You know, people are dying, not only the 22 suicides a day which is inconceivable when you hear that. When I first heard that I said, no you mean a month. I mean, can you imagine a day, 22 suicides a day? A lot of the suicide is people can't get to see doctors, a lot of it because the waits are so long. That's an administrative problem.
We have a plan and it's been put out on my website and people love it. If you're going to have a wait of six days, five days, two days, one day, we're going to give our great veterans the right to go out, go across the street to a private doctor or a private hospital or a public hospital, whatever happens to be in that community, without having to drive 400 miles to another hospital.
We're going to give [veterans] the right to see their private doctor, get taken care of it, perhaps the private or public hospital.
Get taken care of quickly, effectively and go about their business. And the government, we are going to pay the bill. That will totally reduce all of the waiting times, all of the problems. And I think it may actually get the V.A. to respond better to things because, you know, there is a little competition you would think.
It's not like we have a choice. We can't let what's happening happen. I mean, I've heard stories that are so horrible. I mean, people are killing themselves while they're waiting on line because they can't - you know, they know it's days and days before they can have what could be a simple procedure, what could be a simple prescription.
We're going to establish a procedure where people can leave the line, go outside, take care of themselves and the government's gonna pay.
By the way, that's a far less expensive solution than other very foolish solutions I've heard. The veterans love it, they love it. But it's a far better solution than anything anybody's heard and its common sense and it's there.The doctors need the business and the private hospitals and public hospitals need the business and they're sitting there, waiting. So we don't have a choice. We have to do that.
We're gonna get away from political correctness .
Like the whole concept of profiling, you know, I mentioned the other day profiling, everyone goes, profile and profiling. Well, profiling is you know, in Israel they're doing it and they're doing it well.
We have a politically correct military and it's getting more and more politically correct every day.
That's through intelligence, not through ignorance, believe me. Because some of the things that they're asking you to do [in the Army] and be politically correct about are ridiculous.
I will say I would leave many of the decisions of some of the things you mentioned to the generals, the admirals, the people on top, and we get some of the - the Congressmen just mentioned to me and I - I think it's true 100 percent, you get your top enlisted people in that and you have some discussions with some of these top enlisted people who know it better than probably anybody.
We get our military people to come back and make recommendations to me and I will follow those recommendations. I will follow them very strongly.
The world is changing isn't it? So you're not allowed to pray before a football game. I thought it was horrible.
Religious liberty, hey, it's about religious liberty. And there has to be a melding of both. We're living in a time where you have to have a melding of both. But it's very unfair what they're doing to religion in this country.
One of the things that I'm doing and I'm - we have the Johnson Amendment. You know what that is. That Lyndon Johnson in the 1950s passed an amendment because supposedly he was having a hard time with a church in Houston, with a pastor. And he passed an amendment saying basically if you're a pastor, if you're a religious person, you cannot get up and talk politics.
We've raised a lot of money from small people that - people that give small donations, people that wanna be a part of it and they've been very much left behind. We call them the forgotten man and woman. And we've raised millions of - more than any Republican ever thought possible .
The truth is I am beholden to no one, nobody's gonna tell me what to do, no - no group that owns a military firm that gives military supplies. Because I know - I've heard the case where often times you wanna buy certain weapons or something and you like one but you get the other one because that one has a contact to our politicians.
You're gonna get the best - you're gonna get the best equipment [in the Army].
You're gonna get what's good, you're gonna get what the generals and what the admirals and what - and the enlisted and they'll - we'll get together, we wanna get the right stuff.
Without you [the military forces], we wouldn't be here. I don't think you've been given the respect that you deserve. I don't think you've been allowed to fight ISIS as an example the way you wanted. I don't think you've been allowed to fight for Iraq the way you've wanted.
If they listen to the military people, we probably wouldn't be having an ISIS right now.
We're running a war by politicians and we're running a war by political correctness as per that question [with ISIS].
I can only tell you this and I used to speak about it all the time, we have a Navy that hasn't been in this position since World War I.
We have an Army that hasn't been in this position since World War II, in terms of levels and in terms of readiness and in terms of everything else. We are not capable like we have to be.
