Former President Donald Trump boasted about his popularity with veterans during his debate with President Joe Biden on Thursday and said veterans "can't stand" the current commander in chief.
"Our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy ... and they like me more than about any of them," Trump said.
Trump said Biden has put the lives of illegal immigrants ahead of those of veterans, who he said have been left homeless while illegal immigrants are placed in luxury hotels and other accommodations.
"Our veterans are on the street," Trump said. "They're dying because he doesn't care about our veterans. He doesn't care. He doesn't like the military at all. And he doesn't care about our veterans. … I had the highest approval rating for veterans, taking care of the VA [Veterans Administration]. He has the worst. He's gotten rid of all the things that I approved, that I got through Congress. All of the different things I approved, they abandoned."
Trump's boasting appeared to get under Biden's skin.
"Every single thing he said is a lie," Biden said. "Every single one. For example, veterans are a hell of a lot better off since I passed the PACT Act [Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics]. One million of them now have insurance and their families have it. Their families have it. Because what happened, whether it was Agent Orange or burn pits, they're all being covered now. And he opposed, his group opposed that.
"We're also in a situation where we have great respect for veterans."
Biden brought up his son Beau Biden, who served in Iraq and who died in 2015 of brain cancer. The president has long believed his son's cancer was possibly a consequence of exposure to military burn pits in Iraq.
"My son spent a year in Iraq living next to one of those burn pits, came back with stage 4 glioblastoma,"Biden said. "I was recently in France for D-Day, and I spoke to all about those heroes that died. I went to the World War II cemetery, World War I cemetery he refused to go to. He was standing with his four-star general, and he told me, he said, 'I don't want to go in there because they're a bunch of losers and suckers.'
"My son was not a loser. He was not a sucker. You're the sucker. You're the loser."
Biden was repeating a story vehemently denied by Trump that he called U.S. war veterans dead suckers and losers during a D-Day celebration in France in 2018. Many people have come to Trump's defense, including former national security adviser John Bolton, who is no friend of the former president.