President Donald Trump said he “always felt the veterans weren’t given a fair shake” and promised that in “the not-too-distant future,” the Veterans Affairs Department will be “a much different place,” during an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”

The president touted the Veterans Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act he signed into law Friday. Trump said it was a “tough one to get through” Congress and past unions, which balked at the new measures to allow the firing of incompetent VA employees.

“Well, it’s really an accountability bill. You had people that would be in the VA and they wouldn’t work, or they’d do much worse than that,” Trump said. “And you couldn’t fire them; you couldn’t get rid of them. They were hanging around.  They were receiving money. They weren’t taking care of our veterans.”

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“And I had made the promise that I was going to be taking care of our veterans if I win. And, you know, they voted for me overwhelmingly,” Trump added. “In my own heart, I had a very strong obligation to take care. So we had it passed.”

Trump said he had been haunted by “disaster stories,” in which veterans in need of urgent care were “waiting in line for seven, eight, nine days to see a doctor.”

“And worse, where they have a disease, or a problem, or a form of cancer that’s easily and quickly curable and they have to wait six, seven, eight months. And by the time they get in, it’s terminal,” Trump said. “It’s, you know, the things that go on are just incredible — and have gone on.”

That’s why it was so important to get to work quickly on reforming the VA, speeding up the process, weeding out employees [who] were doing subpar work, and increasing the quality of care, the president said.

“And we’re getting it done and we’re doing whatever is necessary,” Trump said. “We’re getting — this was one bill; but, we have many and many coming. And the veterans — I think, when you look at that, in the not-too-distant future, it’s going to be a much different place.”

Lamenting that there were “a lot of forces” that pushed back against the accountability bill, Trump acknowledged it was a “very difficult fight” that faced opposition from all sides.

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“I’ve always felt the veterans weren’t given a fair shake. They fight wars, they lose limbs, they lose, you know, lives. They just — they’ve gone through so much, and I’ve always felt they were never appreciated the way they should be appreciated,” Trump said. “But you know who appreciates? The voters … They appreciate what the veterans have done.”

The president lamented the intense partisan divide in Congress that prevents common-sense reforms from being pursued.

“One of the things that should be solved, but it probably won’t be, is that the Republicans and Democrats don’t get together. And I’m open arms, but I don’t see that happening. They fight each other. The level of hostility,” Trump said. “But the level of hostility — as an example, the health care bill … that everybody’s reporting on.”

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“It would be so great if the Democrats and Republicans could get together, wrap their arms around it, and come up with something that everybody’s happy with. It’s so easy, but we won’t get one Democrat vote, not one,” Trump said. “And if it was the greatest bill ever proposed in mankind, we wouldn’t get a vote.  And that’s the terrible thing.  So there is — well look, their theme is ‘resist.’ I’ve never heard of anything like this ‘resist.'”

The Democrats, particularly those in the Senate, have made a point of obstructing the president’s agenda at nearly every step of the way.

“But that’s called ‘the resistance,’ and that’s a terrible word. Think of it. Their theme is ‘resist.’ Their theme should be, ‘let’s get together, envelop. Let’s get together.’ But their theme is ‘resist,'” Trump said.

“It’s obstruction. And the problem is, they become obstructionists, and the voters — I happen to like it, from the standpoint of running for office. But I think it’s a terrible theme in terms of getting elected,” Trump added. “And more importantly, I think it’s a terrible theme for the people of this country. Resist, obstruction. That’s not what [the voters] want.”