20 posts from Monday, August 25, 2025

Thank you very much. This is a very special group of people. I've been with them from the beginning. Abbeygate, you know, Abbeygate, one of the dumbest days in the history of our country by a previous administration, getting out of a place that we shouldn't have been. At a minimum, they should have been at Bagram, the big field, where, you know, we have hundreds of acres around it. Nobody's going to get near it. They left from a small airfield, and the consequences were horrible. And these people have been, my friends, have been with me, and I've been with them 100%. And we meet more than once a year, actually. I think our all-time meeting was in Bedminster, where we played music, right? Right. Late into the night. They thought I'd be there maybe for five minutes, maybe not at all, and I showed up for like four hours. We were listening to music all night long, and they were all crying because they lost their loved ones. But it's a lot of, it's four years, it's a four-year anniversary. So we're signing a proclamation honoring them, and honoring you, and honoring your loved one, and so sad, and so unnecessary. And you know, what people don't know, there were a lot of other people killed from the other side. I call that, you know, people killed, and the people that we also contact are, we have like 32, maybe more, but approximately 32 who lost their arms and their legs, and your kids didn't make it. They made it, but boy, they got to go through hell. And we have 32, at a minimum, 32. And then you had hundreds of people killed overall, you had hundreds of people killed that day. That was a rough day. We had 13 of our great ones, right? Yes. And somehow this group is just, we get together every once in a while. So I just want to thank you, we're four years now into this nightmare, we're just a nightmare. I think that that date also helped start the war with Putin and Ukraine, because he saw how incompetent our military was under Biden, and under Milley, and all these dopes, these dopey people. And that's not our military. You see what our military is now, we knock the hell out of people if we have to, or we settle because they don't want to play games with us. But I just want to say, I'm really honored to be with you again, and we'll be with each other for a long time. And your loved ones are looking down, and they're very proud. This is the new and improved Oval Office, we had an Oval Office, which was still the Oval Office, so I don't want to disrespect it, but now it's very special, and you see what's happened, and everyone loves it. It's all the real deal, 24 karat gold, and people come from all over, and I do believe they're serious, they're not rolling their eyes, you know, the roar of the eyes, but we don't have any of them. And we brought the pictures up, they were in the vaults, those are pictures of some of our great presidents, a lot of them, and they were in the vaults for over 100 years in many cases. And they were just, they're beautiful pictures, works of art, Lincoln, Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, that's Monroe of the Monroe Document. All mostly great presidents, we have a couple of them, Benjamin Franklin, not a president, but we figured he'd make the cut, discovered electricity, a couple of other things, but we have a lot of great presidents. But think of it, they've been down there, there's George Washington, the big one, they've been down there for, in some cases, much more than 100 years, and we brought them out. I went through the vaults myself, I spent hours down there looking. That's in between Russia, Ukraine, China, all the other stuff, we do it. I want to thank Doug Collins for being here, the secretary who's done an unbelievable job, thank you very much. And JD, thank you very much, you've been fantastic. And all of the others, Pete, good, we did a little thing with Pete about Secretary of War today, and it seemed to be well received. We'll do it a couple of more times, and if everyone likes it, we'll make that change, Pete, you'll decide. But I just want to thank everybody for being here, very special to me, a very special day, four years is a very special time, and now it's lightening up, but it'll never be really light. But there are some great souls that are looking down on you right now, and they're very proud of their parents and brothers and sisters, but moms and dads especially, that's what I seem to have dealt with mostly, it's a tough, there's nothing tougher. So thank you very much. In the media, I want to thank you because you've been very respectful of this group of people, and they deserve it. They went through hell for no reason, it should have never happened. And I'm going to sign the proclamation now, and we will have our, we will have a very special proclamation done and completed, okay. Oh, that's a good one. That's our good one, we rate them. I don't put them under the auto pen, I don't say, have the auto pen sign it, right? We don't do that. I don't know how anybody's allowed to do that. They actually weren't. Good one, right? Yes, a couple of good questions today. It's been very fair, actually. Okay. Do you have any questions on this subject, please? Mr. President. Yes. The Defense Secretary's order a review of Afghanistan withdrawal that is ongoing. I'm curious if you have any update on that review. And then for the families, I know that there was frustration with previous investigations on Capitol Hill. Are you satisfied with the speed of this investigation thus far? Pete, do you want to answer that? Yes, sir. On behalf of this beautiful group, on behalf of these families, on behalf of your loved ones who fought for our nation, America deserves answers as far as what happened in Afghanistan. The military needs to answer for what happened in Afghanistan. So upon the President's direction, immediately we initiated an investigation which showed that there needed an even deeper dive. So Sean Parnell, our Pentagon spokesman, who himself is an Afghanistan veteran, is leading this effort. It's a top priority for us. We're getting access to all documents necessary, why decisions were made, why they weren't made, why certain force protection measures were ignored. Again, there's never been accountability for this. It's something that Joe Biden allowed to happen that never should have happened. Any objective observer knows that's not how you leave a country, and certainly these families know better than anyone else. These families deserve answers. We're going to be honest about it. We're going to get to the bottom of it. Sean Parnell, an Afghanistan vet, is leading it, and we're doing it on behalf of the American people. So I would anticipate middle of 2026, that's how thorough of a review we're doing. Probably a little bit sooner, but we're going into everything to get an understanding of what happened. So we remember these great 13 souls, but we also remember the people that were so badly injured, our soldiers, 32 of them, approximately. And we're in contact with them always also, but they lost arms and legs, and their faces were blown to pieces, and they're incredible, and they suffer with it. And so we understand that, it should have never happened, should have never been allowed to have happened, and they were in the wrong place. Bagram was the place to be. Big massive airfield with hundreds of acres surrounding it. Nobody could get near it, and who would not have done that, but we had a bunch of incompetent people running our country. So we are going to talk for a little while, and we'll talk about people that I've gotten to know. We have friends and daughters and others that died, and there were hundreds of people that died that day, hundreds, many from the other side, needless thing also. They did nothing to hurt anybody, but that was a terrible day, and I think it was the worst day, and in many ways the most embarrassing day in the history of our country. And yet, at the same time, we learned so much that it's, you know, we call it a big lesson. It won't happen again. I think like that can never be allowed to happen again. Doug, would you like to say something, please? You've been so fantastic. It would be great. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. President. For these families here, I think you expressed the nation's grief of what happened. We saw just a tragic mistake that was there, someone who has been in the middle of -- I was in Iraq and others, but Afghanistan, when you saw that withdrawal, but what you suffered went through. And for those that you've mentioned, Mr. President, who are injured, who took the VA, the Department of Defense, we're taking care of those folks, and we're going to continue to do so at your direction. But with the families, it's just one of those times it's a place that never goes away. But I know from this president is he's made a commitment that that memory will not be forgotten and the Cabinet understands that and our American people understand that because of what she does. And this is actually our biggest gathering today. So you must have heard Oval Office and you said, "I want to get there and do a job in the Oval Office." But it is. And it is a special place. But this is our biggest gathering in terms of the numbers, everybody here, because there was always somebody couldn't be, everybody's here, and that's a great honor, I think it's a great honor. J.D., do you want to say a couple of words, please? Oh, sir, I just echo what you said. We're so honored to have all of you here. I know that days like today can't make the hurt go away, but hopefully four years on, we can start to remember with fondness and with a little bit of joy the people that were taken from us. We're so proud of you. We're so proud of your loved ones for giving their life for our country. And I think importantly today, this is a rectification of a wrong. The fact that the President of the United States lost your loved ones through incompetence, but never acknowledged it. And your government never actually put pen to paper to say we're grateful for your sacrifice. We correct that wrong today, and we're going to keep on fighting to understand, as Pete said, what happened so it never happens to another family again. But God love you all, God bless you, we're so thrilled to have you here in the People's Oval Office. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And I don't think they ever heard from Biden or anybody, did they? No. Nobody ever even called him. It's a terrible thing we suffered through for four years, so needless to say, yes, ma'am. I wanted to ask about veterans, and I wanted to say I'm so sorry for all of your loss. And I know we've covered it in the media, but I can't imagine what you all have been through. And thank you for being here. I wanted to ask, just on behalf of those veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I know we talked about this in the Oval previously, about making sure care for those, for example, exposed to burn pits while serving. Making sure that they have the care, are you considering maybe a streamlined service like the World Trade Center health care program, and maybe the Veterans Secretary can comment too, but are you considering something like that to make sure, because it seems like they're struggling to get care? Well, there's a lot of things. We take care of our vets. Nobody loves our vets more than me, and we take good care of our vets, great care of our vets. Do you want to just say a couple of words about what we're doing, Doug? Yes, Mr. President, through the PACT Act and through others of the burn pit, which is something I've been under as well, we're streamlining following the Congress direction, but we're also adding more services we've included, a lot who have applied. We're also streamlining our backlog under President Trump's direction also. We took that backlog that was under President Biden was up at over 260,000. We're down now, Mr. President, I get to tell you that, under 150,000 in just a little over six months. So we're making sure that what was bogged up in a bureaucratic system, we're streamlining it so they get that care quicker, and we're making sure that it is what they need. And then we're also doing that in our hospitals as well, so they get that care quicker in not only in our hospitals, but in our community as well. That's been the biggest difference. We're about the veteran at the VA, not about the bureaucracy, so we are making progress there. And the VA has a 93% approval rating. It was down in the low 40s when we did. So I had pretty close to that in the first term, we had a great first term, and it was pretty close to that. And then they took over and it went down into the 30s and 20s and 40s, but it went down at one point to 28 or 29%, which is terrible. They gave away choice and accountability, choice meaning you have the way to, as a veteran, you can go and you can choose who your doctor is, et cetera, et cetera. They gave that up, and accountability is getting rid of the people that were sadists and really bad people that abused our veterans and really badly abused them. And they got rid of both of them and we put them back. I couldn't believe when they did it. Anyway, but now you've blown everybody away, Doug, at 93%. So we're 93% approval for our vets, and I like that, so that's good.

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It's an honor to be with President Lee of South Korea. We've known each other and gotten along very well. We have some additional trade because I hear they want to renegotiate the deal, but that's okay. I don't mind that. That doesn't mean they're going to get anything, but I don't mind. But we're going to have some very serious discussions about different things, including trade, where we do a lot of trade with South Korea, as you know. We are thinking about contracting some ships. They build them very well in South Korea. They're also thinking about coming to our country with some shipyards to start us on the process of building ships again. You know, in World War II, we'd build a ship a day. And today we don't build ships anymore, which is ridiculous. We're going to start that again. But we were like you. We were building ships all the time for everybody. And presidents and people allowed that to slip by. And now we buy ships. But we're going to be buying ships from South Korea. We're also going to have them make ships here with our people, using our people. And we're going to go back into the shipbuilding business again, because really, essentially, we don't build ships anymore, which is ridiculous how that ever happened. But we were the best at it. And you can take a look at World War II, in particular, where we were doing virtually a ship a day. And it's hard to believe these were tankers and different kinds of ships, but we were very active. And you see a lot of those shipyards sitting there idle, but they're not so idle anymore. And you're going to come in also, and you're going to be doing a lot of ships in this country. So I look forward to that. But we have a lot of other trade things here, a big purchaser of our military equipment. We make the best military equipment in the world. And you saw that recently with -- let's take a look at what we did with the B-2 bomber, which you have one right there. They gave that to me. I guess the company gave that to me. The B-2 bomber was so successful in what took place in the little excursion that we made 36 hours, and it wiped out the -- nobody's ever said anything like it -- 36 hours back and forth. Not a thing went wrong. Not a screw was missing. Not a bolt was missing. Not a plane had not even a little bit of a problem. And we actually had 52 tankers with many planes. But you know, you looked at the B-2, the way they handled that. Every single bomb hit its target. So they understand that we make the best military equipment in the world, and South Korea is a big buyer of military equipment. And we're going to talk about that also. And we have many things to talk about, and I look forward to it. And it's a great honor to be with you. And congratulations on your election. That was a big one. And we're with you 100 percent. Thank you.

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We're gonna have a good meeting. We're gonna have a great meeting.

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