Former President Donald Trump revived one of his go-to lies about his record on veteran policy during a Fourth of July message to supporters this week.
"Our military, we do, as you know, we did choice, Veterans Choice, where, for our V.A., where we had the highest rating that, I think, anybody's ever had, we're at 92 percent," said Trump in "leaked video" footage obtained by the anti-Trump account Patriot Takes. "Now it's back down into the 40s again, but we had Veterans Choice." He went on to add that the military has "gone to hell" and has "woke people at the top."
Veterans Choice, a program that allows veterans experiencing long wait times in the V.A. medical system to seek care at private facilities, was actually signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2014. But Trump has repeatedly tried to take credit for the program himself, including when he was in office.
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In one memorable exchange in 2020, Trump abruptly ended a presidential press conference when then-CBS reporter Paula Reid pointed out that he was not correct that he had created the Veterans Choice program.
This comes as President Joe Biden, who is fighting to recover from the ongoing fallout of a low-energy debate performance last week and swirling rumors in the press and among some Democratic officials that he doesn't have the energy to continue the campaign, is trying to turn the focus back onto the former president's mistreatment and contempt for soldiers and veterans.
At a rowdy and energetic campaign rally in Wisconsin on Friday, Biden, after mocking Trump for his 2020 remarks that George Washington seized the "airports" to win the Revolutionary War, once again brought up previous reporting that Trump dismissed a French gravesite of Marines who died in World War I as "losers" and "suckers" for giving their lives to fight for America — a comment that Trump continues to deny he ever said.
