Well, thank you, Doug, and thanks to all of you for your service. And let me just be another voice that says to all of our nation's veterans, to their families, to their friends, to their children, to everybody who has served the United States of America in uniform, but also to the people who made it possible for them to serve the United States in uniform, this is your day.
Happy Veterans Day, my fellow veterans. We're proud of you, and we're never going to stop fighting for you. So, 22 years before Abraham Lincoln was president, he observed that it was that our veterans who were the memorial to generations past, to the wars that they bought, and to the freedoms that they earned.
And in his time, he was talking about the generation of Revolutionary War veterans who had served their country honorably, and they were passing away. And he likened it to a massive beautiful forest, where every day we would lose one or another giant beautiful oak tree. Think about what those veterans represented.
Before we had these beautiful monuments, before we had stone temples built to honor those who served, the first memorial to our nation's freedoms and the wars that made them possible were our veterans. You saw them in the friends that you served with. You saw them in the people who lost limbs. You saw them in the headstones that represented a life that had served the United States of America.
We are, of course, proud in this amazing city, in this beautiful capital of ours. We're proud of all these incredible monuments, but we know that the most important monuments to our generations who served in the military, our most important monuments are you. It is the people who had the courage and the willpower and the fight to put on the uniform of the United States of America and say don't send my neighbor, send me. That is the greatest monument to America.
It's you all. It's the fact that you served. But just as in Lincoln's time, some of those monuments were disappearing. One of the amazing responsibilities and the humbling responsibilities as a veteran is that we have to to pick up the torch when one generation sets it down. Now, when I first started doing work with the generations of veterans in Vietnam, one of the things they told me, one of the most important things they took to heart is that they did not want to leave the next generation of veterans behind.
Anybody who's talked to a veteran of Vietnam knows that they were fighting not just for their benefits, not just so that the country honored the promises that were made to the generation in Vietnam, they were also fighting so that the generations that fought in Iraq, in Afghanistan, so that the government honored those promises as well.
Because one of the most important things our veterans do is not just fight for their country, they fight for their fellow veterans. And let me say, as one veteran to the next, we are picking up that torch every single day. We will never leave our veterans behind. Ladies and gentlemen, that is my most sacred promise to every person here today.
But just as in Lincoln's time, he was witnessing that amazing Revolutionary War generation lose an oak tree every single day. So, in our time, we are watching fewer and fewer World War II veterans who still remember what it was like to serve in one of our nation's greatest and most historic triumphs in 251 years of proud history.
And so, I want to give a special shout out to three World War II generation veterans who are here with us today, and I'd ask that they be recognized. And that is Dave Yoho, Clifford Richardson, and Julian Smith. Thank you for your service. Thank you for -- Fighting for this country. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow veterans, this is your day, of course, and I want you to celebrate.
I want you to have a good time. And in my family, our great tradition, because veterans ate free at Golden Corral, was to go to Golden Corral. [Laughter] Whatever -- we had one guy in the back standing up and clapping. But whatever your tradition is, I want you to enjoy this day, but I also want you to take some special commitment.
Just as the generations of World War II veterans and the generation of Vietnam veterans fought for my generation of veterans, it is now our time to pick up the torch and to fight for the next generation of veterans. So, yes, ladies and gentlemen, let's celebrate our veterans, but I want every single veteran here, every single veteran in our country to remember that our job is to fight for the next generation of veterans, and that is exactly what we're going to do. And because of that, I am proud to introduce a man who has fought for veterans every single step of his life in public service, a man who expanded healthcare benefits for our veterans and who demands that his administration honor its commitments to the veterans who served our country in uniform.
He is our commander-in-chief, but most importantly today, he is a fighter for the nation's veterans. And I am proud to fight right alongside him, Mr. President, Donald J Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I want to just thank the vice president. He's doing a fantastic job. We appreciate it very much. And we come today to these hallowed grounds, and they are indeed very special, rolling hills and hold the names of our great heroes etched in stone to honor 250 years of service, valor, and sacrifice unsurpassed in all of the ages.
On Veterans Day, we reaffirm our undying gratitude to every patriot who has answered -- the call of duty. We pay tribute to all of those who have won the wars and worn the uniform, who faced the enemy, who have beaten the enemy at every turn, who have borne the burdens of fate and destiny to stand as our protection in battle.
You are indeed our protection in battle. And we thank Almighty God for the noble warriors of the United States military, who have always stepped forward so that America might always stay free. To every veteran here at Arlington and across the nation, today we render you the highest salute. We offer you our deepest respect and love, and we pledge to you our utmost loyalty and devotion.
Please join me in thanking every American veteran of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, and the United States Marine Corps. And we want to thank you very much. As we salute our veterans, let us also express our profound love and appreciation for our military families, past and present. They are amazing.
Thank you very much. And they are really among the very best of our nation. We're honored to be joined as well by the First Lady of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you. The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. I had a feeling that was going to happen. He's done a fantastic job, and he loves you and he protects you.
He's all about you. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, with a 92 percent approval rating, the job he's doing. That's pretty good. Maybe we'll get it up to 100 pretty soon, Doug. Doug Collins. Thank you, Doug, what a job. It's about 50 points higher than his predecessor, I must tell you. That's a big difference.
Many members of my cabinet, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, is fantastic. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. And representatives of our amazing veteran service organizations and the countless members of the United States Armed Forces who are with us today. Thank you all.
We really respect and appreciate you. Thank you all. To inherit a free nation is among the rarest blessings that any people in history have ever known. To defend that freedom is among the hardest and highest obligations, one of the most difficult tasks imaginable. Across every generation, American liberty has been preserved by legions of selfless patriots who have raised their right hands and sworn an oath of flesh and blood for a cause whose full cost could not be measured in advance.
There was no way it was doable, they thought. In every era, they've stood watch, they've held the line, they've hold a charge bravely into the fray that few people would have wanted to do or could have done. It's something that lies between order and chaos, freedom and tyranny, civilization and barbarism and good and evil, exact opposite ends of the spectrum.
Time and time again, for 250 years, the American Warrior has returned victorious, our republic has triumphed, and today our country is stronger than it has ever been before. A nation without heroes is like a sky without stars or a heaven without angels. But in America, we've never known that darkness because we have the men and women of America's armed forces, our guiding lights, our greatest heroes, and our guardian angels.
At 19 years old, Jack Myers kissed his young bride and newborn son goodbye and went to serve as a gunner in the 692nd Tank Destroyer Battalion in World War II, brave people, all. In the frostbitten winter of 1944, Corporal Myers found himself in the largest battle in American history, the battle of the bulge.
For weeks, he and his unit fought in one of the most intense crucibles in the history of war to turn the enemy's final advance into an unbelievable and somewhat unexpected defeat. We thought we'd have to go on much longer than that. It was an incredible moment in military history. Months later, Jack's battalion was among the first to liberate the Dachau concentration camp, coming face to face with the evil he risked his life to destroy.
Today, Jack is a great, great grandfather and is here to receive our nation's gratitude at 103 years old. Jack. Corporal Jack Myers, we are honored by your presence today. It's really something. You see how we all respect you, respect you so much. Thank you and thank you for being here. US Army Colonel Douglas Moore served as one of the famous Dust-off medevac pilots in Vietnam.
And boy, could they fly. Flying an incredible 1874 combat missions and evacuating 2,782 badly wounded soldiers. On a single day in December 1968, he twice exposed his helicopter to close range machine guns and sniper fire to rescue five Americans from hell. Then Douglas flew back into danger to rescue eight more Americans as bullets ripped through his helicopter, hitting his leg, his hand, his helmet and sending shrapnel into his eye that blinded him.
Douglas was knocked backwards and the helicopter began to dive, but despite it all, he grabbed the flight stick, recovered the aircraft, and returned the eight men to safety. Nobody thought it was possible. For his actions, Douglas received our military's second highest honor, the Distinguished Service Cross.
Over three decades, he also received two Distinguished Flying crosses, a Bronze Star and 33 air medals and he is really a hero. He happens to be with us today. Please, Colonel. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Colonel, what an honor. Americans must always remember that our way of life is not the natural condition of mankind.
Everything we've have achieved, everything that we are, everything that we hope to become is built on the courage of those willing to endure an unimaginable, and to some just unbearable, and to stand strong when all else gives way, stands stronger than anybody that's ever stood before. And I will never allow anyone to hurt our country.
We're not going to allow anyone to hurt or damage our country with bad, foolish, horrible ideology. We're not going to let it happen. And everyone knows what I mean. In 2010, Green Beret Ryan Hendrickson was leading his team through a Taliban held village in Afghanistan at 3:00 in the morning when he was stepped on by enemy.
I mean, he -- he was -- the enemy was all over, and he made the mistake, a mistake that people understood when they were -- In the battle's jungles, he stepped on enemy explosives, a lot of them. The blast ripped through his lower body, and he looked down to see his shattered bones protruding from his absolutely mangled leg and arm.
Certain that he would die, Ryan's only thought, as he was airlifted away, was the men he was leaving behind. He couldn't stand the thought of it. He endured 27 surgeries and two cardiac arrests, but the doctors saved both his life and his leg. They told him his combat career was over, but Ryan was not done. 18 months later, he returned to Afghanistan.
As his team cleared another village, a barrage of terrorist gunfire pinned down two of his men. With the enemy closing in, they said they didn't have a chance. Ryan was ordered to stand down. Don't go. Under any circumstances, do not go. But he had not come all the way just to leave his comrades in danger behind.
He charged forward despite orders -- you should have listened to those orders -- but he charged forward into the fire. That same leg, it was hit again. And in a valiant race to rescue the dying men from the clutches of the Taliban, evil group. For his courage, he was awarded the Silver Star. Sergeant First Class Ryan Hendrickson, you saved a lot of people that day.
Thank you very much. Even though you disobeyed orders, which we don't like -- [Laughter] Thank goodness you did. Ryan, please stand up. Thank you. These are very brave people. Whenever I visit our troops anywhere -- and I do it as often as possible -- but anywhere in the world, I see that same fierce determination burning in their eyes and that same love of country beating in their hearts.
I'm pleased to report that the spirit of our Armed Forces is higher than ever before, and that we have the best recruitment numbers in the history of our country. There's never been recruitment -- Anywhere near that. Thank you very much. And General Kaine, thank you. And Pete, thank you. Great spirit; we have a tremendous spirit.
Two years ago, we had shortages. Now we have waiting lists of people that want to get into the United States military, which is stronger and more powerful today than ever before. We built it during my first administration. We used it a little bit now. In Venezuela, we won the war in 48 minutes and in one of the most stunning displays of military dominance and power the world has ever seen.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it. This Veterans Day, I also want to say a very special thanks to every service member currently working to ensure that the world's number one state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never have a nuclear weapon. Thank you. Here today is a veteran who reminds us why that mission really matters.
As a young man, Dale Garner enlisted in the Marines after the Iran hostage crisis. Soon he deployed to Beirut on a mission of peace. But on the morning of October 23rd, 1983, Iranian backed Hezbollah terrorists all, by the way, terrorists all, detonated a truck packed with explosives at the Marine Barracks with hundreds of Americans inside.
Dale's first memory is waking up in a hospital bed and his catastrophic head injuries and wounds, a collapsed lung, a broken back, torn up legs, ruptured ear-- eardrums and horrific burns across his entire body and all over his face. He was the sole survivor of the men around him, and he joins us here to remember the 241 American service members murdered in the Beirut barracks bombing, the deadliest day for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.
Dale, please stand up. Thank you. You look good, Dale. He looks good, a handsome guy. What's going on here? Thank you very much. That was a terrible time. America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war on America since 1979. This should have been taken care of a long time ago. Under this administration -- Thank you.
Under this administration, and it was about time, somebody fought back. All of us fought back. We fought back, and we seriously fought back. And we won, just a question of when we want to end it. We want to make sure we have a total victory, not a 93 percent victory. It's going to be total. It'll take them 25 years to rebuild back what we have destroyed, and hopefully we won't have to destroy any more of that country.
We've got a lot of work to do to put it back. US involvement in the Korean War lasted four years and we lost 36,500 great people. The Vietnam War lasted 21 years and we lost 60,000 people. Iraq went on for eight years and we lost more than 4,400 people. Afghanistan was almost 20 years and we lost 2,500 service members and got very little from any of these wars.
In our case, we had Venezuela, where we're taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil and all sorts of other things, be hundreds of billions very soon. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And we've paid for the cost of the war many, many times over already. Nobody has ever even envisioned that. To the victor belong the spoils, they used to say, but you can say it again with us under this leadership.
In Iran, where we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon, the B-2 bombers, they took them out. We began operations against Iran seven months ago, of which only a few weeks were active hard fighting. We lost 18 beautiful souls. But when this conflict is over, and it will be soon, the entire world will be a much safer and better place, a more peaceful place, and a place without the kind of danger -- That we had to suffer, because the bravery and skill of our amazing American warriors has absolutely been incredible.
So, in the case of Venezuela, we have millions of barrels of oil coming out on a weekly basis and billions and billions of dollars. And China left when I called them, gotta leave, and Russia left when I called them. They were all nibbling at the edges. Said you gotta leave. They left, but we didn't leave.
But when the battle ends, our commitment to those who serve is only just beginning. It's only just beginning. It's going to go on forever, things that you would never even think about. But we have to be strong, we have to be brave, and we have to be respected like we are right now. We've never been any -- any more respected.
I would say we are right now more respected than this country has ever been before. And if you go back two years ago, it wasn't pretty. The world was laughing at us. But that's all why that I'm very proud to have done more to improve care for American veterans than any president in modern history. To ensure our veterans get the treatment they have earned, I passed the VA Choice and the VA Accountability, two of the most important things ever passed.
Nobody thought they could be passed, but we got it done. In less than two years, we have cut the VA claims backlog by 71 percent. I signed the VA Home Loan Reform Act so that no veteran loses their home to -- foreclosure. The banks are not happy about that, but we are happy and the veterans are happy. That's all that matters.
And we've secured housing for nearly 100,000 homeless veterans who were not properly taken care of in the last administration. And we're committed to ending the veterans homelessness. I mean, you had it -- it was a plague, a horrible plague. We're working very hard on it and we're getting the numbers down by -- by percentages that nobody thought were even possible to think about.
We're doing a real job. And Doug Collins has been fantastic, I will tell you. America's veterans have always fulfilled their duty to us and while I'm president of the United States, we will always fulfill our duty to them. From the Patriots first stand at Lexington Green and the Concord Bridge to the blood-soaked battlefields that saved our nation from the treacherous trenches of Europe to the deepest waters of the Pacific and the farthest reaches of the world, our veterans have answered every call, met every threat, crushed every foe, and borne every burden of war so that our children might know every single blessing of peace and love.
And soon we're going to dedicate a magnificent triumphal arc to our veterans, and that's in honor of our great veterans and our great military. They've been waiting for it for 200 years. Each day at Arlington Cemetery, sometimes as often as 30 times a day, a bugler plays the sound of taps over a new grave of an American veteran.
In those 24 notes, there is sadness, there is pain, but there is always pride, pride in our nation, pride in our flag. And there's never any doubt, no doubt, that our heroes served a noble cause, no doubt that they gave themselves to a righteous mission, no doubt that they had victories and won. They just won, won, won.
That's what they want to do. That's what they know how to do. That's all they know how to do. The freedoms they preserved and the legacy that they secured have outlived them in so many cases, but they're looking down on us right now, and with God's help, we will do things that we've never been able to do before.
Our country is becoming a far greater country than it's ever been before. So today, as one people, we say to every American veteran, the sacrifice you have made, we will never forget the oath that you have kept. We will never take for granted the values you fought for. We'll never -- we will never, ever forsake the flag you held high.
We will never let it fall. And the nation you served, we will never, ever let it fail. I just want to thank everybody for being here. You're an amazing group of people, heroes all, the families, the soldiers, the warriors, you're heroes all and it's an honor to be your president. It's -- this is really an amazing time in our country's history.
We're doing things that nobody ever thought possible. And yes, we'll have some minor setbacks. We'll handle them very nicely. But our country has never done like it's done right now, like it's doing right now. May God bless America's great veterans. May God bless our military, and may God bless the United States of America.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Audience members chant "USA"]