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Hillary Clinton speaking at American Legion convention in Cincinnati Wednesday

Donald Trump to speak Thursday morning
Posted at 11:33 AM, Aug 17, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-31 05:30:23-04

CINCINNATI -- Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will both visit Duke Energy Center when they attend The American Legion’s 98th national convention in Cincinnati this week.

Clinton will address the convention at noon Wednesday, Aug. 31 while Trump will take the stage a day later at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1. 

The American Legion, described as the nation’s largest nonpartisan veterans' service organization, invites candidates from each of the two major parties to address its members every presidential election cycle.

Roughly 10,000 veterans and their families are expected to attend the weeklong conference from Aug. 26 to Sept. 1, said Henry Howard, a spokesman with the American Legion.

The convention will include a day of service projects for local veterans and a parade in Cincinnati. Veterans will come expecting to hear about military spending and health care from the presidential candidates.

“Of course, important to our membership (is) veterans health care,” Howard said. “The government is the one who sent these men and women off to war. As part of that, they promised to take care of them.”

This will be Trump's first visit to the city of Cincinnati since Republicans named him the party's official candidate. He has yet to hold a single campaign event in Cincinnati or open a campaign office in Hamilton County, one of Ohio’s most sought-after voting regions, since taking on the title.

Clinton has opened three offices in the county as well as a location in Mason so far. She has also made one official campaign stop here, and her husband, Bill Clinton, stumped for her in Cincinnati twice already. This is Clinton's third visit to Cincinnati this summer after she spoke at Union Terminal in June and the NAACP convention in July.

Both candidates have promised to reform a troubled veteran's healthcare system if elected. They are expected to address more of that, along with their overall military strategy at the convention. 

Clinton vows to “maintain the best-trained, best-equipped and strongest military the world has ever known” if she is elected president in November, according to her position on military veteran issues and national security on her website.

Trump's proposals for VA reform includes "increasing funding for mental health resources for veterans, better care for women veterans and modernizing all VA centers with 21st century state of the art technology," according to his website.

For more information on the convention, you can visit legion.org/convention

WCPO's Amanda Seitz and Maxim Alter contributed to this report.