STEPHANIE RUHLE (CO-HOST): Joining us now is Shane Ortega, a retired U.S. Army staff sergeant and transgender rights activist, and Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat from the great state of New York. Shane, let's start with you. What's your take here?
SHANE ORTEGA: My immediate reaction was this is a completely egotistical move on behalf of Donald Trump. I think that he's -- honestly, he's trying to [inaudible] the American public to deflect and detract from the principles and goodwill of what it is to be an American service member. And he's trying to use them as pawns right now in order to invoke some sort of emotional reaction from the public to circumvent his own investigations that are going right now towards his impeachment.
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ALI VELSHI (CO-HOST): I would imagine that it's tough in life being a transgender person in America, not just because of the personal struggle that entails, but because of the community in which we live that is still learning to understand these things. And then you join the military, which is all about rules and the way things are done and tradition, and that's extra hard. And then you put your life on the line because you joined the military. I would imagine that a transgender person who makes it all the way to being a member of the -- one of the U.S. military services has got to be one of the best people we've got around protecting our freedoms.
ORTEGA: To be quite honest, inherently, being a trans person is a life of suffering. Let's just be real clear about that. There is so much suffering that happens just from being yourself authentically in any capacity in the States, but particularly when you have sort of this air of idiocracy in our leadership. Being a trans military person -- and let's just be real clear, I made it to a position where I supported special operations. That's not something that we talk about. That's a highly coveted position in our military. I had to be extremely well-trained, extremely mature, and extremely level-headed in order to understand the capacity of that job. So, when President Trump tweets this, I have people that are still serving. I have friends that are still serving, and they are trans military people, and they are in special ops positions, and they are in other coveted positions. I'm entirely outraged, and I'm asking the American public to what degree, and to what effort are you going to become outraged? What institution do we have to take where we take away the rights of these people who are literally sacrificing their very lives, giving everything they have, for you? And when are we going to start intervening? Taking away this health care is literally a right that we earned. We earn it with our blood. We earn it with our sweat. We earn it with our time. We give up our contact with having normal lives and being able to integrate into social society once we get out of the military, such as me. I was retired last year from being injured. And we give every ounce of everything that we have to this country, and for Donald Trump to tweet this, I really feel like this is the operation level of an elementary school child. We have 18-year-old kids who perform and behave better than the capacity of our acting commander-in-chief.
