Donald Trump came to Washington to cut right, cut that budget, get rid of the waste and the fraud. Well, when it comes to defense, not so much. He's jacking that up. Perhaps not surprisingly, requesting $1.1 trillion for defense. [00:00:17] And I made a point like this on TDR. But I want to be clear. It's not like the US doesn't have a military. And he's like, let's get a military. We're a country. We should have one. I want $1.1 trillion for a military. [00:00:32] It's just for one year, like maintenance, like paying your insurance on your car. It's not like we pay the 1.1 trillion and then we're safe forever. No, he's going to request even more the year after that and the year after that. And there's a lot of ways to, like, size this up for how ridiculous it is, [00:00:51] how over the top it is. I will say that last year, our defense spending, which was already comically high, nearly $1 trillion even then equated to about 37% of all global military expenditures. So one third of all of what everyone has spent on the military. [00:01:10] And I looked it up, and there are definitely more than three countries in the world. So we are doing too much, I think. Here's a chart that puts it in perspective. That's last year. So every other country on earth is about a half in this measuring of it. And to put it in perspective, what we're adding to what we already did last year. [00:01:29] It's like if you took the entire military budget of India and the UK and then put it on top of what we already led the world in. As of just last year, it's an insane amount of spending no matter how you measure it. And it certainly seems to blow a hole in the idea that he's for fiscal discipline. [00:01:47] Yeah. So a couple of things here. You know, you went with India and UK Russia. We are adding more just this year to the Pentagon than the entire military budget of Russia, which is in a massive war with Ukraine, [00:02:02] let alone everything else that Russia has. So that's amazing. Now, what's also amazing is, as you a lot of you know, I had this moment on X where I asked him to cut the Pentagon budget. I talked to Elon Musk. I say I talked to Elon Musk. It was just X post, right? [00:02:20] And so Elon Musk was like, great, give me some suggestions. And then Don junior jumped in and everybody was excited. Then Hegseth said they were going to cut. And Fox News said they were going to cut. And Tim Pool and Patrick bet David and everyone said, we're going to cut, we're gonna cut, we're gonna cut. [00:02:36] Did you, did you? So look, did I think, oh, I bet Elon and Donald Trump, they're not going to worry about corruption. They're just going to do the right thing. No, I voted against Trump. Of course he's not going to do that. He didn't do that in his first term. [00:02:52] He didn't. He's not going to do it this time. And what did Elon want? He wanted a lot of money from the government. And by the way, that's also buried in this document, which we're going to get to in a second. Okay. And we're going to get to how much they're taking from the rest of the budget. So they could add pork to the Pentagon. [00:03:09] So but this is the moment when we ask our right wing friends what happened. Okay. Are you going to hold them accountable or are you just now going to go. Well, we said we all collectively clearly said cut right on all of those shows. [00:03:25] And in all of social media, we all said cut. And the Pentagon is can't pass an audit. ET cetera. But now we're going to say, well, cut really meant add and it meant add a lot. It meant take away from the average American and all the other things we're about to tell you about and give it to the military contractors [00:03:45] who say, I don't know where the money is. Who cares? And they stuff it into their mouths and their pockets and get away with this kind of corruption. So look, the left wing is clear on this. I think the independents will be fairly clear on this. This one is on right wingers. [00:04:00] Do you want this nonsense? You said you didn't. So I don't know if you're ever going to hold Trump accountable. And I don't know how you would do that at this point, but just at least I'm asking for a little bit of honesty that this is the exact opposite of what you claimed you wanted. [00:04:17] All right. Yeah, yeah, I'll give you just a few more stats and then we'll throw to Yaz for commentary. But this is I mean, look, by any measure, this is insane. Like, I know a lot of it needs to go to, like, the border or whatever, but, like, are you are you building the border wall out of stacks of cash, like, tightly bundled? [00:04:32] Like, is that literally what you're building it out of? Imagine thinking that America is so uniquely unsafe that we'll all die. Our country will be gone unless we add $150 billion this year. You know, like Fox News, how much they've whined about the money that was spent [00:04:48] to keep Ukraine as a sovereign nation. This is way more than that. Not not like for a specific conflict. Like an emergency, an act of God. Just are we just we want to do more of this and more of that, more of everything, literally, but complain more about Ukraine. And so absolutely insane. [00:05:04] Spending a bunch is going to go to the Golden Dome. Obviously, Donald Trump's idea to give, I don't know, billions of dollars to Elon Musk to stop satellites or something, or to stop missiles or something. Nuclear modernization, shipbuilding, border security. They say there's going to be a military pay raise. [00:05:21] That at least feels defensible considering all of this. But and as you pointed out, for seven straight years now, the Pentagon has failed to pass an audit. My favorite part of this is that they're going to put like over $500 million into the Pentagon audit, and the Pentagon is saying they're [00:05:38] on track to not fail an audit by 2028. So we're going to spend half $1 billion to audit them this year. And they're saying, oh, not even close. There's no way we're going to pass that thing. Then why even spend the money? It's absolutely insane. [00:05:53] But we're going to talk about the things that are cut to make way for this. And sure, 150 billion more dollars, 1.1 trillion is a lot, but we're not going to be spending $20,000 on a Chilean trans opera or whatever. We won't spend 30 grand on a gay comic book. [00:06:10] We'll just spend $150 billion on this. And we'll consider ourselves to be very fiscally disciplined as a net result of all of that. But yeah, as we've thrown a lot of numbers out there, what do you think? Well, first of all, I just want to say the Golden Dome is so funny to me because Trump is so obsessed with gold. [00:06:25] It's weird. Like all the gilding of the white House and everything. Also, I'm warm toned. I get it, I wear a lot of gold jewelry, but like, he's orange and the gold is just going to make him look even more orange. So I just like as maybe no one's told him that before, so I'm just going to say it [00:06:40] so that it has been said anyway. As far as the military goes, am I missing something? Like, are we at war? Are we about to be? I guess we're always, like, on the brink of some version of war. I know that we like to pretend like do pretend versions of war where we just run military campaigns in other countries, even though Congress [00:06:58] never actually declares war. And I know we're obviously doing all the stuff that Israel is doing. We are the funding behind all of that. But like what is happening? You know, what's happening is that we keep talking about defense contractors here. But what are defense contractors? Those are war profiteers, right? [00:07:14] This is nothing more than Trump and this administration enriching all of these military contractors at the expense of everyday Americans. You know, and to be clear, I'm not against military upgrades. I know that they need maintenance and upgrades. That's totally normal. That's why we have annual budgets. [00:07:30] And I'm certainly not against giving our service people raises. But the Pentagon, they can't even pass an audit. The money and the spending is unaccounted for here. And for an administration that claims to be so transparent, where is the transparency and is it ever going to come because they keep not, [00:07:48] you know, not passing their audits and then nothing happens. So until there's some kind of accountability, I don't think anything's going to change. And for some reason, a lot of Republicans are supporting all of this, even though like the numbers are astronomical there. Their comical, right? It's ridiculous. What is it, 30 something percent of spending. [00:08:06] So I. Where's the money going? Yeah, just a couple of quick things on what Yaz is saying. Really great points. First Golden dome. Super important. That is a boondoggle project that has no chance of working. It will be a giant waste of money. [00:08:22] And as we reported on here earlier on The Young Turks, guess who's likely to get the contract for Golden Dome. Oh, SpaceX. Interesting. An Elon company. So what happened, Elon? As Ro Khanna said the other day in the congressional hearings. [00:08:38] Hearings? Where is Elon? You said there was going to be cuts. Where's Elon? Okay. Now all of a sudden we're not cutting, but we're adding to your company massive, massive contracts potentially to Elon Musk's company. So well, look, if you think about it, you could say he's a good, smart businessman. [00:08:56] He bribes, I mean, gives campaign contributions to Donald Trump to the tune of about $300 million. That is a lot of money. Are you sure he's a good businessman? Well, he might get back $300 billion, so that would be an amazing return on investment. [00:09:12] Corruption works in this country. By the way, why is most of the pork at the Pentagon? And why is the Pentagon the one department that can't pass an audit? Because it's the convenient place where you go, oh, you can't look there. It endangers us all. If you cut the Pentagon, we're all going to die. [00:09:28] So that's why we have to add pork and pork and pork. And you can't see where it is. If you question it, you're all gonna die. That's why they put it in there. If you put it in the Department of Education, people would be like, well, how much education do we need? Right? But if you put it in the Pentagon, they can do the fear mongering. [00:09:44] Okay. And one more thing that he has brought up, she said, you know, like, are we about to go into a massive war? Actually, we might be. And that might be another reason they're adding to the Pentagon, because in a story later in the show. And by the way, watch the show live 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern. Get all the news. [00:10:01] They're going Trump's organization has done a $5.5 billion deal with the Saudis and Qatar. Wait, what does that have to do with war? What is the one thing Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar agree on? The US should attack Iran. So now Trump just got bribed. [00:10:18] I mean, made a business deal with those two countries. So maybe they're gearing up for the war that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel Israel purchased through Trump. So there's no good news coming out of this at all. [00:10:35] Oh, and by the way, you know, I challenged the right wing. I will give two people a tiny bit of credit here. Okay. My left wing friends get ready. Get to get triggered. Okay. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson, both going on huge tirades, do not go to war with Iran. [00:10:52] It. We said antiwar. We meant antiwar. The base hates this. Okay. So whether they base, I know the base also, at least they claim to hate the addition to the Pentagon. Whether they actually do will find out whether Marjorie Taylor Greene hates the addition to the Pentagon and Tom Massie and others do. [00:11:09] We'll find out. Right. So. But I am worried that part of the reason they're loading up here is so that they could do what the donors want, which is for us to die in other countries wars. Yeah. Yeah. And even if we don't end up dying in other countries wars, those donors, including the contractors, they get the money. [00:11:26] Let's just a couple more numbers before we go to the cutting part of this. $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. $14 trillion. You know, they say like Green New Deal. Unrealistic. How could we ever spend, like, $2 trillion to stop our our civilization from being [00:11:45] destroyed or whatever, $14 trillion to, like, start and kind of lose a few wars? That's great. Great use of money. And a large portion of it goes to just a few corporations, one 12:45 third in recent years of all Pentagon contracts have gone to [00:12:01] Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman. So they're making huge money whether we go to war or not. They get the money. It's a it's 1.1 trillion this year. What is it going to be next year is going to be 1.2 the year after that, 1.3, 1.4. We have a $1.5 trillion budget within a few years. [00:12:19] And the amazing things about this is, as we're about to show you, if you want to come in and you want to cut the CDC by 50% or education by 30%, whatever, you can do it. You literally just have to see, say, die. And it's gone. Perhaps never to return. But when you add money to the defense budget, do you know how utterly difficult [00:12:38] it is going to be to ever cut that? Like, never mind the fact that the defense budget was 800 billion just a couple of years ago. Now that it's 1.1 trillion, if AOC comes in and says, I'm going to cut it back down to 800 billion, every single anchor will be like, you are going to kill America. [00:12:55] We will be instantly invaded by Guatemala or whatever. And then that'll be it, because they just lock it in. And that's why it always goes up, never to go down again. Utterly demoralizing. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. [00:13:11] But it does keep you updated on our live shows.