Biden: “I will be a commander in chief who respects your sacrifice”
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President-elect Joe Biden told veterans he "will never betray the values you fought so bravely to defend" in a Veterans Day statement.
What he's saying: "For many years, I have said that we as a nation have many obligations, but we have only one truly sacred obligation: to prepare and equip our troops we send into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families when they return home," Biden said.
- "For our veterans, that means providing a future of security, opportunity, and dignity; world class health care provided by the VA, with women and LGBTQ+ veterans receiving culturally competent care; and addressing the mental health crises and epidemic of suicide that are claiming too many of our veterans and service members."
- "Fulfilling our promises to our veterans and military families, caregivers, and survivors is critical to our national security, because it is how we will ensure that future generations continue to volunteer to serve."
- "This Veterans Day, I feel the full weight of the honor and the responsibility that has been entrusted to me by the American people as the next president, and I vow to honor our country’s sacred obligation."
Biden also mentioned the 2008 service in Iraq of his late son Beau Biden, saying "we learned what it really means to be part of a military family the year that Beau deployed to Iraq with his National Guard unit."
- "We prayed every night and morning for his safety, and we missed him at every family gathering or when tucking his children in at night. It was hard. It hurt."
The big picture: Biden and his wife, Jill, visited the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia on Wednesday morning to pay tribute to veterans around the same time that President Trump was visiting the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, the Washington Post reports.
