The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website currently informs visitors that the VA is experiencing “processing delays for some GI Bill students” and that they are “doing everything in (their) power” to rectify the situation. But Trevor Noah isn’t so sure. The department is so far behind on providing education payments that many veterans are having to go into debt to support their own undergraduate or graduate school tuitions—not to mention that a high volume of veterans were promised housing subsidy bills that remain unpaid. The excuse that the department has put forward is that the computer system they are using is outdated: 50 years old in fact. But Noah pointed out on Thursday that while lagging technology is the current justification for how Americans are treated when they come home from war, this type of snafu has never stopped efforts to send Americans to war:
“Every time America’s going to war they find the money for drones that are so advanced they can zap a pimple off an ISIS fighter’s face. But when the soldiers get home all the sudden America’s like, ‘Yeah, we can’t pay you. Our computers are running windows BC, so sorry.’… I don’t trust a computer that has a built-in ashtray.”
The second piece of reasoning that the department has advanced is no more convincing. Sounding painfully like a child trying to get out of cleaning their room, the VA is claiming that the number of veterans waiting for funding is so high that they just can’t pay anyone. “That’s not the attitude of a responsible government agency,” Noah pointed out, “That’s the attitude of an absentee dad. Just comes back and he’s like, ‘Hey Billy, I already missed the first 12 years of your life so it’s too late to start now, am I right?”
