US Vice President Mike Pence has marked Armed Forces Day by boasting that the Trump administration is committed to rebuilding the country’s military.
"I want to assure you, President Donald Trump is fighting tirelessly every day, and we will rebuild our military, restore the arsenal of democracy and we will, once again as a nation, give our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guard the resources and training you deserve to accomplish your mission and come home safe," Pence said on Saturday in an address to a crowd at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
The remarks came shortly after Trump signed a massive weapons deal worth $110 billion with Saudi Arabia, praising the arms sale to a regime that is engaged in a bloody war of aggression against neighboring Yemen, in part as a bid to generate job growth for Americans
"Tremendous investments in the United States. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs," Trump said after sealing the arms deal.
Referring to Trump’s meeting with Saudi rulers to sign the weapons contract, Pence further stated that, "At this very moment, President Trump is overseas, renewing America's role as leader of the free world. As we speak today, the president is in Saudi Arabia strengthening our alliances across the Arab world."
Pointing to Trump’s first overseas trip since he was sworn into office, the American vice president described it as an effort to reestablish weakened US alliances and reassert American might abroad.
He also said, "I'm just here on President Trump's behalf, while he's on the other side of the world, simply to say thank you."
The Trump administration’s huge arms sales to the Saudis was, however, criticized in the wake of the kingdom’s persisting atrocities mostly against civilians in neighboring Yemen.
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