Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:10 pm
In a press call with the Clinton campaign, two Democratic Congressmen who are also veterans blasted Donald Trump as “not giving a damn about us” and “He’s completely clueless about foreign policy… he knows nothing about combating terrorism. Anyone who has spent any time at all there knows this.”
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who joined the Marine Corps and served in Iraq. Gallego is the son of Hispanic immigrants, said Donald Trump was “not fit to be President and doesn’t understand how the VA system works.
Gallego said “Trump keeps talking about veterans but not a plan for how to make things better.” Gallego continued, listing things that Trump has done that makes him look at Trump askance, including earlier this year trying to track down the $6 million Trump said he donated to veterans, Trump never served but claims he feels like he served and “Meanwhile he calls our military a ‘disaster’.”
Gallego said it is really hard to believe that Trump cares about veterans after what he said about John McCain, bragging about shaming good POWs saying his poll numbers went up after that, the Trump university scamming veterans out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and kicking disabled veterans off of 5th Avenue where they were working as vendors.
The Democratic Representative and veteran left no room for wondering where he stood, saying in closing, “As a veteran I don’t believe Trump gives a damn about us. I’m proud to be supporting Hillary Clinton.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a former Marine Corps officer, was not impressed by Donald Trump praising Saddam Hussein or his accusations that U.S. troops stole “millions and millions” in Iraq. Moulton said, “Ruben and I put our lives on the line in serving our country, these kinds of comments are so unbelievable insulting. Saddam Hussein wasn’t good at anything. Killed his own people.”
The veteran continued sending shivers down the spine of any thinking person, “(In)2003 I was in Iraq, south of Baghdad, shortly after we arrived we found the graves of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, people killed by Saddam. When Trump says he (Saddam) knows how to kill terrorists, these are the people he is calling terrorists. Innocent civilians.”
Rep. Moulton said Trump knows nothing about combating terrorism, “He’s completely clueless about foreign policy… he knows nothing about combating terrorism. Anyone who has spent any time at all there knows this.”
But of larger concern to Moulton his contention that Trump is endangering people right now, simply with his rhetoric. The Democratic Congressman said, “The things that Donald Trump says on campaign trail are not just dangerous because of what they represent for a future president but they are dangerous today in that the rhetoric puts people in danger right now.”
When asked about Donald Trump’s references to privatizing the VA, Moulton said that although he’s open to working with the private sector to fix the VA, privatizing has already been tried with another plan and it didn’t work, “You never really know what Donald Trump is saying, but he’s talked about privatizing the VA. .. We know from experience over the past decade that privatization doesn’t work. We know this because Republicans ran the VA Choice program. It’s been implemented and wait times have gone up.”
In May of this year, NPR reported that indeed wait times have gone up for vets, due to the bipartisan Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 (the Choice Act), even though the program cost $10 billion dollars.
Republicans are trying to use the Choice Act to privatize the VA. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is trying to make the 2014 Choice program permanent in spite of the problems cited by veterans.
Moulton labeled Trump “Reckless, erratic,” and said “He would make our country less safe and he is doing so just by running.”
In contrast, the veteran finds that Clinton is the one of the most qualified people ever to run for president, “Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified people to ever run for President and I am confident she will take proper care of veterans.”
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