles about the failures and or successes of Past presidents or the current one and what they've done for veterans.
And I think that the one thing that we can all agree on is that there has been many instances, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office, of the United States government dropping the ball as it relates to the quality of care for veterans and just the overall umbrella of care For veterans in this country.
There always seems to be a lot more complaints.
A lot more confused questions.
Like people are confused about why things are the way they are.
And ask a lot.
And it doesn't matter who.
Who is sitting in that office.
And so...
I often wonder, what is the metric that is used to determine success?
How does one contemplate what success looks like as it relates to veterans' issues in this country and how a president may handle those and whether or not they're good or bad?
And of course, It's my opinion, based on the things I read and the videos you watch and then the conversations that you have out in the community, that it all depends on where you stand as it refers to the aisle, right?
Are you on the right side of the aisle, left hand side of the aisle, or are you down the middle?
And I think that Veterans issues, if they're not, which I think that they're not more now than ever, should be a nonpartisan issue 100% of the time.
I mean, we've had shows and conversations.
Jason and I had a pretty good conversation about Veterans receiving stand-alone legislation.
It's been long known that we will see what seems to be good pieces of legislation put forward to go through the process to ultimately become a law that have all kinds of bullshit hidden in them.
All kinds of pork and all kinds of things that have nothing to do with veterans care.
But because politicians know And more importantly, because the staffers of politicians know that veterans' issues, if they're not, should be the most nonpartisan issue in all of government, in my opinion.
They know how to play that game, and they know how to write it correctly, they know where to hide it, and they know that it's not likely That very many people are going to spend an overwhelming amount of time to read hundreds if not thousands of pages of legislation.
And all it takes is a few lines to put in there whatever you want.
And so then when the bell rings, the call for votes, and all our elected officials scurry to the voting place, Many times haven't read it all.
Their staffers haven't read it all.
How can you?
There's so much stuff going on and there's so many issues to talk about and to deal with.
How can you read every page of each piece of legislation that comes out to you?
Of course, when you see opinion articles about the success or the not-so-great things that presidents of current day and past have succeeded or failed at, it's all going to depend on who writes it.
And then there's the issue of how accurate is it.
And I think that if you go back and forth, back and forth, You can read articles for and against all day long about any one topic.
And I think where people have the trouble is that they don't really do their due diligence and search out what the real truth is.
And that's assuming that we get the real truth right from the get-go anyhow.
And so it's my opinion that it's hard to gauge it anyhow.
I mean, how do you know that any of this is the truth until these pieces of legislation that make it through ultimately become law?
And then you can go try to use whatever system this is or whatever benefit this is or whatever and see if it works properly.
That's really the only litmus test, I think, right?
Because anybody can write whatever the hell they want to write.
But let's go through this one, right?
So this opinion piece, we don't have to go through the whole thing.
It's pretty strongly worded to one side, and I think that you'll see what that is.
But let's just go through it quickly.
So this article was posted earlier this week on military.com.
It was an opinion piece, as I said.
So this is not, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn't been verified, a lot of these accusations made in here.
The gist of Representative Derek Von Orden.
Derek Von Orden is a Republican member.
From the state of Wisconsin.
And earlier in the month, he published an article in his support of Donald Trump and the good things that Trump has done in his last presidency.
And so here we go again with this idea that it all depends on who writes it.
Derek Von Orden writes something.
This guy, whatever the hell his name is, he writes something.
And so we just go back and forth, back and forth all the time.
So let's continue.
He published an op-ed earlier this month saying that former President Donald Trump has done much for the U.S. military members and veterans while President Joe Biden has been disrespectful, and that is nonsense.
Any good that veterans received during Trump's term in office came from others' efforts And in spite of, not because of President Trump.
Most people's actions are prompted by what they think and feel.
In Trump's case, he has never felt or shown respect for the U.S. military or its veterans.
He has thought only of how he could use them for his own purposes.
See now, to me, that's a very strong claim.
It's a very strong claim, knowing that there's two sides to every story, and I'm almost willing to bet my next paycheck that this guy is not either willing to listen to the other side of the story, but certainly doesn't know it.
But again, this is the guy writing it, and they published it.
Let's see.
Less nostalgia for Trump's presidency obscure the facts.
Let me remind you of several of the facts of his presidency.
When running for president in January of 2016, Trump skipped a Republican presidential debate for a fundraiser for veterans.
Although he received roughly $5 million in donations, he pledged an extra $1 million of his own cash.
He sent the money to veterans' charities months later, only after investigative reporters revealed he had not donated the funds.
Trump was fined $2 million by a judge for deceptive practices tied to the event.
Okay, so...
How true is this?
If the man...
If the man had said that he was going to give them a million dollars, then he should have given them a million dollars.
And that's that.
So, is it possible that he made a mistake or he just disregarded it, whatever you want to say?
Yeah, it is possible.
But is this what we're going to use as a reason to damn President Trump from...
Getting into office again or garnering any support.
For some, maybe, that's true.
And if that's the case, well, that's okay.
But to me, pay them what you said you're going to pay them.
If you didn't, if it was a mistake or you disregarded it and said, hey, hey, I'm just kidding.
And then you were asked to pay $2 million and found guilty of deceptive practices.
Well, then pay your penance and let's continue on.
Moving on.
As president, he canceled the visit to the, I'm going to butcher this, Ainsley Marne American Cemetery near Paris.
And I know that I butchered that.
I really apologize.
I should probably have figured that out before we went live today.
Hey guys, from now on, we should probably work on that, huh?
Although he falsely claimed his helicopter could not fly in the rain and the Secret Service couldn't drive him there, the truth was that keeping his hair dry was more important than honoring American war dead, as reported by The Atlantic.
Trump reportedly told staffers, why should I go to that cemetery?
It's filled with losers.
Losers?
Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice are losers?
Okay, so this clearly was taken out of context, in my opinion.
I don't believe that even if it's true that Donald Trump doesn't support or respect the veterans of this country, he isn't stupid enough.
To publicly say, or even in a room full of staffers and not publicly on a camera or anything, he's not dumb enough to say that.
I wouldn't think that.
And it kind of plays off the whole debacle that went on between him and John McCain.
Where they said that, Trump said that John McCain was a loser and he doesn't want to be You know, in the same room with somebody who's captured, and those guys are losers.
And Trump did say that John McCain is a loser, but he was talking about his failed presidential campaign.
Trump claimed that he raised John McCain a million dollars, supported his campaign, supported his run for presidency, and the guy lost, called him a loser.
That's the truth.
You lost the campaign.
You're the loser of that year's election.
He did not, however, say that John McCain was a loser for being captured.
Donald Trump did say that he preferred to be in the company of men who weren't captured.
Which was probably a really stupid thing to say.
And here's one thing that I've always said about Donald Trump.
There's some things that he could say less of.
There's some things that he could probably just hold his tongue completely on.
And maybe this was one of them.
But at the end of the day, does this really articulate that Donald Trump has no respect for any veterans?
Keep in mind that behind closed doors, allegedly, Donald Trump and John McCain...
Had their battles.
They had their disagreements.
They had their arguments.
I don't believe that they liked each other at all.
And so, there's probably some of that going on.
Now, if there is none of that going on and Donald Trump decided to say that John McCain was a loser because he was captured, well then I would say that that's completely effed up and that would be a strike against the man.
Whether you like him or not, We don't need to be calling them losers for being captured while he was sacrificing everything for his country.
And so on this one, I kind of stand in the middle of the road, but I will say this.
At the end of that interview, Donald Trump did talk about how everyone is so upset about political correctness.
And using the right tone and saying the right thing and catering to the right feelings.
And so, the one thing he did say in that interview that I agree with 10,000% is that we don't give a damn about political correctness.
And by we, I mean the proverbial we.
By we, I guess I mean anybody who agrees with what I'm saying.
It's my belief that political correctness has gotten us into a lot of situations that we could have otherwise avoided had we just been stern and truthful.
Donald Trump is the kind of guy in this interview that was on CNN talking about John McCain that said, America doesn't care about political correctness.
Or at least the people that are shouting from the mountaintops in support of President Trump.
They care about results.
And see, at a time in our country, when we have all this bullshit going on, and it only seems to be getting worse.
I don't care about your tone.
I may not like it.
But there's nothing that says I have to like it.
I may not agree with you, but there's nothing that says I have to agree with you either.
So where are we going to plant our flag?
What hill are we going to die on?
The political correct hill or the results hill?
Because when the smoke clears at the end of the day, If our country crumbles or gets much worse and begins to crumble before we all wake up, I don't think anybody's going to give two shits about political correctness.
Nobody's going to care about your tone or his tone or anybody's tone.
They're going to want to have their lives back.
And Americans who are waking up right now Are in fear of their lives being snatched from them.
And in some cases, while they're sleeping quietly at night.
Just think about it.
While you're laying in bed, resting at night.
Waiting to get up and go to work in the morning.
Or go play a round of golf.
Or go for a ride.
Whatever it is that you do.
There's a possibility that everything that you know and love could be taken away from you while you're sleeping.
Hell, it could be taken from you right in front of you while you're awake.
And I think that we see examples of that all the time.
I mean, just here in Minneapolis, not a month ago, I think it was, what, two and a half, three weeks ago?
A Minneapolis police officer was executed on the street for trying to help somebody who was injured, who just happened to be a shithead who had already committed a crime, had already shot somebody else.
This guy didn't know any better.
Went over to render aid and the guy rolled over and shot him in the face.
Or at least that's the story that I heard, that I read.
I don't know all the details.
I don't know anybody that was there, so I haven't had the opportunity to really gather all the true gory details of the situation.
But these types of things are happening all the time.
In broad daylight, in the middle of the night.
Aren't these the things that we want fixed?
And see, now we've gotten off the The trail of veterans' issues.
But I think that it's bigger than veterans' issues.
I think that it's just issues.
Issues that we face in our communities every day.
And maybe the cool thing about this show and having a show that is done by veterans...
Is that we see the world through a different lens.
I believe that.
I believe that we see all these things through a different lens.
We see them from a completely different view.
And so things like police officers getting executed while they're trying to serve the community that they're charged with protecting.
To me that's an act of war.
It's a declaration of war.
And we've talked before, everybody's talked before, about how we don't want to be fighting wars on our own streets, in our own neighborhoods.
But yet, the men and women who volunteer to get an education, be trained, And then every day they go to work, kiss their family members or hug their parents or say goodbye to somebody or something.
Hell, it could be their dog.
Not knowing if they're going to come home tonight.
You see, one of the things that Stu Peters and I talked about...
Often, when we spent those 16 years working together as bounty hunters, sitting in the same truck most of the time, thinking about and devising a plan about how we were going to intentionally put ourselves in the same room with a man or woman Who is actively evading prosecution or prison
or whatever, extra jail time.
And the lengths that people will go to stay out of jail, to stay out of prison.
The lengths that people will go to not have to answer for the crimes that they've committed.
And we've talked about it all the time.
Because we're both fathers.
We both have families.
We both have aging parents.
We both have large friend groups.
We both have dogs.
We both have things that look forward to us coming home at night.
And so the idea that on any given day, at any given time, When we put ourselves in harm's way to apprehend somebody who is actively evading prosecution and arrest that will go to great lengths and do just about anything so that we can't
catch them and bring them to jail, you had to.
You had to leave home every day And keep it in perspective.
Every day you pull away from your house.
You ask yourself, did we do a good job?
Did we provide a good house, a home for our families?
Did my wife and I provide good family support for our kids?
You know, all kinds of things.
And you have to learn to make your peace with it, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent.
Because at the end of the day, there's still a job to do.
And you're still going to stay in that vehicle and go to whatever address it is you need to be at to put yourself in the same room with this person.
With the understanding that they will, in some cases, do anything to stay out of jail, including take your life.
Or hurt you really bad.
So, these are all the things that are going on all around us.
But yet, we're worried about whether or not Donald Trump is avoiding getting his hair wet.
The things that he may or may not have said About somebody, but the results, the results are the real litmus test about what's really going on in this country and what they're doing.
Let's keep going.
During the same trip, he also told senior staffers that nearly 2,000 U.S. Marines were killed, who were killed at the World War I Battle of Baloo Wood were suckers for getting killed.
American Marines, whose motto Semper Fi means always faithful, not suckers when dying for their country.
This is what he thinks of the honorable men and women who sacrifice their bodies, family time, and even their lives for an American cause greater than themselves.
Doesn't and never will understand how a person can be true to an ideal for which he does not receive financial reward in return.
A Memorial Day in 2017, while standing in front of the grave of First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, the son of General John Kelly, who died in Afghanistan in 2010, Trump turned to General Kelly and said, I don't get it.
What was in it for them?
Well...
What was in it for us?
Was he saying that to be disrespectful?
Or was he saying it in the context of, look at the way they're treated.
Look at the way we treat veterans in this country.
What was in it for them?
How was the government treating veterans in World War I? I guess I don't even know.
But if it's anything like it is today, where it's getting better now in 2024, what was it like during World War I? We're just now getting decent.
What was it for them?
Some people would argue That we, veterans of current day, members of the military current day, should be asking themselves the same questions.
What's in it for us?
Why are we doing this?
Because often it seems like people are joining this military, they're choosing to serve this country honorably, and sacrificing a whole lot without a guarantee of any kind of Decent return on their investment,
the investment of their life, the investment of their health, their mobility, the investment of their ability to have children, the investment of giving up their mental health because war is a son of a bitch.
What is in it for us?
I think it's an interesting question.
I'd be very surprised to learn that Donald Trump asked that question as a way to laugh in the faces of World War I veterans who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
I'd be very surprised to know that.
Anyway folks, I've rambled on way too long.
We gotta take a break.
We'll be right back with you, so please stick around.
We'll be right back.
Hey, folks, welcome back here.
I think that we should burn through the rest of this article.
I'm not going to read all of it.
The guy goes on to talk about Trump's disrespect for John McCain.
We already talked about that.
But I did want to point out this one last thing right here.
It says, any good that helped American veterans while Trump was in office did not spring from his love of the military and it was not his administration's idea.
It was developed by a combination of efforts by congressional staffers, veteran service organizations, and concerned officials in the Departments of Veterans Affairs.
But President Biden has been concerned with military members and veterans for decades.
His late son, an army officer, died of cancer that the president believes came from exposure to chemicals in wartime burn pits.
Okay, so here's the thing.
This is an argument that's often made about many things as it relates to our president.
People like to talk about The mess that the president inherited when he came into office.
That was Obama's excuse for not getting anything done for the first five or six years he was in office.
Well, he inherited a mess from George Bush.
That's bullshit.
And if that's the narrative, Then we can go ahead and say that anything that Biden has done for veterans was not his work.
It was the work of Donald Trump.
And maybe even some of President Biden before Trump.
Which maybe, by proxy, maybe Biden gets a little bit of credit for it since he was the Vice President, but I highly doubt it.
I highly doubt that Sleepy Joe was doing really any great things when he was vice president other than doing what he was being told to do by the puppet master, Big Mike and her little buddy, Barack.
So anyway, as I said, it all depends on who writes it.
And so there's a whole bunch of stuff, and it depends on what side of the aisle you're on.
I will tell you this.
I want to share with you a couple of things that came out of, what's his name, Derek Van Orden, the Republican congressman from Wisconsin, that this guy was talking about early on in his article.
So I found that article and I read through that one.
Now, Mr.
Van Orden was in the Navy for 26 years, retired as a Navy SEAL senior chief.
And so this guy, Mr.
Van Orden, probably did some pretty crazy shit in his time serving our country.
The one thing I didn't mention to you was the guy who wrote the last article about how big of a dipshit Trump is, he also served in the military.
I think he had...
20-ish years, if I remember right, but he was in the Air Force as an intelligence officer.
The Air Force, he did some active duty time, it said, and then most of his time was in the reserves, I think.
Which is neither here nor there, he served.
So he deserves credit for that.
But therein lies a huge difference.
A huge difference in the way that things are seen by these two different men.
Congressman Van Orden was quite literally the tip of the spear.
Navy SEALs do a lot of the snooping and pooping and shit that we don't even know about happens.
Right alongside with the Green Berets, the Army Special Forces, and the Air Force Para-Rescue, and the Force Recon, which is a Marine unit.
Those are our special operators, the guys who Who are in control of a pretty big can of whoop-ass and they do some pretty sweet stuff in defense of our country in the name of you and I. But he had something to say about why President Trump would be great to have back in office and talked about some of the successes that Trump had when he went through his first term.
And so a couple of those things are this.
I don't have it to put on the screen, but I'm gonna share them with you.
First, he talks about some of the mishaps for veterans in the military that have happened under Biden's watch.
And he starts with this.
Tragically, President Joe Biden has failed our men and women in uniform, starting with the needless deaths of 13 service members and leaving behind as many as 9,000 Americans that live under Taliban rule during his disgraceful abandonment of Afghanistan.
We already know that that's true.
We watched it.
We watched this cowardice un-assing of Afghanistan That, in my opinion, does not fall in line with the values in which the military stands on.
We don't retreat.
We don't give up our home.
We certainly don't leave all this equipment for our enemies to just take and have and use against us.
Now, some will say that the reason why the equipment is left over there is because it costs more to bring it home than it does to buy new stuff.
And that's probably very true.
But if that's the case, why are we not destroying it?
At least do that much.
What's not talked about is The millions and millions and millions of dollars of equipment and ammunition and weapons and aircraft and vehicles that was just left behind because it was more expensive to bring home than it was to leave there is now just for anyone to take and use.
And we experienced some of this when we were leaving Iraq.
We were closing down bases.
In fact, this was happening while I was there.
I was stationed in Kuwait at this time.
But we had units going up into Iraq to close down bases and bring troops out and bring stuff out.
But they were talking about all the stuff that they left behind, like people that I know personally that were on these bases for the last time and saw the lines and lines and lines of brand new vehicles,
trucks, minivans, SUVs, things like that, TVs, computers, office equipment, Huge walk-in freeze, all kinds of stuff.
Just left.
And so, I believe that it's probably way expensive to deconstruct all these bases and bring all that stuff home.
Maybe it would have been more cost-effective to somehow get them to Europe for our forces to use or our allies to use, whatever, but we left it there.
And the question even back then, 2011 or 12 or whatever it was, was...
Why aren't we throwing Willie Pete grenades and all this shit and destroying it so it can never be used?
Because at the end of the day, folks, let's not forget that every piece of equipment, every bullet I fired, every hand grenade we threw, every flare I threw up and I popped in the air, every gallon of fuel we burned, I mean, anything.
We can probably go down a list for hours of things that were consumed by our soldiers.
We're all paid with taxpayer money.
Now, some would say that, well, you can't avoid it, right?
You got to pay taxes and we don't get to control where that money is spent.
and for the most part, I agree with that.
But I certainly extremely disagree with American taxpayer-funded equipment, weapons and ammunition, vehicles, aircraft,
being left in perfect order for our enemies to use, to take, to destroy, to whatever they do with it.
I would much rather blow it all up Burn it in place and just leave hunks of burnt metal right where it stands.
That would be a better use of our taxpayer dollars, in my opinion.
But nope, we just left it.
Let's continue.
President Donald Trump's record of support for our veterans and military families stands in stark contrast to Biden's failures.
That is why I'm proud to be leading the voice for Veterans for Trump.
Between 1.9 and 3 million US service members have served in the post 9-11 war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In August of 2021, Biden failed all of us when he orchestrated a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed U.S. military men and women during the dignified transfer of those 13 heroes.
Biden repeatedly checked his watch.
And even today, President Biden has never publicly out loud Said the names of any one of those 13 people, service members, that were killed the day that we left.
Are you telling me that that's better than somebody not wanting to get their hair messed up?
We know that that happened.
We saw it.
We saw the families talk to cameras.
We know that that happened.
Biden has run the Department of Veteran Affairs with an equal amount of disrespect.
Recently, reports uncovered that Biden paid...
Check this one out.
If this one doesn't grind your effing gears, none of them will.
And then I guess you gotta just find something else to make up your mind one way or the other.
Biden's VA paid nearly $11 million in bonuses to executives who were not eligible to receive them using funds intended to meet the needs of our veterans to instead line the pockets of career bureaucrats.
It's a disgrace.
It is also just one example of Biden's mismanagement of our tax dollars that has ultimately led to the inflation for all American families.
And see, there's another thing that's not talked about often.
All of these things are helping to take more money out of your pocket.
Not only are we leaving stuff for millions and millions, dare I say, one or two billion dollars worth of shit for somebody to just walk in and take and have, but we're also paying, with taxpayer money, 11 million dollars in bonuses to VA executives.
That money was earmarked for veteran care initiatives inside the VA. And so, let's just take $11 million, for example.
If I had an extra $11 million, the government was like, hey, I got some money for you.
You think you could do something good for veterans with 11 million bucks?
Yup.
I would start here in Minnesota and we would end veteran homelessness.
If you are a veteran of the United States military and you do not want to be homeless, you'll have a place.
Any money left over, we'll start branching out.
We would also start an initiative to raise some more money.
Once we can show that we're actually using money to help veterans in our communities, then we'll start raising more money and just spread throughout the whole country.
And maybe we can do it throughout the whole country.
If you're a veteran and you don't wanna be homeless, and you are homeless, here's a way for you not to be.
Decision is yours.
But instead, we got $11 million going to people who are already receiving a very handsome salary, which, mind you, is paid for by your tax dollars.
And see, this is the part where I get frustrated.
Because we talk about this stuff, we read it all the time.
But all these problems.
And then there's always follow-up conversations about, well, oh man, there's just not enough money.
We need to request more money.
We need to put in a request to blah, blah, blah, whatever committee it is and whatever department.
We need to get more money.
And I get it.
I understand nothing's free and everything costs money, especially if you want to do it the right way the first time.
But then there's example after example after example of how all this money is mismanaged, misspent.
And then when questioned about it, no explanation given.
And I think that that's one thing that us as constituents of all of these people that are in elected positions, these are things that we need to start asking about and we need to start getting in their asses about it.
Because otherwise it's gonna be business as usual.
Our veteran population was undoubtedly better off four years ago under President Trump, who fought day in and day out to make sure his administration served those who defended our great nation.
So some of the things that he did was kept the VA's priorities straight and made sure that our government served veterans and not bureaucrats.
He developed an Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection to hold bad VA employees accountable and created a White House VA hotline to help veterans, which was primarily staffed by veterans and their family members.
The hotline answered more than 250,000 calls While it was open, and 94% of those calls were resolved.
One of the first things that Joe Biden did when he got into office and started signing executive orders to reverse everything Trump did was shut down this hotline.
You see, The fact that 250,000 calls were made, 94% of them had resolution, is a pretty cool thing if you ask me.
But it also goes to show you that some of these complaints that veterans have about VA policy and the VA in general are easy fixes.
Are some of them probably like over the top, unnecessary or unfair or whatever?
Yeah, probably.
There's a lot of old timers out there that don't understand the ways of the new world, if you want to put it that way.
And so they got a lot to bitch about.
And I'm sure that some of these calls were old timers who were just not understanding what's going on.
Trump also fought to give our veterans health care they deserve by signing the Mission Act, which expanded health care options to our veterans, including access to walk-in community clinics.
He also offered greater access to telehealth services for my fellow veterans in rural communities through VA's Anywhere to Anywhere program.
So these are all initiatives that showed results.
And so as we were talking earlier about his interview about John McCain and how people are all concerned about tone and we're concerned about political correctness.
And Trump's comment was, these folks don't give a shit about tone and political correctness.
We want results.
And he's right.
There are systems in this country that are broken.
And we want somebody in office, if it isn't going to be Donald Trump, fine.
Whatever.
But somebody who is going to strive to achieve results.
And I think that if somebody gets into that office and they can honestly say that they're striving for result-driven outcomes, then we don't really have a whole lot to bitch about.
But the frustrating part is that we go back and forth, back and forth about who was better and who was worse, how much money was wasted, how many people's feelings were hurt.
Was this person accepted?
Were these guys accepted?
I mean, there's all kinds of just irrelevant bullshit.
And maybe all this stuff is relevant once the big picture is better solved.
Because I don't know that we'll ever, like, solve it, solve it.
And we're certainly not going to solve all of it in his four years when and if he gets re-elected.
And so, as we close out the show, one other thing to think about is, let's say Donald Trump does get re-elected.
And he does some great things for this country.
Well then what?
He can't run again.
Then what do we do?
I guess the only saving grace is that we know that Biden won't be running again.
Shit, by that time he won't be able to feed himself.
And his depends will be too bulky.
He'll look silly in his suit.
But I think as we get further and deeper into election season, ask yourself these questions.
Not just about veterans' issues, but about any issue that is important to you.
Take the time.
Do some reading.
Do some looking.
Do some searching.
And do yourself a favor and search multiple, multiple different Platforms and publications.
Because if you stick to one or two, you're going to get conflicting stories.
And to be quite honest, I never really believed it myself, but one of the places you can find some pretty accurate results on some of these things, as far as numbers are concerned, is Federal government websites.
If you go to va.gov, if you go to whitehouse.gov, if you go to the House of Representatives and the Senate and look up these pieces of legislation and then kind of follow the trail to where it goes and where it stops if it doesn't make it.
And then if you kind of just Look at the things that were going on around that time and do some other searching.
Sometimes you're going to see issues that you think are not related at all, are actually related.
And though they may not be related in context or subject, there's usually some kind of money, some kind of programming, some kind of contract, some kind of something.
Follow the people who will greatly, I shouldn't say greatly, who have the highest propensity to benefit with either money, power, or control, or any combination of the three, or all three.
And if they stop, it's because they didn't get what they wanted, usually.
Very rarely do we find, I think, do we find that things are stopped because they just don't make sense for the American people.
Usually things get stopped because there's not enough money in it.
Or there's disagreements about who's gonna control what.
Anyway folks, that's all we have time for today.
We probably could keep going on this for another hour.
But in closing, we owe it to ourselves.
We owe it to ourselves to be informed.
We owe it to ourselves to make sure that we have at least a basic understanding of the things that are important to us as it relates to people who you are going to vote for.
This all with the idea that the elections are going to be free and fair and all that other bullshit.
But we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our children and our communities to at least be self-aware of what's important to us And how those candidates best support those things.
And you're gonna find that there's gonna be candidates that don't really support the belief system that you have, but you gotta pick the lesser of two evils.
Who's gonna support you the best?
And you always, keep in mind, have the opportunity to write in your vote.
You can write in Richard Leonard if you want, you can write in Mickey Mouse, write in your own self, your parents, whatever you want.
But I still believe that it is important That we as Americans get out and vote.
We gotta do it.
A lot has been sacrificed just for our right to cast a vote.
And we'll figure out the free and fair thing.
But at least go out and do it.
Don't wear the sticker though.
Stickers are stupid.
Anyway, you guys take care of yourselves.
Have a great week.
Thank you for joining us again this week.
Have a great evening, and we'll see you on down the road.
▲
Export Selection