Donald Trump wants to rebuild the military and improve its readiness – and provide "all the help" veterans suffering from PTSD need, former Cincinnati mayor and Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell said Monday.
Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, pushed back at criticism of Trump's remarks Monday before Retired American Warriors in Herndon, Va., he told the "The Steve Malzberg Show" Monday on Newsmax TV.
"You had 125 military veterans and a scattering of former diplomats like myself who listened to Donald Trump make the case for building and improving military readiness," Blackwell said.
And of his remarks "a lot of people can't handle" the stress of combat and war, Blackwell insisted Trump "was basically saying that we owe these brave people all of the attention, all of the help that they need to adjust back into civilian life."
"There are very, very traumatic experiences involved in military service and particularly in warfare," he said, adding: "You have to have the imagination of Jonathan Swift to twist that into being some sort of an attack on those veterans with those needs."
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Blackwell also elaborated on his commentary lashing out at the Black Lives Matter movement.
"If they were really concerned about black lives, they would in fact deal with the issue of black-on-black crime," he said. "They would deal with the issue of the widespread practice of abortion and the taking of innocent life in the African American community. They would begin to deal with those things that lead to a weakening of economic upward mobility like school choice, etc."
"If you look behind the curtain, Black Lives Matter is actually funded by and led by non-black people," he charged. "These are generally leftists who in fact have a very radical political agenda that's not about saving black lives or advancing black upward mobility. It's all about advancing their political agenda...."
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