NEW YORK — Facts trump gossip. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on September 3 cited four anonymous sources who claimed that President Donald J. Trump canceled a November 10, 2018 visit to a World War I cemetery in France because the American GIs there were “losers” and “suckers,” and, Goldberg asserted, Trump “feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain.”
At least 13 former or current U.S. officials who were in Paris with the president have stepped up and, by name, refuted The Atlantic’s vicious libel. Instead, they corroborate Trump’s explanation: Bad weather jeopardized helicopter travel, and the Secret Service inveighed against a 90- to 120-minute drive each way, partially on rural roads. An unidentified military aide’s contemporaneous e-mail also cites poor weather and, thus, backs Trump.
Trump defeats The Atlantic, 14-4.
Team Trump’s dismantlement of this disgusting fabrication offers the perfect occasion to compare President Trump’s care and concern for America’s veterans with the deadly neglect that they suffered under the Obama-Biden Administration.
- President Trump signed the VA Mission Act. It liberated vets to avoid the VA’s long waits and immediately enjoy private care.
- The President authorized VA Accountability legislation, which speeds the discipline and punishment of inept, corrupt, or sadistic VA employees. Trump subsequently has told some 7,600 such shady staffers: “You’re fired!”
- Trump approved the “Forever GI Bill,” ending deadlines and letting vets use their educational benefits throughout their lives.
- He has forgiven the student debts of some 50,000 permanent and totally disabled veterans.
President Trump’s pro-veteran policies are the antidote to Obama-Biden’s toxic treatment of America’s beloved vets. The previous administration ran a veritable killing field for veterans.
As a September 3, 2015, CNN.com headline stated: “307,000 veterans may have died awaiting Veterans Affairs health care, report says.” The VA’s Inspector General discovered that — as of September 30, 2014 — 307,173 veterans in the VA’s enrollment system died before being approved. Among these, 18,100 perished between 2010 and 2012, and 30,706 passed between 2012 and 2014. So, under Obama-Biden, 48,806 vets died while “pending” a “final determination status.”
“People who fought, and who earned the right to VA health care, were never given VA health care,” Scott Davis of the VA Health Eligibility Center told CNN in September 2015. “They literally died while waiting for VA to process their health care application.” CNN reported that Davis “alerted the White House and senior officials at the VA, but was ignored.”
Under Obama-Biden, as of May 2014, delays and mismanagement contributed to the preventable deaths of at least three veterans at VA medical centers in Atlanta, six others in Columbia, South Carolina; and 40 more in Phoenix.
Even worse, administrators in VA hospitals where vets suffered stomach-turning medical abuses or died while awaiting treatment were not immediately sacked. Instead, they savored promotions and bonuses under Obama-Biden.
- Sharon Helman directed Phoenix’s deadly VA Health Care System. She scored a $9,345 bonus atop her $196,000 salary.
- Notwithstanding chronic management errors and a Legionnaire’s disease outbreak that infected 20 veterans and killed six others, Pittsburgh VA hospital chief Terry Gerigk Wolf earned her $179,700 base salary, a perfect performance review, and a 2011 bonus of $12,924.
- Despite American Legion warnings, local veterans’ protests, and three preventable patient deaths that the VA inspector general tied to deep mismanagement, Atlanta VA hospital chief James Clark collected $65,000 in bonuses over four years.
- On Columbia, South Carolina VA regional director Carl Hawkins’ watch, disability-claim backlogs doubled, and at least 95 related documents wrongly were shredded. So what? Beyond Hawkins’ $165,300 salary, his 2007 through 2011 bonuses totaled $79,275.
- In the 60 VA offices that Diana Rubens oversaw, backlogged disability-benefit claims nearly septupled. Whatever! From 2007 to 2011, she won bonuses of $96,896.
The Atlantic got it perfectly backward: As 700-plus vets attested in an open letter, President Trump has honored and benefited them and their brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, Obama-Biden treated America’s veterans like losers and suckers.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
