00:00Hey folks, Senator Mark Kelly and I know people are seeing the news stories about the USS Abraham Lincoln about
00:13them being on cruise for an extended period of time, not being back and forth for 250 days and mental
00:21health issues that some of the sailors are having, some of which have reported that they've
00:30tried or contemplated jumping off the ship. It's a tragic thing. It's horrible to think that we have service members
00:40who are there defending our country who feel like they don't have another option. And they do. There's a thing
00:49called the Brandon Act, which I supported and helped get passed, where service members can elevate these concerns to their
01:01leadership at their command and get mental health help. So I encourage people to look at that. So the other
01:11issue here is why this is really challenging for folks is that this president got us into this war with
01:19Iran with no strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, and he has no way out.
01:24And because of that, you've got these deployments that are being extended to much beyond what anybody had anticipated or
01:34planned for. Hey, service members know they're going to have to go overseas and defend our country. And, you know,
01:44they're subject to, you know, a deployment schedule that they don't have a lot of control
01:49over. They get that. But when you have a president that has done such a poor job explaining what this
01:57is all about, and how the American people are getting anything out of this. The other thing is there needs
02:03to be an investigation on why this is happening. Why are the living conditions aboard that ship, you know, so
02:08poor at this point, and these deployments going on for so long that people feel like they need to end
02:15their lives.
02:15So I'm calling for this administration and the Department of Defense here to investigate what's going on aboard the Abraham
02:24Lincoln.
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