Trump Loves Our Military. He Just Hates Taking Care of Them
Last night, Donald Trump hosted his MAGA rally to Congress, offering little policy or coherent vision for the State of the Union — just more attacks on our nation’s veterans and boasting about how great America has become in six weeks. It was a nice preview of what the immediate future holds for America, and it wasn’t pretty.
The 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report highlighted trends in veteran suicide rates. In 2022, suicide was the 12th-leading cause of death among veterans, with 6,407 suicides, averaging 17.6 per day — a drop from 22 per day in 2014. This decline was driven by federal investments in job programs and expanded health care for veterans. But that is now over.
Through Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented attack on the federal workforce and veterans.
Veterans make up roughly a third of federal workers — so the ongoing mass purge has already disproportionately affected those who served this country. Furthermore, the Veterans Affairs Department plans to lay off up to 83,000 employees, cutting its workforce to 2019 levels as part of a broader Trump administration effort to shrink federal agencies. This move will cripple veterans’ access to health care, benefits, and education. As one of the world’s largest veteran employers, the VA’s cuts will deeply impact a community already at risk of falling through the cracks of society.
The Trump administration’s attitude toward veterans was clear in advisor Alina Habba’s remarks Tuesday. While Habba claimed “we care about veterans tremendously,” she said that “we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work.” Then Habba put in the knife, saying of the veterans being purged by DOGE: “perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment.”
This confirms what we already knew — Trump and his allies despise veterans and will do everything in their power to sideline them while dismantling democracy, stripping civil liberties, and sacrificing the economy in the process.
Trump continued to attack federal workers, and the veterans among them, in his address to Congress Tuesday night.
“For nearly 100 years the federal bureaucracy has grown until it has crushed our freedoms, ballooned our deficits, and held back America’s potential in every possible way,” he said, asserting that “we have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work.”
“My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again,” he continued. “Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately.”
I recently spoke with an Air Force veteran who served 13 years, including two deployments to Kuwait and Qatar. After transitioning to civilian life, he took a Department of Defense job on the West Coast supporting Army recruiting, believing he was building a stable future for his newborn child — despite being thousands of miles from family. Now, he’s facing a reduction-in-force memo, and unsure whether to uproot his life again or hold out hope for an exemption that may never come. He knows he’s fit for his job, but he expects he won’t have it for long. He’ll lose his home, his wife will lose her job, and they’ll be forced into unemployment — just like countless other veterans — crippling the economy through no fault of their own.
Then there’s Kyle Lewis, a Navy veteran diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma. When doctors told him he had weeks to live, he enrolled in an experimental treatment at Johns Hopkins, funded by the National Institutes of Health. That treatment saved his life. Now, thanks to Trump and DOGE’s research funding cuts, his access to that treatment is gone. His tumors are still there, held at bay by medicine that is suddenly out of reach. He knows the data. There’s an 80 percent chance his cancer will come back within the next year. His government just thanked him for his service by making it a certainty.
These are not isolated veterans stories. There are hundreds of similar stories on message boards on Reddit and Facebook — go read them. The Trump administration claims DOGE’s cuts are about saving money, but no one can point to real savings. Instead, the government is funneling billions into tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and driving more and more funds to Elon Musk’s companies. Our veterans and their families will pay for it with their lives and their livelihoods. Meanwhile, some DOGE staffers have six-figure salaries.
The worst news for veterans in federal service and those relying on the VA is that Trump and Musk’s agenda is just beginning. From targeting LGBTQ+ veterans to gutting the VA, slashing Medicaid, and cutting Social Security for a million uninsured veterans, the result will be a community that is poorer, sicker, and worse off than ever.
During his speech last night, Trump praised active duty and military veterans several times.
Speaking about the supposedly “tremendous turnaround” in the first weeks of his presidency, Trump said: “People love our country again, it is very simple. They love our country and they love being in our military again.”
He gave a shout-out to a high school student whose “greatest dream is to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”
For all that talk — and Trump and Republicans’ claims they would support veterans — this administration has made its stance clear: veterans are not a priority, and their careers, livelihood, and health don’t matter.
The DOGE and Trump message to those who served is simple — thank you for your service, you’re on your own.
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