leadership, drama. it s taking its toll on our veterans, on the employees of the v.a. and on our national security. right now troops are watching overseas and they don t know who they ll come home to at the v.a. this is bigger than flicpolitic this is a conscious calling moment for america. does the iava take an official position for or against jackson? no. we re letting our members speak for themselves. you ll see a diversity opinions in that poll. they were all going to tune in on wednesday and see what happens. they re looking for people to hold them accountable. the chair and the ranking member isakson and tester are good guys. they re not partisans. they ve been rigorous in this process. think jackson wil get a fair they v been voices of tranquillity and bipartisanship in the senate, so we ve got two good guys in fronthat can take
president nixon the day you were awarded. how has the action of being there you are. how has the action of being awarded the medal of honor changed? well, our wars have changed. we used to fight continuously, and now we fight in fragmented place at fragmented times with a force that s an all-volunteer force and therefore not necessarily representative of everybody. we i think there s a large and i think in certain cases insurmountable gap that s opened up between the people who ve served and the people who are serving. that wasn t the case back in the day. our friend paul rykoff made this point last week. he s the founter of iraq and afghanistan veterans administration, iava. he s tired of the military used as a shield, hearing people blaming the sthant take a knee protest in the nfl on the troops
force and therefore not necessarily representative of everybody. we i think there s a large and i think in certain cases insurmountable gap that s opened up between the people who ve served and the people who are serving. that wasn t the case back in the day. our friend paul rykoff made this point last week. he s the founter of iraq and afghanistan veterans administration, iava. he s tired of the military used as a shield, hearing people blaming the sthant take a knee protest in the nfl on the troops somehow vaguely, hearing that we can t question generals. he thinks the last thing our society needs is another impediment between the two classes, those people who are signing up to fight our wars and those of us who enjoy our freedom here. yeah, there s already a gulf, and i think we need to bridge it. it s going to be difficult to do when you don t have to serve. when our battles are being fought in disparate places, many
yesterday we spoke with calvin and sheila murphy about their son army special murphy. he died in syria earlier this year. here s just a reminder of the pain these families deal with every day. every day is hard. every day it gets worse. it doesn t get better. it gets worse because i m still looking for my child to come through the door. now these families are in focus right now for good and bad reason, but it s an opportunity. how can we help these families? what do they need? what are the challenges? paul rye cough you can get them online the iava. always a pleasure. thank you for the work that you do in service to the country. you ve got concerns and you ve got opportunities here. haas your concern about this ongoing political back and forth. we re for getting about whose in the middle of it. whose in the middle are the gold star families. they re under tremendous pressure right now. they have enough to deal with before this ever happened, new
iava. interesting times. i want to read the last line of our piece for our viewers. the one american who really needs to take a knee is another football player, it s the president. what do you mean. in the army, we take a knee when we stop on a patrol, to ensure you don t take flack or get shot at. in football, when i played football, sometimes you take a knee to take a rest or a play off. or the coach pulls you out of the game and makes you take a knee because you made a mistake. i think the president has made a mistake by trying to squash free speech. i m always going to stand for the national anthem. that s what i believe in. and if kaepernick or anyone else wants to take a knee, that s their right. that s free speech. that s america. that s what our anthem is all about, the flag is all about. and the even the veterans that i talked to who are very divided on this issue. some of them will never kneel, some of them will kneel, they believe that people have the right for free sp