During a press briefing on Wednesday, President Trump indirectly criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over his refusal to lower interest rates at the President's request.
00:00Bill's signing, and it's very important to me and to many of the people in this room.
00:05So I'm thrilled to sign the VA Home Loan Program Reform Act into law.
00:12And that is something that they've wanted to do for a long time.
00:17This legislation provides desperately needed relief to veterans and their families
00:22who have fallen behind on their mortgages, of which there are a lot
00:27because we have somebody that doesn't want to lower interest rates.
00:30It probably won't lower them today. It's a really sort of an amazing situation.
00:36And it helps keep our promise to end veterans' homelessness.
00:41And we're going to do that for America. We're going to do that for our great veterans.
00:46I'm thrilled to be joined by the bill's sponsor, Congressman Derek Van Orden.
00:51Where is Derek? Derek? Hello, Derek. I didn't see you back there.
00:54Mike, how are you, Mike?
00:58Thank you, Mr. President.
00:59Very good. These two gentlemen are terrific.
01:04They are working together, and they've been working together, Mike, for a long time.
01:09A long time.
01:09So I just want to thank you both, and I'll ask you to say a couple of words.
01:14An estimated 61,000 American veterans are in danger of losing their homes, as you know.
01:19But thanks to this bill, the Department of Veterans Affairs will be empowered to pay loan holders the necessary amount to prevent foreclosures on our veterans so our veterans won't be foreclosed and put out onto the streets.
01:33It's very important. This bill also creates a five-year partial claim program that could benefit up to 3.7 million veterans.
01:42That's the kind of numbers you're talking about. It's big stuff.
01:45The costs of the program are fully offset and will add nothing at all to debt.
01:50That is common-sense legislation that overwhelming support and passed unanimously in the House and the Senate.
01:58Wow. When was the last time that happened?
02:02That's pretty impressive.
02:04My administration is committed to doing everything possible to ensure that our veterans are treated with respect and treated as well as anybody in this country.
02:13They're so important. They're so great.
02:15They've suffered so much in many cases.
02:19In May, I signed an executive order to open the National Center for Warrior Independence in Los Angeles, California, which will house up to 6,000 homeless veterans.
02:29You know, until we came along, they treated the veterans far worse than the illegal immigrants.
02:36They came in. They were staying in hotels, luxury hotels, and the veterans are staying outside of the sidewalk on the same hotel.
02:42Some pictures are just incredible.
02:44In addition, we'll also be opening a full-service VA center in New Hampshire, which is the only state in the union to not have a VA center.
02:53And I made that promise to the people of New Hampshire a long while ago, and we got it done.
02:59It's the only state that doesn't have, and yet you have a lot of veterans in New Hampshire.
03:04We're slashing the wait times at VA medical centers, and we're bringing back VA choice and VA accountability, which I had and the Democrats abandoned.
03:13Made it so much better. Accountability, meaning if you treat our veterans badly, we treat you badly.
03:20You get fired and beyond that.
03:23And VA choice is you can get out and you can, if you don't, if you don't have a doctor ready, willing, and able to take care of you within the VA, you go outside, you go see a doctor, you get better, and we pay the bill.
03:39And the veterans loved it.
03:43We had a 92 percent approval rating.
03:45And what did the Democrats do?
03:47They came along and they ended both of them, and they hired back many of the people that we fired.
03:51We fired people and replaced them with great loving people.
03:56But we fired people who were sadists.
03:58In many cases, they were sick.
04:01They were thieves.
04:02They were stealing.
04:03And they hired them back.
04:05The accountability, meaning the VA accountability, it was a big deal getting it passed,
04:09because you have unions, you have all sorts of problems to go through.
04:13We got it through everything.
04:14And the Democrats, as soon as they got back, they hired many of the worst people right back, and we're getting rid of them.
04:20But I want to thank the two gentlemen standing behind me.
04:24And I'd like to ask you just to say a couple of words, and then we'll take a few questions, if you'd like.
04:29And we'll sign the bill, and our veterans will be very happy about it.
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