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March 16, 2025 - Stew Peters Show
01:07:46
The Chaos Behind Trump’s VA Cuts: A Nation on the Edge
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Well, folks, nine weeks.
Tomorrow will be the start of Mr. Trump's ninth week as president of his second term.
Nine weeks.
And the country is still in complete madness.
Still in complete madness.
And some are asking, what the hell is really going on around here?
What's really going on in the halls of our government?
Elon's president and Trump's the press secretary.
Who's really running the show?
All kinds of garbage.
And the answer is, in my opinion, who really knows at this point?
I don't know that we're far enough along to make all kinds of generalizations and...
I think the smoke hasn't even cleared from the disaster that was the previous administration.
What I do know is that it's clear that there's a lot of steps being made, and there's a lot of hammers falling.
And we've seen that, both good and bad.
And who knows if President Trump is responsible for all those.
Maybe he is, maybe he's not.
I guess the court of public opinion, as usual, will make that determination.
It's not for me to say.
Who knows if it's even for you in particular to say.
We all have our own opinion.
But today I think we should have a little bit of a discussion about all this craziness going on centered around This potential shutdown and firing, just outright firing of 80,000 VA employees.
Allegedly, we're just going to fire them for no reason because we hate veterans.
And I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
I think that we're getting a little quick to jump to conclusions, maybe.
I don't know if we have all the information, maybe.
I don't know if we're digging deep enough into some of this stuff to really have a truly educated and thoughtful opinion about it.
I don't know if we've dug into both sides enough to find out what's bullshit and what might be the truth.
And what might just be an outright lie?
So today we're going to discuss that a little bit.
And again, remember, I'm no expert.
I'm no politician, for sure.
I just, I like to read a little bit.
I like to watch what's going on around me.
And I form my own opinions.
And I love talking to you guys about it.
And we have some pretty good discussions offline in the comments and emails back and forth with people, stuff like that.
And so I think that it's helpful, it's fruitful to build community by having these discussions.
We don't always have to agree, of course, and we don't, but I still think it's a healthy way for grown-ups, for grown-ups to communicate.
So, with that being said, stick with us, don't go away, we start now.
Hey everybody, and welcome.
Welcome to another installment of The Richard Leonard Show.
This is, I believe, 178, 179 Richard Leonard shows that we are taking part in today.
And so I would like to, again, say thank you if you are a returning viewer.
Thanks for coming back.
Thanks for taking part and participating.
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I hope that you do come back.
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Things that you would like to say, and you'd like to leave comments.
We love the comments.
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Okay.
The other thing I wanted to say quickly before we get started in the discussion, and we've got a lot to get to, is if you notice me looking a little funny or Discombobulated, maybe.
It's the lights.
I recently had a brain operation to fix this deal I have going on with this intracranial hypertension.
So I had stents put into my brain.
I got another one coming in a couple weeks I got to do.
But it must be done.
I want to put a plug in here, though, for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
These people, these people, by the way, are amazing.
And so I live about two hours away from the Mayo Clinic.
I got down there at about 8 o'clock in the morning a couple weeks ago now.
A week and a half.
I had it done on the 5th of March.
I checked in at 8.15.
I had this procedure where they implanted these stents in my brain.
And by 2.30 in the afternoon, I was all the way back at home in bed.
It wasn't an amazing experience.
It's quite painful.
The recovery is quite painful.
Anytime they leave hardware in your brain, the brain doesn't like that, just for common knowledge, if you didn't know.
But it's necessary.
This procedure will save my vision.
I was losing my vision slowly but surely.
And this will prevent me from having massive strokes before I'm an old man.
So it's necessary.
I had to do it.
And so the light sensitivity is something that I haven't recovered from yet.
But I had to be here.
I can't.
I can't sit in bed.
I can't sit in my chair.
I can't sit in the dark very much longer.
It was driving me nuts.
So here I am coming and doing the show and talking.
I got to do something.
So if I look discombobulated, it's probably the lights and my eyes are stinging a little bit, but we'll get through it.
We'll be okay.
So anyway, I just wanted to say that.
Nobody thought I was having some kind of episode that was unexpected.
All right, moving on.
VA shutdowns.
The VA has been on the GAO's list of problem children, we could say, for quite a while.
Ten years or so.
It's a high-risk agency, and probably rightfully so.
You know, I mean, after all, the Department of Veterans Affairs and VA Medical is probably, not probably, it is.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is.
The things that I've read would tell me that it is the biggest healthcare provider in this country.
They got a hundred and something odd hospitals.
They got clinics.
They got satellite clinics that pop up here and there.
They got a ton of staff.
And so recently, now that the Doge is going through all these agencies, it's come out that the VA hopes to cut 15% of its workforce, which is about 80,000 people.
Now, that number sounds alarming.
It sounds like a lot.
And the initial reaction that I witnessed via social media, via the bullshit mainstream media, was that now all of a sudden, the right side of the aisle and the president and Elon Musk and anybody else who supports them, they don't give a shit about veterans.
They don't care.
And that poses a problem because it's blatantly false.
I don't believe that that's true.
In fact, Doug Collins, the new secretary of the VA, which we're going to hear from sometime in the show, was on with Maria Bartiromo sometime earlier this week.
And they're talking about all of this.
And the idea is, much like has been the narrative of the new administration and its supporters and the cabinet and all these things since the beginning, these agencies are overstaffed,
overfunded, And many of them don't need the amount of people that they have to complete the mission that they're doing.
Now, I am not a person who is saying, yep, we need to cut 80,000 people from the VA because we hate veterans.
Knowing that a large percentage of VA employees are veterans, which means that of these 80,000 people that they're going to cut, they're going to cut some veterans out.
I think that that's unavoidable in this particular situation.
But just because...
Just because we're veterans doesn't mean that we get to sit in positions in the federal workforce, in the state, city, county, local, private workforce, and just collect a paycheck and either do redundant work, do subpar work, We have to be able to justify our existence.
The VA for example needs to be able to justify their massive budget every year.
They have to.
The federal government, in my opinion, needs to be able to justify its massive, massive budget to the American people every year.
And the VA, of course, is a federal agency, just like the DOD, the Department of Justice, you know, all these other agencies that are also getting audited and getting swept through.
We have to do this.
And also keep in mind that a lot of these things...
We're being told are probably temporary until these audits are finished and completed and they're analyzed and we decide who should be doing what and how many people it should take versus how many customers or clients or patients or whatever they see and serve and all these things.
But I don't know that it's helpful for anybody, whether you agree or disagree, to just jump right to conclusions about who cares, who doesn't care, who's going to get rich on cutting all these people and cutting all these programs.
Is there going to be mistakes made?
Yeah, I'm sure there are.
In fact, I think it was last week, if I remember right, where President Trump told Elon, alright, enough of the hatchet, let's kind of scalpel our way through this stuff.
And so, like, there are precautions in place.
And there is oversight.
And this narrative that President Trump told Elon, go forth.
Go forth and...
And just cut everybody out.
Let's cut everybody out and then we'll fill our own pockets, our own billionaire pockets.
We'll fill them up and we'll become trillionaires.
That's stupid.
It's really stupid.
It's a dumb narrative.
If you take the time, for example, to go to the Doge website and look line by line by line, At what they've found and what it's going to and how much it is by each agency.
It's really kind of remarkable how it's organized.
I think that most folks who are losing their minds about this would have a tough time defending a lot of this shit that we see on these lists.
Now, some will say, well, it's all just a big lie.
Of course, Elon Musk is a billionaire and apparently he's a smart guy and he can just build all these lies on a website.
Okay.
But then ask yourself, why?
Why would the richest man in the world want to fuck over the American people to become the more richest man in the world?
I don't know.
I don't buy it.
Personally, I don't buy it.
Are there other ulterior motives?
Some will say so, but I also don't buy that.
I just don't see it.
When you hear people talk about that for far too long, we have been fisted.
We've been fisted by the rest of the world when it comes to trade, when it comes to the economy as a whole, when it comes to the race to the moon that everyone says is fake.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not.
If the argument is that nobody's been there, then how does anybody know what really is going on?
It's a dumb argument, in my opinion.
Nobody's been there, so how does anybody know what it really looks like?
How does anybody know that the earth is flat or round?
It's fucking stupid.
It's a waste of time to even talk about it.
It's dumb.
But as it relates to the VA and cutting 80,000 jobs, trust me, folks, if you haven't ever worked at a VA facility, Maybe try and go in there and ask for an informational interview or see if you can shadow somebody.
Shadow somebody that's not a nurse, that's not a medical assistant or a CNA or a frontline staff worker.
Go in there and shadow some administrative people.
And by all means, go and shadow a nurse or a CNA or medical, all that.
Go ahead.
I think that if you spend a week in a VA facility, you're going to find that there's people that don't have a full day's work every day.
And when we're at a place in this country where we are on the verge, Apparently, allegedly, on the verge of financial collapse.
I think that it's something to take a real serious look at.
And I don't know that anybody needs to apologize for that.
I don't know that anybody even should really be apologizing to veterans for that.
If you are a person who served in the military, And you're working in a job in the VA and you're not doing your job as you should or you're doing subpar work or you don't have enough work and you're not able to keep yourself busy.
I don't think that you should be surprised if they consider eliminating your position.
What happened when you were in the military and you didn't do your job?
What happened?
I could tell you what would happen to me and my team of people when we were downrange in combat and somebody chose not to do their job or couldn't if they weren't able to.
If they couldn't do their job or weren't able to, guess what?
They got a different job.
The difference is, in the military, they can't just fire you and kick you out unless it's something egregious or it's an injury that will certainly preclude you from serving out the rest of your time.
Which is why people like me got medically retired.
They didn't think that I could continue doing my job to finish out my career, so I got medically retired.
But if you're not able to do the work to the standard that is set for you, I fail to see how you're surprised.
Are we as veterans in a place where we expect a free ride?
Do we expect a free ride, a free job, a free paycheck beyond what we're getting in VA disability, what we're getting in education benefits, what we're getting in this and that?
We didn't get it as soldiers.
We didn't get it before we were soldiers.
And quite frankly, I don't know that we should want to get that.
As veterans.
We talk a lot on this show and other shows about how your commitment to service, maybe not for everybody.
Maybe I shouldn't speak for all veterans.
It's not a maybe.
I shouldn't speak for all veterans.
But when that uniform comes off the very last time, When you take off your uniform for the very last time in your career, it's a very bittersweet moment.
In fact, the last day of my service, I think I wore it until I went to bed.
I think I lounged around the house in it.
I didn't want to take it off.
I knew it was my last time to wear it as a United States Army infantry soldier.
It was bittersweet.
But we know.
We know what's next.
We know what's coming.
But at no time did I think, boy, I think I'm going to go try to work at the VA and I'll just hang out there.
Let's hang out there and I'll collect a paycheck.
Just chill.
That's not how it works.
That's not what we were taught.
That's not how we were brought up in the military.
That's just not what happened.
It's not what we did.
And so, I guess I fail to see what the argument is.
I understand that the argument is, Things like the one I saw just yesterday, I think it was, that the veteran crisis line is going to go away.
Who said that?
Veterans aren't going to be able to get care at the VA. There's going to be nobody there.
Who said that?
If you ask Doug Collins, care?
And benefits and everything in between shouldn't be affected.
Why do we have any reason to think that he's lying to us?
He's been in the job for nine weeks.
And then you see online people are...
We're posting pictures from VA facilities of signs where there's nobody at a desk and, well, if you need assistance, call this person because there's nobody there.
And then the caption that, well, Trump fired these people.
What a travesty to veterans.
Anybody ever stop to think that maybe that person went on vacation?
Maybe they got sick?
Maybe somebody died?
Maybe, who knows, maybe they had a baby.
Why is the first thought that because Trump's president that he got fired, that he fired these people?
Stupid.
It's all about the narrative and the spin zone that the mainstream media is putting out.
But for some reason, we have forgotten how to think deeper.
We've forgotten how to look deeper.
We've forgotten how to look at both sides of an argument.
But we're real quick to just jump to conclusions because there's somebody on this news station or that news station or something like that that's going to tell us what's what.
Well, maybe that sounds plausible.
Yeah, let's go with that.
Well, I think that we're in a place.
We're in a place and time in this country where it's probably a horrible, horrible idea to just run with the first thing you hear.
What it seems that we've forgotten how to do is to think for ourselves.
What we seem to have forgotten is, hmm, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Why would that happen?
Why would anybody do that?
Why would somebody fire all these people?
For no reason.
Why would people who are in the top 5% of the richest people in our society Fire all these folks to make themselves the more richest people in our society?
When they've already shown that that's not their goal?
I don't know.
Maybe I'm the fucking ignorant one.
Maybe I'm stupid.
But I go back to The idea that Donald Trump could be doing a whole lot of things other than getting shot and being ridiculed and having his family under intense scrutiny all the time.
He could be doing a whole lot.
He could be living on his ocean cruise liner if he has one.
I'm sure he does.
If he wants one, he could have one.
And sailing the world in luxury.
Or flying in his jumbo jets to wherever he wants in the world and bringing his family with him and eating McDonald's in every continent.
And trying Coke in every country of the world.
And do it and play golf everywhere.
He's worked a long time.
He's made a lot of money.
He's an amazing businessman.
Yeah, he's filed bankruptcy a few times.
Yeah, apparently in the locker room he talked about grabbing some lady by the pussy.
Yeah, he said that.
But we can't argue with the results of his business workings.
We can't argue with the results he put out his first term as president.
We can't argue with the election map.
We can't argue with the thousands and thousands, millions of people that on November 5th voted for him.
Sure, sure people are going to say it was stolen.
People are going to say, well, the Jews did it.
It's all because of the Jews, because he's sucking wieners of the Jews or whatever the hell that narrative is.
They're going to say all that stuff.
Who knows?
Who knows what the truth is?
But I'll tell you what, the truth for a lot of Americans, it seems, is that they wanted him in there.
They wanted him in there based on the promises of what he said he was going to do.
For us.
And on day one, he started doing it.
On day one after the inauguration, he took a knee next to his Belgian Malinois named Tom Holman.
Maybe Tom Holman's more of a junkyard dog.
That guy is something.
Grabbed the end of the leash, took it off, and said, get him.
And that's what he did.
He said, day one, we start the biggest deportation event this country has ever seen.
That's what he did.
He also said, we're going to find all this fraud and waste and abuse, and we're going to bring money back to the American people.
We're going to find all this fraud, and we're going to expose it.
He did that too.
I mean, there's a lot of things that he said he was going to do, and he's done them.
And an overwhelming amount of people voted for that.
Was it stolen?
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm not smart enough to read between the lines.
Maybe I'm ignorant.
Maybe I'm falling and drinking the Jesus juice or whatever the hell they call it.
But you know what?
As it pertains to veterans in this country, that's what I really care about at this point.
Today, it seems to be the hot topic.
Why all of a sudden is everybody concerned about the VA? Why is everyone concerned about veterans all of a sudden?
For many years, veterans were just a side conversation.
Yep, we gotta take care of vets.
They're really important.
Super important.
Now we've come to a time where they're in headline news.
Is it only because is the VA the next stop for Doge?
So now we're concerned about veterans?
I don't know, man.
I think that there's a lot of unanswered questions and there's a lot of people freaking out about stuff without enough information.
Have there been people fired already?
I think so.
And I don't know.
I don't work at the VA. I don't really know anybody anymore that works at the VA. Everybody I knew that worked for VA in the past has left because it was not a great place to work.
Many people said that they were way overworked and their co-workers weren't doing nothing.
And they were doing the jobs of two or three other people.
And so when they come out and say, we need to cut 80,000 jobs because there's too much redundancy, well, that kind of fits the narrative of the people I know that work or have worked in the VA system, that aren't frontline workers, that work at the vision level, that work in management.
And that's a strain.
It's a strain on the people at those levels that are doing amazing things for veterans.
And there's a lot of them.
And so, I guess, we just have to wait and see.
And we need to take a break.
As usual, I went over time.
But we'll be right back.
Stick with us.
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Hey folks, welcome back here.
Before we continue on, we ended the last segment with talking about maybe we've got to just kind of wait and see how all this plays out.
After all, it's been nine weeks.
There's a lot of people freaking out.
Some folks are saying, well, the freakout is unwarranted.
Some folks are saying, well, don't say it's unwarranted because I'm going to lose my job or I have lost my job or veterans are going to suffer and they're going to die waiting for benefits.
They're going to be pushed out into the cold or whatever the narrative is.
But I think we should just play the clip of the interview that Doug Collins, the new Secretary of VA, was on with Maria Bartiromo a couple days ago.
In fact, it might have been a few days ago.
I'm not exactly sure when, but sometime earlier this week.
And he has a message.
He has a message for these people that are spewing this narrative, for folks who are scared, and for people that are freaking out that they're going to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, and all that stuff.
And so, take it for what it's worth.
But also remember that it's been nine weeks.
It's been nine weeks.
And so I understand that there's a sense of urgency and there's a sense of panic maybe for folks who have been working in the government system for a long time.
I get it.
But these are the things that we voted for.
We talk all the time.
If you don't like it, we got to change it at the ballot box.
That's how we as Americans can make change.
We've got to vote differently.
Well, this is how we voted.
So whether you like it or not, this is how America voted.
And so maybe this will give you a different perspective.
Maybe it won't matter at all.
But this is what Doug Collins has to say.
So let's check it out here.
Here we go.
That's what we all want, accountability and better care.
I want to get your take on what's going on in Congress.
Look, you were there.
You know what they're going through and trying to come to an agreement, right, when you were the congressman from Georgia.
I mean, the House passed a spending bill to keep the government funded through September.
It now heads to the Senate, where it must pass and get to Trump's desk before the end of the day on Friday, or to avoid that government shutdown.
President Trump called the passage a big win for Republicans and for America.
And this bill provides $6 billion for veterans' health care.
Mr. Secretary, is that the right number?
How will you make sure that new funding is properly spent?
And where does that money go now, once it is in fact official?
No, great.
Look, Maria, if the other side wants to shut down the government, I mean, that's in the Senate right now for them to decide.
I think the House has made a very strong statement, and the President Trump leading that way, but also Speaker Johnson and the others, they've shown unity.
Remember, everybody thought no one in the House could get anything passed.
Well, they surprised everybody so far because they understand what's at stake, and that's our future in our country.
Look, what we get from this budget will go toward things that we have said it's going to go toward.
It's going to go toward veteran health care.
It's going to go toward making sure our benefits.
And also, let me say one thing, because I didn't mention this earlier, Maria, but I want to say it.
And for Senator Blumenthal, Senator Duckworth, all these senators, and others, even on the approach committee up there, who actually say, That we're going to cut disability benefits and we're going to cut health care to veterans.
All I will say to you is quit scaring my veterans.
Quit scaring my employees.
Don't talk in things that you know are not true.
We're going to fight back on this every way because I don't want to see this happen because I get calls from veterans every day who love what they get at the VA, and they're saying, is this going to go away?
And I tell them, no, quit letting them scare people because they're doing it for political gain for the folks that they want to support, which is a bigger government and bigger stuff that they know has not worked in 10 years of being on the high-risk list.
And what do we need for our veterans who come back from their incredible service, having seen the ultimate...
Terrible things that they actually are witness to.
I want to get your take on that because, you know, over the last four years when Joe Biden was sending all that money to all the illegals and housing illegals and caring for illegals, a lot of people said, why are we accepting money going to foreigners, money going to people who came into this country and broke the law, came here illegally, and we see veterans on the street and they're homeless right now.
So give us a sense of what you want to be able to provide.
Our very courageous men and women who put their lives on the line for this great nation and then came back and tried to, you know, assimilate into the country once again.
That's one of my sort of closest to my heart projects here at the VA. And also the VA, especially senior leadership, know that I'm not happy.
I'm not happy that over the past five to six years, we spent over three billion dollars in both homelessness and suicide prevention and suicide care.
And we're not seeing the numbers move.
Homelessness has went down some.
I'll grant you that.
But when you have almost 40,000 still homeless, that means that you're spending $3 billion and we're not making the dent that I believe we could actually make.
So I'm asking different questions, Maria.
I'm asking, why are we doing what we're doing?
Let's reevaluate this.
Do we need consultants telling us, you know, things that we already know?
Or do we need more programs out there with the people maybe out with partnership with the VA that are actually talking to veterans who may not want to come in, but they're out there and they're calling their battle buddies.
They're calling.
They're calling those folks, but yet we need to get help to them because most statistics and studies show that roughly 50% or more of those who are death by suicide are not in contact with the VA. We've got to act differently here, and I'm tired of us asking the same questions, doing the same things, and expecting a different result.
You know what that's called?
It's called insanity, and we're not going to have it anymore here at the VA. Thank you for making...
Uh-huh.
See?
Now, there we go.
There's an example of a very worthwhile look at what we're spending money on.
$3 billion a year for veteran homelessness and veteran suicide to combat it.
$3 billion a year.
Now, just for context, in 2023, here in the state of Minnesota, in 2023, there was reported, whether the number is accurate or not is another conversation, but the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, the state of Minnesota, reported that there was 339 Homeless veterans in the state.
Which in the grand scheme of things, as far as homeless veterans go, isn't a huge number.
Because it's like at 13 or 14,000.
Now they say it came down to about 11,000.
But here in the state, 339,000 in 2023. In 2024, they say it came down to 299,000.
That's progress.
Nobody will argue with that.
But let's dig deeper.
There are organizations in the state of Minnesota who, for years, have been getting millions and millions of dollars in federal grants, donor money, donor dollars.
Millions of dollars.
And we still have only knocked it down less than 100 people a year.
I would venture to say that for millions and millions of dollars, we probably could have, even if they're little shanties with space heaters.
And in nominal electricity just to get folks by so they don't freeze to death and starve to death and have a safe place to rest their head.
Millions and millions of dollars over the last four or five years?
It's been longer, but just for conversation's sake, four or five years?
We couldn't have housed three or four hundred homeless veterans?
What's really going on with all of this money?
These non-profits in the state of Minnesota who are eating up money and CEOs and executive directors have high six-figure salaries and beautiful offices and they're traveling all over to talk about How they're going to end veteran homelessness?
I read an article that was written in August of last year that said the state of Minnesota is on track to completely end veteran homelessness in 2025 for the state.
No.
No, we're not.
We're not on track to end veteran homelessness in the state.
We didn't even knock it down 100 people in a year.
There's 299 left.
The truth is, if these people took all the money that they were given, and all the money that they raised, I'll give it to them.
They're good fundraisers.
They're good property managers.
They seem to be a decent real estate companies.
I mean, if they were to really Want to end veteran homelessness.
I think they could have done it.
I think that they could have spent millions and millions of dollars to build something to put folks in to get them off the street.
But I will say this.
Having worked in the state of Minnesota for a non-profit that chose to revitalize A historic property that was once used by the military back in World War I and II was an old base that was restored,
and then we put veterans who were on the verge of or experiencing homelessness in there with state and county subsidies and federal VA subsidies.
I mean, albeit we had 68 units.
So, I mean, we weren't really set up to end veteran homelessness, but we filled the place.
And it was expensive.
Restoring this property to its past glory, revitalizing it, because it's historic, came with all kinds of rules and regulations.
And maybe rightfully so, so we don't forget what it was like when it was initially built and used for the war effort.
It was an amazing project.
But it became clear at some point that it was more about property management.
It was more about how we were going to get veterans to...
Pay their $93 under the subsidy or their $133 or whatever their nominal rent was so that the county could pay the rest, so that the company could get paid.
And rightfully so.
They've got to keep the lights on.
But when it came time, which was my area, to provide services for folks, that was met with opposition.
Well, we can't talk to veterans.
We can't talk to veterans like they're soldiers.
We've got to be nice.
And I agree.
We've got to be nice to them.
But sometimes, sometimes when you're working with men and women who are living on the streets, and their one biggest worry every night...
Is whether or not, one, they're going to be assaulted, two, someone's going to piss all over their belongings, and all they have are the three bags that they can carry, one on their back and one in each hand, and when they wake up, they're covered in urine because somebody didn't like them, or they pissed off the wrong person, or they're sleeping in my corner.
They don't give a shit about being nice to me.
At one time in their lives, these people were going through basic training.
They knew that they had to wake up in the morning.
They had to get to PT. They had to shit shower and shave.
And they had to be in the right place, at the right time, in the right uniform, and do their effing jobs.
And so, if you talk to them that way, for many of them, you can see it in their face.
It sparks something in here.
Oh.
Yeah, you're right.
We'll get right on that.
Or you're met with a little resistance and you remind them, hey man, this isn't me trying to stomp your dick in the dirt.
This is me trying to help you be successful because without A, B, and C, you can't be here.
And I don't want to see you out on the street.
So get your shit together and let's make this happen.
Let's get you a certification.
Let's get you a job, a part-time job or a full-time job.
Let's get you to the VA where you can get some care for the things that are ailing you.
Let's get you back on track.
Some of them hadn't seen their kids in 15 to 20 years.
Let's get you to a spot where you can come and sit in my office and we can call your kids and arrange a time for you to see them for the first time in 20 years.
And when you do that, you don't look like you're homeless.
You look like you're helping yourself.
Give them a mission.
Give them something to strive for.
Don't just put them somewhere and let them do the same shit that got them to the place they were at before you got to them.
But the fact of the matter is that a lot of these organizations, they want to portray we're helping veterans.
And how could we not?
They're our nation's treasure.
But the only thing that we harp on them about is paying their rent on time.
We don't hold them accountable for leaving their building, the place they live, a mess, smelling like garbage and feces and piss.
We don't hold them accountable when they got scabies and bedbugs from walking around the common areas to infect everyone else.
We don't hold them accountable for cleaning up after themselves and making sure that the place is nice and presentable so when your neighbor's family comes to visit them, it's nice.
And have community events where everyone can get together and feel good about where they're at.
Build a team, a small family, like we did in the military.
We can't do that.
Well, yeah, we can do that.
But we've got to be nice.
Sometimes veterans don't necessarily understand your version of nice.
They don't get that.
And so, when we talk about VA shutdowns, and we're going to cut 80,000 jobs, maybe we should.
Maybe we should.
Maybe it'll bring better people.
It'll bring better people to VA that are going to be accountable, that are going to keep themselves busy, that are going to make the experience for veterans when they come to a VA facility all that much more enjoyable.
It'll make it a lot more advantageous of their time, which all means Better care.
But we're spending billions of dollars to combat things that aren't moving.
Doug Collins mentioned the suicide rate.
We're spending billions of dollars to combat suicide.
We talk about that often.
This show, Disgruntled on Three Clicks Media, we talk about it there too.
We talk about it all The time.
And the numbers don't change.
What are we spending billions of dollars on?
How are we combating this problem?
And as he said, many of them, they find, are not even enrolled or involved in VA. And why is that?
Because going to the VA for people many times is a dismal experience.
Dismal.
It's difficult to navigate.
It's frustrating to go through the process to just get enrolled.
God forbid you try to navigate the system to get yourself benefits, disability benefits.
You certainly can't do it on your own.
I mean, hell, here in Minnesota, for example.
They're fighting in the legislature about who should be qualified to help veterans receive benefits.
Are VA-accredited lawyers really needed?
Yeah, they're needed.
County veteran service officers, your county veteran service representatives, your claims reps, VA, they can't do the same thing.
So when veterans feel like they got the short end of the stick and they're able to prove that they were unjustly or maybe there was a mistake made and they need a lawyer to help them adjudicate their claim in a court against the VA, they're supposed to use a VA claims officer to get their benefits?
I don't think so.
But these people can't even agree that veterans should have an option.
And why is that?
Because lawyers need to be paid?
I mean, let's face it.
If the process of veterans getting the care, the benefits, even the recognition that they deserve or feel that they deserve, Was smooth?
Maybe a couple hiccups here and there?
Then nobody would be bitching about it.
But can anybody explain one, just one instance of one benefit that pays you any kind of income, any kind of disability, social security disability, workman's comp?
VA disability, any of those things?
I don't know a lot about workman's comp stuff.
I've never had to deal with it.
But anything that pays you money, is there any one of them that is a smooth process?
If you're not a shitbag and not trying to take advantage of the system, is there any of them that's a smooth process?
It's very rare that you hear of...
Of veterans having a smooth process through the comp and pen nightmare.
And now we have a president and his cabinet and these people within the organization that are looking to make it better.
And if downsizing it a little bit to make it better, to attract better people, Who will be hired or retained based on their merit because they're good at their jobs, they're efficient, and they know what they're doing?
Why the hell would we want anything less than that?
Why would we want anything more than that?
If our systems are redundant, And we're paying billions of dollars to problems that aren't being fixed.
Where do you start?
Where do you go to look for a fix, for a solution?
If you own a business and you've been in business for 20 years and you've been losing money, Or barely able to stay afloat.
You know, you're in business.
You're making a little bit of money.
Just enough to make it worth it, to keep it going.
And then you go, well, wait a minute.
I'm working all these hours.
I've got these employees I've got to pay.
My business is making a lot of money, but that's on paper.
Business owners, I mean, where do you start?
You start probably with your processes and your people.
If your people aren't doing the job properly, and in this case at the VA, whether they're veterans or they're not, well, if you're a veteran and you're not doing your job, I'm sorry.
You're going to have to look for work somewhere else.
Do I think that just because you're a veteran, you should be given a job and given a paycheck and not doing work?
No, I don't think you should be.
Do I think that you should be a protected class?
Yeah, I think veterans should be a protected class.
We're a small percentage of the population, and we've sacrificed a lot for this country, but I don't believe that that gives us a free ride to just do nothing.
If it's true that your service should or could continue after your time in uniform is over, then why would we work less hard?
You work just as hard as you can.
If you're disabled or you're sick, well, then you have to work within the confines of your disability or whatever that is or whatever your sickness or your limitations are.
Just like in the military, Maybe you can't work for the federal government, just like you wouldn't have been able maybe to continue your service if you had the same thing going on.
Or maybe we need to create a different job pool, right?
Maybe these jobs are ADA-friendly, which there's a lot of them on USA Jobs.
But I don't know.
I think there's more research and there's more auditing and there's more looking and there's more reading and there's more conversations to be had before we just freak the fuck out all the time.
We voted the guy in to do a job.
He's not even a sixteenth of a way through his job and everyone's already talking about how horrible he's doing.
I don't know.
I think that we should be looking and seeing what he's doing.
Maybe it's better than we think.
But that's just my two cents.
I really hope that we can get this country back to where it needs to be.
I hope that Donald Trump is right and we're going to see a golden age of America where everyone's got money in their pockets, we're safe, we're happy, and we're healthy.
I, for one, want to see my grandkids grow up in an America that we don't have to worry about them riding their bikes to the park.
They can play.
I don't want my kids to raise their kids in fear.
I don't want that for them.
And so whatever all this other bullshit in the ether is, we need to figure that out.
Because the generations that we created, which are now creating their next generation, I don't know that they deserve that.
All this fucking madness.
Anyway.
That's all the time we have for this week.
Thanks for sticking with me.
We'll see you guys next week.
Take care of yourselves.
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Good night.
As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over, and instead we're just sending them money, and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the state of Israel, look at the state of Tel Aviv, and look at the state of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going, you tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle.
Fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and to take away my God, go fuck yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign state, you've got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they're supporting?
God, right now, would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say, we stand with them.
We stand with them.
You go to Trump's cabinet.
You go to Biden's cabinet.
It's for Jews.
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I'd just like to say that, you know, in our Bible it says that you're like animals.
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