The Daily Signal - 2 Big Challenges Confronting America's Veterans

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie brings a personal and family history of military service to his high-profile job—characteristics that have helped him lead an government agency responsible for providing care for approximately 9.5 million of America's veterans. The Daily Signal speaks to him about the issues confronting America's veterans and his leadership of the Department of Veterans Affairs. We also share your letters to the editor and an interview with U.S. Special Forces veteran and author Brad Taylor about his new book, "Hunter Killer," which is available Tuesday. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at dailysignal.com/podcasts. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, January 6th. I'm Robert Blewe. And I'm Virginia Allen. Happy New Year. Rob and I are very excited to be back with you all this morning. On today's show, we share a conversation with U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert Wilkie. We also have your letters to the editor and my interview with U.S. Special Forces veteran and author Brad Taylor about his new book, Hunter Killer, which comes out tomorrow. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I would like to tell you about the agenda. a Heritage Foundation email that provides you with the news conservatives need to know every week. If one of your New Year's resolutions is to be more up to date on the news that matters, the agenda is an easy way to stay informed.

It comes out on Monday morning and gives you the conservative perspective on top policy debates, along with television interviews from our experts, and important events happening at the Heritage Foundation. You can sign up by emailing Managing Editor at heritage.org, or scroll down to the bottom of www. www.heritage.org and look for the subscribe to email update section at the bottom of the page. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Robert Wilkie.

He's the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Secretary Wilkie, it's good to have you on the program. Well, thank you, Rob. Thank you for having me. Tell us about the mission of Veterans Affairs and what your priorities are as Secretary for the Department. Well, the mission is very simple, but it's also sublime. I'm sitting underneath the quote from really the father of what was first the Veterans Bureau and now Veterans Affairs. That's Mr. Lincoln. At his second inaugural, he said that the mission of government was to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan. One of the last acts of his life before he went to the theater was to sign the charters for three soldiers home. in Maine, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And our mission as a result of Mr. Lincoln's mandate is to do just that.

We take care of about 9.5 million of America's veterans. We provide educational benefits and home loans. And we are the other end of the national security continuum. care of those who have already borne the battle. And I have always argued that this is probably the noblest mission in government. Well, thank you for the work that you do do. And quite literally, that quote is below you because it's emblazoned on the building, which is right there, right across the street from the White House. That's right. You know, I've heard you talk about two big challenges confronting our nation's veterans. One of them is the opioid epidemic and the other is

suicide, unfortunately. Let's start with opioids. How are you addressing that? Well, we've had change the culture. We are not immune from things that happen in greater America. Suicide is one. It's a problem that is devastating large swaths of our population. Opioids is another. We all know the stories of how opioid use and abuse spread throughout the Midwest and then to the coast. But we had to change the culture. Decided to treat the actual source of pain rather than treating the brain. So what does that mean? We found in our research that combinations of over-the-counter medicines like aspirin and acetaminopin or aspirin and ibuprofen are just as valuable to the treatment of an opioid. But in order to enhance those effects, we have introduced veterans across

the country to alternative therapies, things like Tai Chi and yoga and art and music. Why is that important? I come from the military world. I was born into it. My father was a very decorated combat soldier from Vietnam and a senior officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. I'm still a colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

Our society, our culture does not change rapidly. But we've had to re-educate those that there are other ways of making themselves feel better. And that's what we're doing with opioids. We've reduced the prescription numbers by about 51%. I hope we go even lower than that. The second thing that you asked about is suicide. And this I tie into mental health, although not all suicides have anything to do with mental illness.

but we have never had a national conversation about suicide and life or about mental health. Tell you how long this has impacted the Army of the United States. The Army started taking statistics on military suicides in the 1890s. It's been steady ever since. There were a couple of spikes right before World War II and spikes right after Vietnam, But it has been steady. 20 a day, take their lives. Of those 20, we don't see 14.

Those are primarily my father's era, Vietnam. People who were tossed aside, for the most part, when they came back from Southeast Asia, give you a family example after my father recovered from his wounds in Cambodia. Three years after his recovery was completed, he returned to Fort Bragg, to the all-eastern. American division, and even in Southern North Carolina, he could not wear his uniform on post. So we're dealing with people who have those memories of a government that turn them away. We have to find them, and we have to bring them into the fold. And this is where the free enterprise and the notion that government only works when it's

closest to those it's supposed to serve comes in. So as the head of the president's task force, I am trying to open the apertures so that we can partner with charities, localities, non-government organizations to help us find those veterans. We don't see those veterans who have had bad experiences with government. Last thing I will say, no matter what we do, human life is not linear. We're not going to be able to fully eradicate this problem. people take their lives for a number of reasons. Many of those reasons have nothing to do with their military service. But what we can do is make sure that VA is integrated into all levels of society

so that we can find those that we don't see. Well, I was shocked to hear that number of 20 a day. It is truly sad. For those listeners of ours who might have a veteran in their life or know somebody who's struggling with mental illness, But what advice do you have for them? What can they do to help those? Well, the first thing I asked anyone who is in distress to call our crisis line, that's 800, 273, 8255, or you can text 838255. We get about 1,700 calls a day. We physically act on 2 to 300 of those calls.

That line is open to families as well as to veterans. The other thing that we provide, all of our facilities, provide same-day mental health services. If there is a problem, come see us, and we will move to help. It goes without saying we can't help if we don't know. And we want families and friends to help us help their family members and their friends by getting in touch with us. Well, thank you for your leadership on that and sharing those resources with our listeners.

We'll make sure that they are aware of them. And, again, we pray for those who are in need and hope that they will reach out for help. You know, Mr. Secretary, as you mentioned, you come from a background of service to our country, both as a member of the Air Force Reserve and also through the various positions you've held in public service and government.

So tell our listeners what led you down this, past. Well, I grew up around it. I come from a long line of soldiers, and service was part of our family heritage. I was privileged as a child to see and shake hands with people like Audie Murphy or Creighton Abrams, Matthew Ridgeway, and James Gavin. Those were my heroes, those were certainly my father's hero. And I always wanted to be part of that world. And, you know, Vietnam cast a large shadow across my life. And I'll give you an example other than the one that I, I mentioned about my father being terribly wounded and then not allowed to wear his uniform outside of Fort Bragg. When I was a child, there was always a chance when one of my classmates in

kindergarten or elementary school was called to the principal's office. That child wasn't going up there. There was bad news from Vietnam. And in 1975, we got bad news in our school. One of my classmates, fathers was a medic, Air Force medic. He volunteered to help the evacuation of all of the orphanages in Saigon prior to the arrival of the North Vietnamese Army. The C-5, he was on. He was on. crashed at Tonsanute Air Base. He was one of 11 airmen killed and well over 100 children killed. I remember, well, just this April, 44 years after that crash, I took Denise to the Vietnam Wall. And her father's name was there, one of the last. And that's the kind of thing that that animates me, that kind of service world that I was raised in and those are the people that I was raised to admire.

for sharing that story. I appreciate that. You know, you do get to spend a lot of time with veterans in your capacity. And I know President Trump always seems to enjoy spending time with our troops and veterans as well. What is it like working with him on some of these issues that you're confronting? Well, it's been wonderful because I'm a pretty good historian, and I will tell you, no president, and you can look this up, ever made veterans, the centerpiece of his, first his campaign and then of his administration. He has allowed me to go. He has allowed me to expand what you at heritage and what I believe to be the key to a free society, and that is expand choices that our citizens have.

So what does that mean? We now provide the veteran with the option of going into the private sector, going to a doctor or a clinic closer to that veteran's home, not automatically defaulting to the government. When we kicked off the Mission Act, which is designed to integrate VA into the wider American health care system, we've been able to send well over a million and a half just since June 6th into the private sector. Now, the other side of that is that we've had 3 million more appointments at VA this year than we had last year. So veterans are voting with their feet in both ways.

Many are staying with us because they know we speak the language, we understand the culture, but we're also giving those veterans who want to be closer to home, the opportunity to stay closer to home, not having to travel in some cases out west, you know, five, 600, 700 miles route trip. So it is a new day for us. The other thing that we're doing, we're certainly modernizing our supply chain. We are creating the first electronic health record that follows an American from the time that American walks into the military entrance processing station at the time that veterans is handed to us. So people like my father do not have to carry around an 800-page paper record for the rest of their post-military lives. lives. You know, it's so good to hear you talk about those initiatives. It wasn't much long ago

prior to your arrival that we constantly seem to be hearing about the VA in terms of the scandals that might be happening at the department. Well, you just hit it. It used to. Used to, exactly. And the problem I've got, it's sitting in this perch, is that most of the stories you read, you have to go all the way down to the bottom of those stories. There was just one in the Wall Street Journal about things that happened in the last administration. And I think there's an element in the national media that will never be satisfied if there are no scandals at VA, if there are no systemic problems. In an organization this large, they're going to be bad apples, no question. But what has amazed me is that how many people, particularly in the press,

and certainly some on Capitol Hill, who were invested in the failure of this department, and I think the president has rejected that mindset. I certainly have. And those things that we saw many years ago, we certainly don't see them now. Well, Mr. Secretary, you know, I wanted to ask you a two-part question. One is, you know, how have you changed the culture there at VA? And what are some of the measures that you've put in place to ensure that you are having success and meeting the needs of veterans? Well, I will tell you, the first thing is our customer satisfaction rate.

It's sitting at 90%. There's no other health care system in the country with that, and our veterans are voting with their feet. This president has given me the opportunity to bring people into this structure who have an investment in the armed forces in the United States. Everyone around me has significant military experience. That's vital. It doesn't matter that much in a private hospital setting. But for us, if you don't understand the culture and you don't speak the language, you have. no credibility with veterans. The other thing that we are doing is that we are walking the post.

We are out there talking. I've been in just the last year in 43 states and all the territory. And you would be amazed how many places I go, big cities in this country, massive cities, when I walk in and they say, you're the first secretary we've ever seen. So getting out of this town and getting out and talking to the people who have served, that we have to serve, has been key to the change. And just in the last year, we've gone from 17 out of 17 in terms of best places to work in government to number six. And I think next year will be higher than that. Well, showing up can make all the difference.

And my final question for you has to do with as you look ahead to the coming year. What is it in 2020 that you hope to achieve? What are some of the top goals on your mind? So we want to continue the upward trajectory. to make sure veterans know that they now have options when it comes to their own care. We want to continue modernizing. We want to continue. We're going to be fielding the electronic health record.

We'll modernize the supply chain. We will make sure that veterans are educated where they want to be educated. And I will tell you that's what Heritage has been preaching for a long time. I've said, and of course there are opponents on the hill who go after me, I want a veteran to take advantage of the educational option he or she wants, which means that veteran wants to be a mechanic, a master mechanic, or a plumber or electrician. I am not going to force that veteran into a four-year track that leads to an anthropology or sociology degree just because some public university is out there promoting. it through its mouthpieces on the hill. So choice is the key for our veterans, both on the medical front and on the education front. So I thank you very much for having me.

Well, thank you, Secretary. Robert Wilkie, leading the Department of Veterans Affairs. We appreciate your leadership. Thanks for joining the Daily Signal. Thanks a lot, Rob. What the heck is trickle-down economics? Does the military really need a space force? What is the meaning of American exceptionalism? I'm Michelle Cordero.

I'm Tim Desher, and every week on the Heritage Explains podcast, we break down a hot-button policy issue in the news at a 101 level. Through an entertaining mix of personal stories, media clips, music, and interviews, we help you actually understand the issues. So do this. Subscribe to Heritage Explains on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcast today. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show and in our Morning Bell, email. newsletter. Virginia, who's up first? Mary Jane Kane writes, Thank you for Daily Signal. It is so good to have a place to read the truth. The Heritage Foundation is working so hard to save America. Well, thank you, Mary Jane. And Deborah G. writes, excellent commentary, as usual. Thanks for sharing the real story on so much of

the half-true or even Holy False mainstream media versions. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. Send an email to Letters at DailySignal.com. or leave us a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by bestselling author Brad Taylor. He has a new book called Hunter Killer, and we're grateful for the opportunity to talk to him about it and his own real-life experience serving in the U.S. military. Brad, I've really enjoyed the book.

It's definitely a page-turner and hard to put down. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. You served in the U.S. Special Forces for more than two decades, and in the last date, you were a Delta commander chasing terrorists and hotspots all around the world. Tell us how that experienced helped shape your work as an author. Well, actually, it pretty much did shape it. I originally set out to write a story of redemption.

I wasn't planning on writing a military thriller. I wanted to write kind of like that rocky theme, something like that. But everybody, you know, you read all the blogs and stuff, say, hey, write what you know. Well, I was a Special Forces guy, so it became. military thriller, and it's pretty much infused a book. Every book sends. Well, Hunter Killer is the latest book in the Pike Logan series, which

debuted in 2011 with one rough man. You've had now 13 novels, which have been New York Times bestsellers, and together have sold 3 million copies. So congratulations on the success. Did you ever expect it to play out the way that it did? No,

not at all. I never thought I'd have a single book published, much less, you know, coming up on 14. nobody's more surprised than me. Well, now in this latest book, Hunter Killer, Pike Logan tracks a highly trained Russian assassins to Brazil after an explosion kills a friend of his in Charleston, South Carolina. Tell us more about the story and how you came upon it. Yeah, the previous book, Dawn of War, had a kind of a tangential protagonist in there

in the form of the Wagner group from Russia, it's a private military company. They're all over the place. They're in Libya. They're in the Central African Republic. They're all over Syria. And so I still had tabs on it. Every morning I try to keep up the news from all over the world. And I saw a story about how they sent Wagner mercenaries into Venezuela to protect the dictator down there.

And I picked my interest. And so I started doing more research on it and fell on to the politics of Brazil when the election was going on, which was the leader. The guy winning the election was actually in jail. And it was just a clown. And at the same time, I discovered some of the greatest offshore oil fields in the 20th century, right off the coast of Brazil, named it after him, Lulu Oilfields. And there was so much going on. I said, there's a story there. And so that started my plot line going.

That's great. Now, I understand that all of the places that are mentioned in the book are locations that you've personally visited. Why is it important for you to have that experience and to understand the culture when you're writing about them? Well, for me, I guess other people could do it, but I can't. I have got to get on the ground. I used to have a thing called Sitesound Smells of the Battlefield before you went out on patrol. It's kind of the same thing. Every culture is different.

Every country's different. And if I don't get on the ground, I don't really get a granular feel of what it's like. And I can't convey that on the page. There's only so much you can see with, you know, Google Earth and looking at pictures. So getting on the ground, that really helps me flesh out the details. Usually I say there's like 50% I'm looking for. So when I went to Brazil, I had a 50% idea. I want to go see these specific sites.

But then there's 50% that's looking for me. me, and I don't even realize it. And when I get down there, I'm like, wow, that's really going to work out. So I take notes and come back and write. Now, as I was reading it, I mean, it struck me as how the world that we live in in contemporary events really do play into account. Tell us, you know, as you see the world today and as you follow the news, how does that shape the work that you do in these novels? Oh, it absolutely does. The hardest part about writing the books is that I am writing about current events. And the problem with current events are they're current. So you take a risk. If you want to make sure that the book can stand the tested time, but on the other hand,

you want to be cutting edge on what's actually happening in the world. But there's been several times when things have happened in books after I've written them that I've had to go back and change. Aliciri is a bomb maker in Yemen. He did the underwear bomb. He did the printer bombs, things like that. And I had him in a book. He's a real live person. He's building real live bombs in a book. and then we killed him in a drone strike, and the book was done. I was like, so I go back and change his name, put it in a fictional name, and then he pops up on a video. He's not dead.

I said, I'm not changing that. So things like that happen all the time, but he tried to remain as current as possible. Now, somebody who's been a journalist for a long time, but although never written a thriller, I understand that you have a unique process that you follow. You have a leather-bound notebook where you plot out the book, scene by scene in your own handwriting, and this has been the case for all of the books that you've done. Tell us about that process and how it works for you and maybe other listeners

who would want to behind the scenes look at how your work is done. Yeah, that's a little bit of exaggeration. I do have a leather journal I carry around with me, but it's really just for writing notes down that something comes in my head. Now, sometimes I will write out, you know, whole sections, but just bullet points to the things that I'm going to do. Other times I just see it's something I have to remember and I'll write it down. And that journal goes around with me everywhere. As far as a writing process goes, I really don't have a process. I mean, when you write your first book, you've got your entire life to write it, and I wrote it in barracks on security contracts, you know, gymnastics meets inside hotel rooms, on airplanes,

and I learned I can write pretty much anywhere, and so that's pretty much what I do now. I don't even have a writing desk or I don't have a writing schedule. People usually talk about writing as if, you know, when you're behind the keyboard, but really, for me anyway, writing is always happening. I'm writing when I'm doing physical activity. I'm writing when I'm in the shower. I'm writing. I'm always thinking about the book.

And then when I feel like I've got enough to continue, I'll then get behind the keyboard. Now, I saw on Facebook that you recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and Australia. Tell us about what you learned there. And might we be in store for that setting and a future book? Yeah, definitely. That's exactly what we were doing. We went over to do book research over in Taiwan and Australia, and it's going to have a Chinese focus. And right now that's, once again, you talk about current events.

So I had the whole plot, and I'm writing it right now. And then Hong Kong blew up. And so that's affecting the book. And so I'm like, you guys need to resolve that before I finish my book. Well, it will be timely. You know, finally I wanted to ask you here at The Daily Signal, we obviously cover current events quite a bit. We also have a big focus on the U.S. military. As a veteran yourself, what do you see as some of the biggest threats that our country and the world is facing today?

I think the biggest threats that we're facing right now, are you just talking about militarily? Militarily, or I mean, I'm thinking from a national security perspective, yes. Yeah, it's all starting to kind of blend in because the cyber realm is blending in with the military realm. And the biggest threat I think we have right now is it would be China. The way they've got the Belt and Road initiative, they're infiltrating into Africa all over the place. I did research for operator down three books ago, and I was in Lassutu, which is a country, inside South Africa. And they had a brand new parliament building, things like that.

And there were Chinese letterings everywhere. And I asked the person I was with. I was what's up with all the Chinese? I mean, you don't expect to see Chinese and it was suit to South Africa. And they said, oh, the Chinese are building all this for free just to be friends. And I thought, they're not doing it to be friends or something else going on here. So they're encroaching all over the Spryly Islands. They have the nine-point rim where they're trying to increase South China Sea.

They want to own all that. there's a lot of indications they've infiltrated a ton of places in Australia itself. They own the port of Darwin, the largest port in their Australia is owned by the Chinese. And they're doing the same thing in America, stealing our intellectual property. And they have a fusion, which is the 5G thing. We won't go away because their technology stuff they invent is fused with the government. Most of the time it's actually paid for by the government, and they can use all that. So it's caused issue with the military.

So the military is kind of a slow procurement process. So we decide we're going to build our own little man-portable drones like the DGII drones, you see. And, of course, it takes us two years to come up with the drone. Well, in the meantime, everybody said, we've got to have something right now. And they went out and bought drones, commercial off-the-shelf drones. DGI is a primary drone manufacturer. It's made in China. And it turned out that most of the stuff that drone was seeing was getting sent back to Chinese servers.

So they're basically mapping everything we do. They're getting. So it's those kind of things that are a pretty big threat. I agree, Brad. Thank you for sharing that. That's certainly something we're keeping a close eye. here as well. Well, the book is called Hunter Killer. It's by author Brad Taylor. We appreciate you writing it and coming on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having.

Glad you enjoyed it. And if they want to read an excerpt of that book or any of them, they can go to my website, Bradtaylorbooks.com. Brad, thanks so much. Thank you. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right. And if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change. I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas. We host The Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people who've made this country great.

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