Today the Pentagon is in the news because they failed there. What is it? Their seventh straight audit in a row. It's just totally incapable of passing audits. And if a company fails an audit, that is massive problem. [00:00:17] The Pentagon is much larger than any small business, midsize business, or even big businesses. And that's not somebody else's money. That's not shareholders. Well, hey, sad day they lost money. No, that's our money. American taxpayer money. And their budget is near $900 billion. [00:00:34] Oftentimes they say they can't even find 400 billion of it. So that's going to get to what I promised, what I offer to Elon Musk in a second. But I just want to give you just a quick note about how disastrous the Pentagon is overall. In this case, again, they failed to audit, but they hide things from you [00:00:53] in terms of how much waste there is. And then I'm going to tell you why there's the waste. But. Commondreams. Pointed out the Pentagon buried a 2015 report identifying 125 billion, not million 125 billion, in administrative waste, [00:01:09] out of concern that the findings would be used as justification to, quote, slash the defense budget, as the Washington Post reported at the time. So the point there is, guys, you know, when they talk about fraud, waste and abuse, you got that to no end at the Pentagon. [00:01:27] And that's where you have the most you know why? Because anybody, anytime that anybody says, hey, maybe we should cut the Pentagon, that seems to have a tons and hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, and they can't even account for the money. They go, you're endangering national security. - You're going to get everyone killed. - Right. [00:01:43] So that kind of demagoguing happens from the Republicans and the Democrats. So, and, you know, you've probably heard some of these stories, and this one came out recently, like, for example, defense contractors like Boeing, they sold soap dispensers to the Pentagon, to the Air Force in particular, [00:02:00] that were marked up at by almost 8,000% for soap dispensers. Right. Because they figure we could rob any we want, anybody we want at the Pentagon. And nobody can say anything about it because we'll demagogue them, we'll scare [00:02:17] them, and then we'll take their money. And we got all the politicians in our back pocket. So Elon Musk and Donald Trump promised that they were going to cut $2 trillion out of the overall budget. So the other day online, I said this. I sent this tweet, hey, Elon Musk put me in charge of the Pentagon, US 400 billion. [00:02:37] Easy. That'll get you to 20% of your goal of 2 trillion right out of the gate. I went to Wharton three years before you. I own a media company, so I know how to run a business. If you really want to cut, put me in, coach. Okay, so, at that point already, some on the left are like, [00:02:54] whoa, wait, you can't talk like that. I mean, that'll empower Elon Musk and the other guys. And then what if they cut the Pentagon? Oh, yeah, that's what I want. Right. And you guys that watch The Young Turks, that's what we've asked for [00:03:09] for 22 straight years. So I would love that. Oh, but then they'll get credit. Who cares? Of course, I'll give credit to anybody who cuts the Pentagon or who does any right policy that saves American taxpayers money or gets the average man, any kind of better situation. [00:03:25] But then the shocking thing happened. Elon Musk responded. He said specific, specific suggestions are welcome. Now I'm going to come back to why that's so important in a second. And okay, so I'll give you a preview real quick. [00:03:40] It's not because, oh my God, there's a billionaire who responded to me. I'm so fascinated by that. Oh golly gee, I can't see straight anymore. I'm so naive. And boy, that right wing pivot is about to come. Oh, you wouldn't want to cut the Pentagon, right? [00:03:57] Progressives who have always claimed you wanted to cut the Pentagon. Okay. Anyway, so he says this, and I said, okay, great. In fact, I didn't even realize he commented on the the tweet until last night's show. One of the members pointed out. He's like, Jake, you know, you responded. I was like, oh, I didn't. [00:04:13] So then I went on and I said this after yesterday's show, as you know, you need to settle the line items in the see the line items in the budget. But I have one suggestion already. The generals are not allowed to get a job with defense contractors for ten years. They authorized so much wasteful spending because they're going to get hired [00:04:28] by those same companies. Now here comes the interesting part, guys. If you go and you this is online, you can go check it out. If you look at the responses there from right wing populists in the old days, what would have happened is, oh, ridiculous. [00:04:46] Look at this guy trying to cut the Pentagon. He's endangering us. We need to start more wars. The Pentagon has to be twice the size. Four times the size, right? That would have been the old Republican talking points. And the Democrats would go, yes, oh yeah, we'll double it even more than they will. And that's how it's been my entire lifetime. [00:05:02] But you look at the comments in that section, actual MAGA right wing populists, these are not the leaders. I'm talking about people that are real people. Okay. Going wait a minute. That's a good suggestion. I like that suggestion a lot. In fact, why are we making it ten years? Why don't we make it 20 years? [00:05:18] And somebody else says, why don't we make it a lifetime ban? If you're a United States general, you serve the people of America. You should be intensely proud to be a general that protects us. But if you say no, I don't care as much about that as I do about cashing in [00:05:33] with defense contractors afterwards. Well, then don't be a general, okay? It's a super easy fix for you guys. So if MAGA says, you know what, let's ban the generals from ever working for the military industrial complex so that they are fair and honest when they're inside the Pentagon. [00:05:49] You got a deal? Okay, let's go old school turkey style, all right. And shake on it. So that's the spinning part. That's not really a Turkish thing. It's fun. It's actually an old Western thing. Okay. So anyways. And today I get progressive reaction back going. [00:06:06] No, no, you're falling for their trap. How dare you never work with MAGA? Did you know Elon's a billionaire? Did you know he's a donor? Yeah, I've only said it about 200 times on the show. Maybe more. Okay, guys. [00:06:22] The Democratic Party has never asked any progressive in the base in any of the online shows. Any of you guys ever. Hey, what's your suggestion? Oh, we're open to hearing what you think. - They're always like. - No, you will support Hillary Clinton. [00:06:40] She is the anointed one, and she will increase the Pentagon and you will like it. Right. But could we could we have a tiny suggestion? Hey, could the generals not sell us out when. And I'm not talking generally and I'm not saying, oh, Milley was a bad guy. No, no, no, none of that. I'm not going in that direction. [00:06:57] I'm just saying they have an obvious conflict of interest because they almost all work for the military industrial complex afterwards. So of course they're going to want to give those same companies that they're going to be hired by billions of dollars in contracts. Can we please stop that? No. You must listen to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris [00:07:15] and shut up and comply. Right. So here for the first time, I mean, it's so embarrassing that Elon Musk is saying, hey, do you have any suggestions before any Democratic leader does? Especially to a person who's running. Look, guys, this isn't about bragging. [00:07:33] And so if you want to stop, somebody else will say, oh no, we're larger, I don't care. Go ahead. I don't go be become larger, I don't mind, I want our message to get out. And if somebody else does it more effectively, fantastic. Okay. But for the moment being and for the last 20 years, we've been the largest left [00:07:48] wing show online. 27 million subscribers, 29 billion lifetime views going to be around 30 billion by about Thanksgiving. We'll celebrate together. Okay. And no Democratic leader thought, I wonder if I should go on the youngsters. [00:08:04] I wonder if I should ask the youngsters. And again, it's not about us. Well, okay. Ask one of the other shows. Go on the other shows. Do something, do something. Represent your base. Just try to care about your base 1%, right? No, we've got Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney on our side. [00:08:22] How does that help? Hey, other left wingers out there. I love your brothers and sisters, but do you remember the days when we used to be against Dick Cheney? You remember the days when we used to be against Liz Cheney? I appreciate Liz Cheney calling out Trump on January 6th and the election, etc., [00:08:39] but that doesn't mean we have to hand the party over to her. Did you see mainstream media right before the election when they thought Kamala Harris was going to win? Well, she's got to get a cabinet post. Somebody got they got to have to give her a Liz Cheney something. No we don't. She's a neocon. She would increase the Pentagon. She would push for more wars, not less wars. [00:08:56] That's not what the Democratic Party used to stand for. And that's definitely not what the left wing stands for. And in no way, shape or form does the populist left agree with that. So look, I'm not saying Ellen's definitely going to do it. Are you crazy? I'm not saying Trump is definitely going to do it. [00:09:12] What I'm saying is, hey, now we're all watching left wing, populist right wing populists. Are you guys going to do the thing that you promised? Are you actually going to be antiwar? Are you actually going to cut the Pentagon? Or is this a lot of loose talk? And at the end of the day, all you're going to do is corporate tax [00:09:29] cuts and deregulation and leave the military industrial complex alone. Well, I don't know. I can't answer that question, but Donald Trump and Elon Musk can. So now we have them on the record as saying that they would be interested in that. And now we have the right wing populists going, yeah, I like your proposal. [00:09:46] So now we can have an alliance on not something we disagree on, but maybe, just maybe, have an alliance on things we agree on. And if you're on the left and you don't, you want to go against your own policy position that you have had for decades just to spite the other side, to spite [00:10:06] Donald Trump or despite Elon Musk? You're out of your mind. I'm going to take yes for an answer. That doesn't mean I agree with them on other issues. That doesn't mean all of a sudden I'm like, oh my God. I think Elon and Trump are so amazing. It means if you cut the Pentagon, put me in coach. [00:10:24] I am ready, I will do that job for you. You get somebody else to do it, great. But if I've got to convince the left, take the win. These guys are. I know that this base. I now know the right wing base. [00:10:41] They're complicated. Just like the left wing base. They are not uniform. There are people in there that I massively disagree with. There are some that might be, in our lingo, Problematic. Okay. And I mean that seriously. Like, they might hate, for example, Muslims like me, right? [00:10:56] And a lot of you out there. But that is not the entire MAGA base. So there's different portions of it. And I'm telling you right now, and I'm going out on a limb, and then everybody else on the left could catch feelings and say, no, boo, we don't believe you. We want to be skeptical and hate them. [00:11:12] And even if they say yes, we say no because we're going to just trash our own policies. Like, look, brothers and sisters, that's up to you. Okay? But any left wing populist that actually wants to get these things done, let's take yes for an answer. Let's find the right wing populists that are actually our brothers and sisters and [00:11:31] that actually hate corruption, that are actually anti-war and let's work together. But if they say, oh, okay, after that, now we want you to hate gay people or pass anti-trans laws or do this or do that, I got an easy answer. No, we agree on the things we agree on, and we disagree and fight [00:11:47] on the things we don't agree on. Wow, that's so hard. The idea of just canceling each other and never talking, and never finding out if we actually do agree is a toxic idea. So I'm doing my part to break through that and find the right wing populists [00:12:03] that agree with us and build a real coalition that maybe, maybe get something done, whether it's in this term or in another term. But if you say, no, I got nothing but spite, and I will not work with anyone, even if they 100% agree with me. Well, that means you never really cared about the policy. [00:12:21] It was always a game to you. For me and anybody who watches The Young Turks knows this, I always say the same thing. Eyes on the prize. And the prize is policy. Because policy is the only thing that actually affects people's lives. Everything else is about the ego of the politicians, the donors. [00:12:38] ET cetera. Let's all work together to help our average American and our fellow Americans. All right, that's my message of the day. Now, everybody go fight.