Recently issued the following announcement.
Every American president enters office facing certain realities and enormous responsibilities. The job is to acknowledge the realities and accept the responsibility of trying to improve the situation. Unfortunately, President Biden has demonstrated an uncanny ability to make matters worse. To date, his administration is marked by a string of self-inflicted disasters: the border crisis, out-of-control spending and growing debt, and now the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. For America and the entire world's sake, I hope the actions he directed in Afghanistan don't turn out to be some of the worst foreign policy decisions in U.S. history. I don't envy the next president's task of cleaning up President Biden's messes.
On August 25, I visited Fort McCoy for a briefing with the 88th Readiness Division, where refugees from Afghanistan are being housed. I'm confident that the finest among us at Fort McCoy will do everything they can to serve honorably and do their best to help the people coming here and keep this country safe.
I do have concerns about the vetting process because this withdrawal from Afghanistan has been incredibly botched. My message to the commanding general at Fort McCoy is to be watchful.
On August 27, I sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State requesting information about an alleged incident at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul involving an U.S. military official preventing American citizens and Afghan allies from evacuating Afghanistan.
According to the allegation, a group of over 400 individuals including U.S. citizens were turned away from the airport. It is not clear what happened to the Americans and the other individuals after they left the airport. It's hard to believe that any U.S. military official would deny Americans the ability to evacuate Afghanistan.
Read more about this story here.
I also appeared on WISN's UPFRONT to talk about my visit to Fort McCoy and the bothched withdrawal from Afghanistan. You can watch the entire interview here or by clicking on the image below.
Failure of Federal Health Agencies
I'm agnostic about any particular drug, but I fully support finding some form of early treatment for Covid. I cannot understand why this hasn't happened.
Not only have federal health agencies failed to help develop early treatment for Covid-19, they have also failed to be transparent and provide the public with honest and accurate information. Just a few examples include flip-flopping on mask effectiveness, providing scant research on mask effectiveness and ignoring research showing no benefit and possible harm, closing schools, issuing guidance that antibodies do not indicate immunity, and ignoring growing evidence of the effectiveness of natural immunity.
Tomahawk Post Office Renamed After Local Hero
On August 28, I had the pleasure of attending a ceremony to formally rename the post office in Tomahawk in honor of Einar Sarge Ingman. The Korean War veteran was awarded the Medal of Honor - our nations highest military honor and renaming the post office in his hometown is a fitting tribute to a man whose service and story will forever inspire future generations.
In December 2020, President Trump signed into law a measure renaming the Tomahawk Post Office the Einar "Sarge" Ingman Jr. Post Office. Sergeant Ingman's single-handed destruction of two machine gun nests near Maltari in 1951 allowed his squad to secure its objective. In 1951, President Truman awarded Ingman the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions. Ingman passed away in September 2015.
Wisconsin WWII Veteran Turns 100
I had the pleasure of meeting World War II veteran John Pioro who tuned 100 this summer. He still works on his family farm in Racine county doing what he can from the seat of his ATV.
John was a Corporal in the Army Air Force during WWII. Happy Birthday, John!
Milwaukee Business Leaders
I appreciate the time Milwaukee area business leaders took out of their day to attend a meeting at my Milwaukee office. We discussed supply chain and shipping issues as well as challenges with labor, training and retention.
Kenosha One Year After the Riots
The last week of August marked the one year anniversary of the Kenosha riots. I met with Scott Carpenter (pictured above) at the site of his furniture store that was burned to the ground by rioters. I recorded a podcast with Scott and the Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth to talk about how Kenosha has recovered since those deadly three nights when the city was in the national spotlight.
Interview with Scott Carpenter of B&L Furniture
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