During a Senate Democrats press briefing on Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke about President Trump's tariffs.
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NewsTranscript
00:02Great.
00:03Senator Blumenthal on veterans.
00:04Veterans.
00:05And national security.
00:06I'm going to begin with a word that I told my children never to use, a four-letter word.
00:15D-U-M-B, dumb.
00:19These policies combine cruelty and incompetence in a way that is dumber than anything we've
00:28seen in recent history, maybe in the history of the United States.
00:32They will inflict pain.
00:34These tariffs are attacks on people who put food on the table, build homes, buy cars,
00:41have to purchase pharmaceuticals, but they also undermine our national security because
00:46they're imposed on our allies, on Europe, not on our adversaries or enemies as much
00:53as our friends, including, by the way, Israel.
00:58Now on veterans, dumb applies with absolute force, because what we're seeing is a war
01:07on veterans.
01:08And we're going to hold our Republican colleagues accountable.
01:13The message that we are hearing from veterans around the country is they are rightly fearful
01:21about the cuts, the cuts in funding, the freezes in hiring, the firings that are occurring
01:32and hitting our veterans in real time with real impact.
01:44And we're going to hold them accountable.
01:45We're going to be offering amendments that will force them to vote.
01:50Our Republican colleagues are dreading these next days because they're going to be put
01:54to the test.
01:56And those votes are going to haunt them because veterans know that they need the health care
02:03that comes at those hospitals, like the West Haven facility in Connecticut, others around
02:09the country that are short-changed.
02:11There are now 40,000 vacant positions at the VA, surgeons, nurses, counselors, janitors,
02:22schedulers, 40,000 open positions, and they're recruiting, supposedly, for those positions.
02:28At the same time, they are firing people that hold those positions right now.
02:34Makes no sense.
02:35And so veterans around the country are demanding what the VFW commander demanded when he came
02:44before our committee, stop the bleeding.
02:49We're going to seek, through this next couple of days, to stop the bleeding in veterans
02:54programs.
02:55We're going to make sure that Republicans are forced to answer what is happening right
03:00now at the VA, where the bleeding threatens everyday veterans.
03:06We heard from a number of them yesterday at the shadow hearing we conducted.
03:11Right now the Veterans Affairs Committee is not demanding that Doug Collins come and testify.
03:20We're going to demand that he do it.
03:22And we're going to demand that President Trump reverse these cuts, freezes, and firings that
03:28are causing such irreparable damage to veterans around the United States.
03:33And I'll just say, I think we owe the American people an apology.
03:37All of us who voted for Doug Collins.
03:40It was a mistake.
03:41I did it.
03:43I'm not repeating that mistake.
03:44I put a hold on all VA nominees.
03:48And I think part of what we're going to do is demand health care be protected, especially
03:55mental health care.
03:57No more cuts in the veterans crisis line.
04:00And the PAC Act benefits that we supported in a bipartisan way, protect those benefits
04:06as well.
04:07So we're going to be out there working hard.
04:12And I want to introduce my great colleague, the Senator.