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thank you. joining me now, senator tammy duckworth. the president said this morning that this was an issue of cost and readiness and distraction. do you think that s true? no. it s baloney. you want to talk about cost? studies have shown if 2016, the d.o.d. spent with $5.6 million on health care for transgendered service members. they spent $21 million on viagra alone. 84 until for erectile dysfunction, medication and treatment. if they want to cut costs, i don t think this is place to look. what about readiness? that it emanated from consultation with the folks at dod? my understanding is that this tweet caught the four service chiefs completely off guard. in fact, the dod has come out in the past and said they can certainly work this issue. we have had transgender americans serving with honor in the military. it did not affect unit readiness. and this is completely not the issue. this is an issue of the president appealing to his base. or a handful of people. my understandi ....
The president said this morning that this was an issue of cost and readiness and distraction. do you think that s true? no. it s baloney. you want to talk about cost? studies have shown if 2016, the d.o.d. spent with $5.6 million on health care for transgendered service members. they spent $21 million on viagra alone. 84 until for erectile dysfuncti dysfunction, medication and treatment. if they want to cut costs, i don t think this is place to look. what about readiness? that it emanated from consultation with the folks at dod? my understanding is that this tweet caught the four service chiefs completely off guard. in fact, the dod has come out in ....
She noted the president had never served in the military and had this to say. when i was bleeding to death my helicopter after that rpg ripped through the cockpit of that aircraft, an american came to save my life. it didn t matter to me if they were straight, if they were gay, if they were transgendered. it only mattered that they wore the uniform of the united states military. and i will always remember that. if you re willing to serve this country in unform and you re willing to lay down your life to protect it, you deserve to be able to do that. and so many more americans, including our president, has never worn the uniform. he needs to back off, because i will fight for our transgendered and all military men and women. the ban came as a surprise to many in washington including the conservatives who lobbied the president on transgendered policy. they say they were pushing to prevent the pentagon from paying from transgendered related surgery, not an outright ban on transgend er ....
The president is not back do you think from his one-sided feud with his attorney general jeff sessions. he attacked him earlier on twitter again today. i ll talk it over with maine senator angus king. we started out speaking about the transgender ban and how the military branches were caught off guard by the decision. we learned that secretary of defense mattis learned about the decision before trump went public with it. here is my conversation with senator king. senator king, i want to start by asking about breaking news tonight. the service chiefs who represent the four branches of our military were caught off guard by the president s announcement today on transgend erred service members. you re on the armed services committee. how concerning is that to you? well, it s concerning because he mentioned in his tweets some reference to the generals. i think it s a fair question who he was consulting with. there is an ongoing study on this issue, and everybody was ....
Representing and listening to the voices of the people in their state. they are saying we don t want to pay for this type of procedure for our military. but the appropriations bill that uses money that way, this is not going to pass. and there was reporting, there was axios reporting today that this originated, this argument in the house over paying for transition surgery for transgendered service members among some republicans, and they approached the president about it. the president has gone far beyond the idea of should surgeries be paid for. joan walsh reported that as well, on capitol hill it was about in the short term it was about the money for the taxpayer money that could or couldn t be used for surgeries and for transitioning and all of a sudden they looked up and saw the president tweeting about a complete reversal of policy. regardless of what you think about the policy, there s the the procedural way the president went about doing it. ....