Montini
It goes on.
Trump said he would fire everybody and “fix” the VA quickly. This past summer, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that is supposed to make it easier for the VA to fire bad employees and protect whistleblowers.
Trump talked and tweeted a lot about that, saying, “What happened was a national disgrace, and yet some of the employees involved remained on the payrolls. Our veterans have fulfilled their duty to this nation, and now we must fulfill our duty to them.”
Just last week, however, internal rankings released by the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that hospitals previously identified as the worst of the VA’s system remain just as bad.
And last month, the VA released an analysis of suicide rates for veterans. It found that the suicide rate is 22 percent higher among veterans than it is for non-veterans. You’ve probably heard the statistic that roughly 20 veterans commit suicide each day.
Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve written too many columns about vets who survive the horrors of war, only to make it back home and kill themselves.
The stories are heartbreaking, frustrating.
On a wall near my desk there are photos of some of those casualties: Sgt. 1st Class Brian Mancini. Sgt. Daniel Somers.
Daniel left a long note behind that read, in part: “I am sorry that it has come to this … my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me.
“As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on.”
He said he was “too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. Abandoned by those who would take the easy route, and a liability to those who stick it out.”
It’s the story of too many good vets. I couldn’t find any tweets or comments from Trump concerning the VA’s report on suicides. Or on the bad hospitals. Or on the veteran who took his life not long ago at the Phoenix VA.
The president tweeted a lot during the week the vet committed suicide.
He attacked a congresswoman and the war widow the representative was comforting, tweeting: “I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!”
And he tweeted: “Crooked Hillary Clinton spent hundreds of millions of dollars more on Presidential Election than I did. Facebook was on her side, not mine!”
And he tweeted: “Two dozen NFL players continue to kneel during the National Anthem, showing total disrespect to our Flag & Country. No leadership in NFL!”
And he tweeted: “... the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like (retiring senator) liddle’ Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!”
This president, like every president, has lots to think about. For Trump, it’s things like political enemies and Facebook and kneeling football players.
In his suicide note, Daniel Somers said his mind was “a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety.”
He wondered why the government — and the rest of us — didn’t care more about veteran suicides, saying that perhaps it was “because we were not killed by a single lunatic” but instead by a “system of dehumanization, neglect, and indifference.”
I believe he was onto something.