With all due respect Senator, if you wanted to thank us for our service you would protect our voting rights. Yet, you won’t even make time to meet with disabled AZ vets and your staff have been downright disrespectful. Take for instance our last interaction with your office.1/4
Our team brought over a dozen AZ vets to meet with your staff about voting rights. Your staff was silent the entire call and while disabled vets were sharing their concerns about anti-voting laws, the call suddenly ended. Then ignored our efforts to follow up about next steps.2/4
This is just one of many cases of disrespect shown towards AZ veterans by you and your office. That’s why, after months of being ignored and used as props, five members of your veterans advisory council felt they had no choice but to resign. 3/4
.@commondefense was founded in 2016 by Veterans whose protests at Trump Tower forced Trump to cough up the money he lied about donating to Vet charities.
Since then, we’ve led the #VetsAgainstTrump movement, helping win impeachment and speaking out daily against his crimes.
In 2016, people thought Trump couldn’t win, but we saw the danger. We saw what was appealing about his message within parts of the Veteran community, even though Trump is a fraud.
Back then, Veterans were not well organized to grapple with our frustration with the status quo.
We got to work within our own community, organizing #VetsAgainstTrump since nobody else would.
A few greedy billionaires in Mar-a-Lago are trying to destroy the VA so they can profit off us.
But what’s happening with veterans isn’t isolated. It’s happpening in public education, where @BetsyDeVos undermines our public schools, then uses the sabotage as a pretext for cuts.
It’s happening in the military, where corporate interests, empowered by a revolving door of senior officials, siphon more and more “Defense” money into expensive boondoggles so they can make more profits.
The troops get less for training, basic gear. They need sleep not gizmos.
Fun Fact: one of the disbursements Trump made in an Iowa was to a supposed “Veteran Service dog” charity, which has only ever given a dog to Sarah Palin, and which is run by a GOP political operative with a felony conviction for charity fraud.
Following #VetsVsHate holding a protest outside of Trump Tower in May 2016, calling out @realDonaldTrump for using Veterans as props for racism and bigotry while lying about having donated to Veteran charities, Trump was forced to donate the missing money. /2
Trump held a press conference in Trump Tower where (along with commenting on Harambe the gorilla, calling a journalist a “sleeze,” and attacking the Veterans protesting outside) he announced where he’d donated the missing money.