sides. he said it s not donald trump is not barack obama, to me, my frame of thinking, he nailed it right there saying it s not about the former president of this president, it s been going on long time. and something has to be done. so he is stepping out firmly fuel to say this is got to stop and we have to learn how to get along. there s lots of people who agree with me on issues and why disagree with that who i love and embrace. and to dissent from whatever opinion, that s who we are as a country but this is in. i want to give praise to the charlottesville mayor for his tweet regarding people who want peace and to just go home. we appreciate you so much for sharing and weighing in on the issue. were sorry it s happening in charlottesville. your great constituents there. as a president said we need to pull together as a country. and pray for the victims.
pursue those charges. julie: thank you for talking with us. always a pleasure. kelly: now, let s bring in congressman thomas garrett who represents the district of charlottesville. sir, it s good of you to join us today. this is a very difficult situation for you obviously, these are your constituents in their day is been mirrored by violent things coming out of that area. i can t think of a circumstance i would rather be on your show for less than this. i want to point out, the victims of this racist violence my constituents, but a lot of the perpetrators are not from the area. i don t have words for it. i love this country and i want to see progress and we should strive to be more perfect union.
so our veterans have more choices and more access to the absolute best possible care. i want to thank congressman phil roe, senator johnny isaacson, those two people have been working so hard. senator dean heller for their dedicated efforts to get this bill through congress. is very, very tough. for reasons that, i guess i understand, but it was not easy. i will tell you that phil johnny, ending work very, very hard to get it through. and, by the way i can also say others, and even some democrats. i want to say their names, go ahead say their names. senator koester and representative walls were key in helping us get this done mr. president.
for a veterans to make sure there getting high quality care, not waiting for care. already in the first six months of this year we have authorized over 15 million appointments for veterans in the community. that is 4 million appointments more than what was experienced at this time last year. we are making progress in expanding choice. this is a temporary fix. we still have more work to do with congress and with the president support. we need to collapse a different ways of paying for community care into a single program and simplify to make it easy for veterans to use. i know with this president s commitment toward countries veterans, this is important to him, to me, and to our veterans.
it gives me great pleasure today to introduce the 45th president of the united states, donald trump. mr. president. thank you very much. as you know, this was a small press conference about a very important one. the schedule to talk about the great things we re doing with the secretary on the veterans administration. we will talk about that very much so in a little while. i thought i should put out to comment as to what is going on in charlottesville. so, again i want to thank everybody for being here and in particular i want to thank our credible veterans. thank you fellows, let me shake your hand.