Trump Screws National Guard Virus Workers Out Of GI Bill Credit

By Karoli Kuns — May 20, 2020

About the time you think there's no low too low, Trump finds a newer low. It's not enough to fire the State Department IG because Pompeo is a corrupt SOB, but he's also fired the transportation IG for looking into Mrs. Mitch McConnell's malfeasance and corruption. Yes, those things happened, but it wasn't enough.

You may recall that Donald Trump called out the National Guard to help with the virus response in areas that needed it. And now, it is time for their duty to end, and just in the nick of time, as Politico reports.

More than 40,000 National Guard members currently helping states test residents for the coronavirus and trace the spread of infections will face a “hard stop” on their deployments on June 24 — just one day shy of many members becoming eligible for key federal benefits, according to a senior FEMA official.

The official outlined the Trump administration’s plans on an interagency call on May 12, an audio version of which was obtained by POLITICO. The official also acknowledged during the call that the June 24 deadline means that thousands of members who first deployed in late March will find themselves with only 89 days of duty credit, one short of the 90-day threshold for qualifying for early retirement and education benefits under the Post-9/11 GI bill.

You read that right. The Trump administration has coldly calculated when those National Guard members who deployed to help our nation through a pandemic would accrue benefits, and cut them off with 24 hours to spare.

Rachel Maddow explains how they got to this place:

Now after the president did that in early March a bunch of different members of Congress and senators and governors lobbied the president to please extend that authorization so these national guard deployments could go through to the fall. The White House would not agree to do that, would not agree to extend them to the fall. But weirdly, they decided that they would extend it a little bit. They decided they would extend the federal deployment to June 24th which is a random Wednesday in late June. Nobody could really figure out why they picked that day until somebody finally did the math and as Politico.com reports today we've now realized that if this thing ends on June 24th, that means that the federal deployment for these 40,000 national guard troops will end at Day 89 of that deployment. And ending on Day 89 is really important because if their deployment had gone to Day 90, if it had gone one more day, those National guardsmen and women would have become eligible for benefits towards retirement and education funds under the new GIbill if that federal deployment had gone one more day. So, President Trump is cutting off their deployment. They're calling tit a hard stop at day 89 of the deployment, specifically so they don't get their benefits.

The next time you hear "thank you for your service" coming from one of these Republican hacks, be sure to point out what hypocrites they are. They don't give a damn about the people who are putting their lives on the line. Here's what they've been doing, as Maddow reports:

And these National Guardsmen and Guardswomen, they're doing everything from running community testing sites, they're doing that all over the country. They're providing medical staffing in hard hit prisons that have tons of cases. They have been running food banks and food distribution sites. They run field hospitals. They've been dispatched to states like Massachusetts to run the state nursing home program for residents and staff. National guard has been doing all of this work from an order from President Trump that allowed this to be paid for by the federal government.

So yeah, National Guard. The country thanks you for your service. So much they can't be bothered to give you any benefits.

What a sick, petty, piece of shit we have for a president.