Perhaps it’s not very surprising that Donald Trump lied to America when he said he would protect our veterans. After all, he’s lied about so many things during his disastrous presidency. But as a 28-year veteran of the United States Air Force, I believe that his broken promises to our former service members are possibly one of his most egregious moral failings.

The men and women I served alongside risked their lives to make sure that everyone at home could live theirs in peace. The least our country can do for these brave men and women, and for their families who also sacrifice, is to fulfill the promise to support our veterans after they leave the armed forces.

Sadly, our current commander-in-chief has failed to do that.

Of all of the lows this President stoops to, the ways in which he betrays veterans and military families is among the lowest. Trump loves to talk a big game on this subject, and at the end of the day it is only about one thing, as always: himself.

President Trump said he would protect the Department of Veterans Affairs. Instead, he let his Mar-a-Lago friends drive VA policy, and pursue measures designed to privatize and dismantle the agency from the inside.

President Trump said he would support all our veterans. Instead, he banned transgender soldiers from serving openly and deported undocumented veterans without checking their record of military service.

President Trump said he had a plan to address the epidemic of veteran suicides. Instead, he let millions of dollars earmarked for suicide prevention go unused, as thousands of more veterans took their own lives.

Just as bad, he has regularly disrespected our nation’s service members. Who can forget the multiple slights directed at Senator John McCain, including that McCain was only “a war hero because he was captured…I like people that weren’t captured”? He attacked the Gold Star family of Captain Humayun Khan, a soldier slain in Iraq. He reportedly told the grieving widow of Army Sergeant La David Johnson, killed in a firefight in Niger in 2017, that her husband “knew what he had signed up for.” And he blamed the generals — and took no responsibility — after an operation in Yemen early in his tenure resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens.

During the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump cloaked himself in the flag and other symbols of patriotism, but we should not be fooled. Donald Trump is a coward, either unwilling or unable to stand for the people who had the courage to stand for our country. There is no proclamation of loyalty to our troops that can undo the damage he has done to the men and women who served.

He does not deserve four more years. To protect our veterans, we must join together and work to elect Joe Biden. As a parent of a son who deployed to Iraq, Joe knows the sacrifices that veterans and military families have made, and continue to make every day. He believes in our country’s sacred responsibility to look after our veterans.

As president, Joe Biden will be a champion for the VA and its ability to provide world class health care to veterans while advancing much-needed reforms. He will work to address critical shortfalls in the VA workforce. He will expand cultural competency training to ensure that female and LGTBQ veterans feel supported in VA facilities. And he will rebuild trust in the VA by improving access to care for veterans in their own communities.

Biden’s plan does not stop there. He will invest in research to better understand the long-term impact of Traumatic Brain Injury and toxic exposures, expand transitioning service members’ access to jobs, and within the first 200 days in office, he will publish a strategy to address veteran suicides. Joe Biden understands that veterans and their families who sacrifice everything deserve our support — because he’s been there.

Our veterans deserve better than another four more years of Donald Trump. Joe Biden knows what it means to uphold our country’s obligation to veterans, and I am proud to support him this November.

Jim Smith is a retired Brigadier General in the United States Air Force and resides in Salem, New Hampshire.

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