00:00I said, well, I say it all the time.
00:02I say shit he doesn't like all the time.
00:05But I said that members of the military shouldn't follow illegal orders.
00:08But we're trained that.
00:13It was a friendly reminder.
00:16In response to the friendly reminder, Donald Trump said I should be hanged, executed, prosecuted.
00:24He couldn't even get the order right.
00:29And then he tried to indict me and throw me in jail.
00:31But here's the thing.
00:33That wasn't about me.
00:35It was about all of us.
00:37He wants to silence you.
00:40He doesn't want people speaking truth to power.
00:42He doesn't want people speaking out, especially veterans.
00:48I think veterans intimidate him.
00:51I think there's something there.
00:56Insecurity about the veteran community.
01:00That's why he says they're suckers and losers.
01:03Because he didn't serve.
01:06It's great to be with veterans.
01:07And I have to say this is a challenging time for our military.
01:13Not really like anything we've seen before.
01:15In my view, the guy that Donald Trump appointed to be Secretary of Defense, clearly unqualified for the job.
01:24And the results are pretty apparent right now.
01:28Firing very qualified admirals and generals.
01:31Running around on a stage talking about killing people and lethality and testosterone.
01:36We don't need more testosterone in the U.S. military.
01:40We need better leadership.
01:42On top of that.
01:46On top of that, we had a president take this country to war without a strategic goal.
01:54Without a plan, without a timeline, without an exit strategy.
02:00And now he's stuck.
02:02He doesn't know what to do.
02:04And I sit on the armed services and the intelligence committees, both of them.
02:08And I will say, from what I know about this, the Iranians weren't any closer to developing a nuclear weapon
02:16this year than they were when I first got to the United States Senate in 2020.
02:23And it's this president who, by the way, tore up the deal in 2018 that started them to enrich the
02:31uranium at a higher level.
02:33So if you think there was a problem, this president created the problem.
02:38But he didn't need to go to war and put Americans in harm's way.
02:43We have now 20 deceased service members, over 800 injured.
02:51And what did the American people get out of this?
02:54They got nothing.
02:56They got higher gas prices.
02:58They got higher food prices.
03:00We've got service members deployed for record numbers of days.
03:05On the USS Abraham Lincoln.
03:08And I understand going on cruise can be hard.
03:11And it's challenging.
03:14But really, they had eight service members who tried to commit suicide because of the conditions aboard the ship.
03:20And I got to tell you, the worst thing about that, by far, for me, was to see the Secretary
03:28of Defense go straight to camera and say,
03:33there's no problem, and we give commanders everything they need.
03:38That is not leadership.
03:41Leadership has taken some responsibility for whatever the situation is.
03:46And, by the way, how hard would it have been for him to say, hey, I recognize there's a problem.
03:52We're going to look into the problem, and we're going to make things better for these service members because they
03:57deserve that.
03:58It's not hard to do.
04:00This Secretary of Defense was incapable of doing that.
04:04On top of it, the President of the United States followed it up with saying, well, the deployment wasn't long
04:10enough.
04:11I mean, how insensitive is that?
04:16I mean, here's a guy who, a president who, I think he got five draft deferments, calls service members who
04:26die serving their countries,
04:29what it says on his hat, suckers and losers.
04:35He goes to Arlington and says that deceased service members who pay the ultimate price, I think his comment was,
04:47well, what did they get out of this?
04:49He doesn't understand us, doesn't understand service to this country, doesn't understand sacrifice,
04:56doesn't understand doing something that is bigger than self.
05:02But we have an opportunity to put all that behind us and also provide some accountability.
