The public heard President Joe Biden stumble and mumble through the first debate last month, but veterans heard something far worse: They listened as Biden bent the truth on issues that matter most to those who served their country.
Biden’s defense of his record on veterans was almost completely fact-free during the June 27 debate. And while he accused Donald Trump of lying, it was the former president who accurately described the Department of Veterans Affairs’s failure to help veterans under Biden's watch.
Here’s Biden’s biggest whopper: “We’ve done more for veterans than any president has in American history. … That’s what the VA is doing now. They’re doing more for veterans than ever before in our history.”
In reality, Biden’s VA is failing veterans like never before.
Veterans are being denied healthcare choices for which they should be eligible under Trump’s MISSION Act. This bipartisan law gave veterans the choice of using private sector care, freeing them from the bureaucratic VA maze that has led to long delays.
Backlogged claims are on the rise. Under Trump, the disability claims backlog was fewer than 65,000. Under Biden, it soared to more than 400,000 and remains high well after the pandemic.
Veteran suicide is surging. Suicide rates among veterans fell under Trump, but they have increased by 11.6% since 2020 . Even worse, most veterans aren’t receiving timely treatment under Biden.
Despite the rising claims backlog, Biden’s VA is busy processing health claims from illegal immigrants.
VA executives are putting themselves first. Top VA officials took $11 million that was supposed to incentivize veterans’ care among employees with critical skills and gave it to themselves as a bonus.
To satisfy the far Left, VA is forcing female veterans to share personal space with transgender women as they recover from sexual assault. So much for putting veterans first.
Meanwhile, Trump used the debate to hit Biden with another inconvenient truth: that Biden’s bureaucracy favors illegal immigrants over veterans.
“Just take a look at where they’re living,” Trump said of illegal immigrants. “They’re living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places. Our veterans are on the street, they’re dying, because he doesn’t care about our veterans.”
The latest statistics show Trump is right. The VA itself admitted that homelessness among veterans increased by 7.4% in 2023 .
And there’s no shortage of stories in the press detailing how taxpayers are increasingly shouldering the cost of illegal immigrants as our government pays more to house them. A story from last year detailed how New York City was preparing to spend an additional $1 billion on hotels to provide multi-year housing for illegal immigrants.
When Trump accurately called out Biden for abandoning veterans’ healthcare choices and allowing more veterans to live on the street, Biden dismissed the reality around him.
“Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one,” Biden said.
Every veteran, and every person, should look past the terrible optics of Biden’s performance last month and pay attention to what he said. Biden’s routine dodging of the truth shows he has no idea how poorly VA is doing or that he is willing to lie about it in public.
Either way, veterans shouldn’t put their trust in Biden. And so far, they haven’t.
A GOVX poll in April and May of this year showed Trump had the support of almost 70% of people with backgrounds in the military, government service, and first-responder careers. In that same group, Biden polled at just 20%.
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“First of all, our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand this guy,” Trump said of Biden during the debate.
When you’re right, you’re right.
Peter O’Rourke is the former Veterans Affairs acting secretary and chief of staff under President Donald Trump. Darin Selnick is the former veteran affairs adviser on the Trump White House Domestic Policy Council and a former senior adviser to the VA secretary for the Trump administration.
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