Jon Stewart left The Daily Show almost eight years ago, but though he laid low for several years, lately he’s come roaring back. His new show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, finds him telling fewer jokes and being more serious. In turn, he’s garnered lots of attention for mercilessly grilling powerful people on serious issues. His latest viral moment involves him calling out the “corruption” of a bloated defense budget that hasn’t helped cash-strapped soldiers.
Exchange between @jonstewart and @DepSecDef Kathleen Hicks on the defense budget: “I can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. To me, that’s fucking corruption.” pic.twitter.com/2pu0geUyRE
— CSPAN (@cspan) April 7, 2023
On Thursday, Stewart appeared at the War Horse Symposium in Chicago, where he took part in a discussion with Department of Defense (DOD) deputy secretary Kathleen Hicks. During a particular heated part of the chat, Stewart called for an audit of the Pentagon for what he called “waste, fraud, and abuse” in her department, especially considering the DOD has a proposed 2024 budget of nearly $850 million.
Hicks split hairs, saying, “‘Audit’ and ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ are not the same thing.” She claimed that if the Pentagon does not pass an audit, that only means “we don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where.”
“So, in my world, that’s waste,” Stewart replied. “If I give you a billion dollars and you can’t tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible. But if you can’t tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think?”
Stewart elaborated, saying “it’s a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can’t pass an audit and tell you where that money went — like, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn’t well accounted for.”
He pointed out that there is food insecurity on military bases:
When I see a State Department get a certain amount of money and a military budget be ten times that, and I see a struggle within government to get people like, more basic services, and then that department that got that–I mean, we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise. Like, that’s shocking to me.
Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs, and the incredible magic of an audit. But I’m a human being who lives on the Earth and can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. Like, to me, that’s fucking corruption. I’m sorry. And, if like, that blows your mind and you think that’s like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that’s institutional thinking, and that it’s not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest dighting force in the world.
So, again, I get back to this idea of like, I’m not looking to pick a fight with you. But I am surprised at the reaction to these questions are, “You don’t know what an audit is, bucko.” Like, that’s just weird to me.
Hicks replied by claiming that food insecurity among soldiers is a “major priority” for the administration, adding that “a lot of funds are going toward that.”
You can watch the exchange in the tweet embedded above.
(Via Mediaite)