00:00Mr. President, I like to think of Labor Day as the Trump Trade Policy Day because everyone around this table and everyone listening knows that one of the major reasons why American workers and organized labor voted for you is because of your trade policy and the policies you've had and advocated for for 40 years or more.
00:18You have reset global trade policy in the past few months, and it shows that it's been working for American workers. When you look at President Biden, in the last quarter of 2024, median weekly earnings fell 2.1%. In the first quarter of your term, they went up 3.3%. And that's why we're doing the trade policy we're doing.
00:40It's to help the workers of the United States of America. And they're the best in the world, but they can't do it without a level playing field. And you have flipped the script.
00:48For many years, the other countries had high tariffs and high non-tariff barriers. While we were open to, right, to all of their labor and services and goods and capital, you flipped it.
00:59Now we have the tariffs, and they have lowered theirs and non-tariff barriers. And we couldn't have done it without you and the leverage you've created.
01:05So between the tariffs and the deals, the hot streak continues for the workers of America. So thank you.
01:11Thank you very much. Really good job, by the way.
01:15He's a good negotiator. Good negotiator. Thank you. Please.
01:21Well, Mr. President, I feel like as everybody here has talked about how great working with this team is and all, but I do feel a special need that you've given me the privilege of working with the best of America.
01:32I get to take care of the veterans. I get to take care of the veterans who Labor Day really finds its roots in, if you think about it.
01:40We wouldn't have Labor Day if it wasn't for men and women who would leave their jobs and go fight this nation's battles to keep us free and independent so that they would have jobs to come home to.
01:48And over the past few years, they've been coming home to many times a government that was keeping them back, holding them back, taxing them, regulating them.
01:57And now we have veterans who represent the bill, the big, beautiful bill, they're the beneficiaries of.
02:03And I get to see them all the time because they're receiving the benefit because they see the jobs, they see the care that they've been given.
02:09And these veterans can look at their country with pride, knowing that we're taking care of them, just like you told me to do.
02:13When your only statement you said to me, I asked you what to do, you say, go take care of my veterans.
02:17Well, that's what we're doing.
02:18One of the other things we're doing right now is, for many of you, I love to hear how you're deregulating everything.
02:23And I've worked from Congress and worked with many of you before.
02:25I get to do the same thing with the largest bureaucratic organization in the government.
02:29We're deregulating from the inside.
02:31And it's amazing to me because we have such a powerful workforce at the VA who really want to do good, but yet they kept tripping themselves up.
02:38They kept making their own way to take one step forward and put a regulation in it, put them three steps back, and it always hurt our veterans at the end.
02:45We're taking that away.
02:46We're making community care again, Mr. President.
02:48We talked about this yesterday.
02:49We're making community care a part of our direct care system.
02:51So if a veteran wants to get into the community, they have our direct care, and they also have the ability to go into the community.
02:56Something that the previous administration decided they wanted to keep everybody inside because they thought it was a fiefdom they were building.
03:02I'm telling you, we're not building a fiefdom at the VA.
03:04We're trying to take care of a service organization that takes care of veterans.
03:07So how do we do that?
03:08We make best medical interest where a doctor can send a veteran to the community a lot quicker without having to worry about miles and time logs and wait times.
03:16Just get them the help they need.
03:18We've actually expanded out, and it's made a difference in this regulation, and also unleashed a workforce that is now free of the collective bargain agreements and other things that have kept them from being able to do the job of national security that they've been intended to.
03:31I'm actually giving them the benefit of the doubt to actually go be the workers that they're called to be, and that's what Labor Day is about.
03:37The VA is going to have the best workers.
03:39But just to let you know how that's working out, wait times at our hospital are going down because we're getting them into our hospitals or into community care.
03:46And then one for you, Ms. President, you heard about this a lot, and that was backlogs.
03:50At the backlog when I first came in, I've said this before, in February we had over 260,000 backlogs.
03:56That means over 125 days of not getting an answer.
03:59In just a little over four and a half months, we've dropped that over 100,000.
04:03We're under 150 and heading down to historic lows.
04:06We'll be within the next month lower than any time under the previous administration at all.
04:10That means our veterans are getting the help they need.
04:12So when you look at it this way, we've opened new facilities.
04:14We've put new facilities in places where workers can get to.
04:17We've expanded out hours, over a million extra hours, so veterans, younger veterans in particular,
04:22can get off of work and bring their sales and get their appointments in after hours on Saturdays.
04:27That's what it means to be in the Trump administration.
04:29That's what it means to take care of veterans.
04:31That's what it means for Labor Day, because you can't forget the ones who fought for us to be on this table today.
04:37And it's all because of what you've done in the progress that we've made.
04:41Well, you've done a tremendous job, and I hear it all the time.
04:46We have a 93 percent approval rating at the VA now.
04:50And you know what it was before. It was, like, horrible.
04:54So thank you very much.
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