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37 years. Highly decorated, and a tremendous leader. I appreciate his service to this country. All of us, all US citizens, would be better served if this administration listened to the advice of those military leaders, especially the Secretary of Defense, who thinks he is really good at this. He should have never had this job. He was unqualified for the job. And in my view, the president should have fired him multiple times. On Ukraine, you've been an outspoken supporter of it. Some of the pilots trained in your state. After President Zelenskyy met with President Trump on Friday, he said they sort of agreed to disagree on whether to get these long-range missiles, these Tomahawks that would allow them to fire into Russia. Where does that stand? President Biden wouldn't do this either. Yeah. So I spoke to Zelenskyy three weeks ago in New York right after his meeting with Donald Trump, and we talked about Tomahawks in that meeting. Much longer range, over 1,000 miles, 700 pound warhead. Really good, game-changing. The president said he would consider giving them this weapons system. And then he had a conversation with Vladimir Putin. And I think it's important for people to recognize Vladimir Putin is a former KGB officer. He is a master manipulator. The president has one view, then he talks to Vladimir Putin and he changes his story on this. Of course, Putin does not want Ukraine to get a longer range missile that could go after targets deep into Russia, beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, by the way. It can range targets much further. It's very accurate. It's a very survivable weapon. And Putin has a conversation with him, and those weapons are now off the table. Hey, I think Ukraine can handle-- if we can give them enough rounds, if we have them in our inventory and enough launchers, ground launchers are rather new to this system. It's something we got rid of for a long period of time. They've demonstrated their ability to operate a sophisticated weapon system like the F-16. They could handle this, and it would help. Zelenskyy says they're going to continue to try to persuade President Trump. I have to ask you about the shutdown. The Republican Leader, John Thune, has offered to sit down with Democrats to discuss Obamacare, but on the condition that Democrats end the shutdown. He posted this on social media. Can you bank this as a win and agree to start negotiations? That's what we want. We want negotiations on how to fix-- I didn't look at his tweet, but what we need is to fix this skyrocketing premium. They're going to go up on November 1st for people. They can't afford it. People in my state-- I've talked to so many people. This woman, Emily, whose husband is a pastor who has three kids, says without the Affordable Care Act, she cannot have insurance for her children. They don't get it through his work. So what we need to do is fix this health care premium issue and open the government. But don't you need to do that before November 1st when premiums go up? Are you going to end the shutdown before November 1st? I would like to. We should be able to wrap this up this week if they will sit down and have a negotiation with us. The president has spent one hour negotiating this issue with leadership in Congress. That's it. One hour. They need to get in a room and stay in a room until we can hash this out. The president has said he wants to fix this premium thing, and he wants the government open. That's what we want. Well, we'll see if there's progress this week. Senator, thank you for your time. Thank you.
