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 no [CROSSTALK] responsible.
But if you can't tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think?
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 corruption.
>> Looks like Kathleen Hicks who serves as the Deputy Secretary for
Defense got a little testy with Jon Stewart as he was spitting some
truth about government waste over at the State Department.
Now, he has reason to be concerned.
Of course, he calls out the low pay for service members.
The fact that they need to rely on social services like food stamps just to make
ends meet.
In the meantime, the Pentagon has failed not one, not two,
not three, not four, but five audits in a row.
I wanna give you the numbers to that and then we'll watch some more video of
Jon Stewart honestly killing it in that conversation.
So after 1600 auditors combed through the Department of Defense's
3.5 trillion in assets and 3.7 trillion in liabilities,
officials found that the department couldn't account for
about 61% of its assets.
Federal law since the early 1990s requires mandatory audit for
all government agencies, and since fiscal year 2013, all but
the DOD have been able to satisfy that requirement.
So really wasn't until 2017 when the audits into the Pentagon started and
they have failed every single one since.
>> Yeah, look, man, I love Jon Stewart.
So every once in a while, somebody on the left says that they don't
like Jon Stewart and I don't know why, they never explain why, right?
But every time I've seen him, he's been awesome.
He's like the only truth speaker in all of politics and
all the media, in the public life in America,
the one person I've seen say things that are true consistently is Jon Stewart.
And so in the old days people say, yeah, only the Court Jester can say things
that are true, etc, and he's a [INAUDIBLE], no, no, no, no, forget that.
Just painting him as a Court Jester is doesn't do him justice at all.
No, he's a brave guy who's willing to sit there with the number two person in
the defense department under Joe Biden, by the way.
Jon Stewart spoke, like everybody thinks he's a Democrat, right?
And he probably is, but there he is challenging a Democrat,
a very powerful Democrat.
What the hell did you do with the money?
There you go, I love that.
Just because you're on the left or you're a Democrat doesn't mean you're supposed to
kiss the ass of the powerful on the left or the in the Democratic Party.
You're supposed to challenge them to actually do the right thing.
>> Yeah, look, to answer your question, I'm sure that there are some views that
Jon Stewart has that are a little different from mine or from yours, but
it's okay to have like minor disagreements or disagreements on the edges.
I think for the most part he's right on the issues and
when it comes to anything pertaining to first responders, to military ways,
to the treatment of service workers, he's just on point.
So this is where he really shines and you're about to see more of it.
So this conversation was taking place at some event called the War horse symposium.
It took place in Chicago.
Let's watch more videos.
>> Audits and waste, fraud and abuse are not the same thing.
So let's decompose these.
>> Then please educate me on [CROSSTALK].
>> Sure, so an audit is exactly what you just described, which is,
do I know what was delivered to which place.
>> Right. >> The ability to pass an audit or
in the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste,
fraud and abuse.
That is completely false right there.
So, [CROSSTALK] it's suggestive that we don't have
an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where.
That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste fraud and
abuse has occurred.
>> So in my world, that's waste.
>> [LAUGH] >> No, I love that, and I chose that time
code in the video to show you how defensive she is, because,
home girl, 61% of the military's assets can't be accounted for.
>> Come on.
>> Come on, are you really trying to defend this disaster?
>> I'll go 10,000 times farther than Jon Stewart.
No, I think you guys are robbing us blind, okay?
I think you can't account for 61% of it because you're giving it to defense
contractors in a completely unaccountable way.
They're stuffing it into their pockets, and
then later you will get hired by those same defense contractors.
I think you're corrupt.
I think this defense secretary is corrupt.
I think the defense secretaries and all the generals that immediately join these
defense contractors, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, right wing or
left wing, I think they're all corrupt.
And I think that they're stealing and stealing and stealing billions of dollars.
And by the way, John is absolutely right.
The facts too, like in any business, if you said in a business setting,
you gave me a billion dollars, well, I don't know where it is.
>> All right.
>> And then the investor or shareholders or whoever would you think they'd be like,
no, that's not waste fraud or abuse, that's totally fine.
No, of course not, they like, where's the God damn money?
>> Right. >> Where's the goddamn money?
Did you put it in the Bahamas?
Where the hell is it, right?
No, of course, that's waste, fraud and abuse.
It's not even close.
No, she's a total joke.
>> Let's go to the next video because this is where Stewart brings up the pay and
the financial conditions of service members relative to what we pump
out financially for the defense department every single year.
Let's watch.
>> I'm not saying this is on you and that you caused this.
>> [LAUGH] >> But I think it's a tough argument to
make that [CROSSTALK] an $850 billion dollar budget to an organization
that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went.
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.
And especially when they see food insecurity on military bases and
they see-.
>> You wanna talk about that cuz we should be talking, I mean,
[CROSSTALK] I try to understand where you're trying to go other than the dollars
which really bother you [LAUGH].
>> I think it doesn't really bother me, I think it's all connected.
>> And I think he's right about that clearly.
There was a story that broke today, I believe it was.
We're probably gonna cover it tomorrow, but it's a leak of government
documents pertaining to the war in Ukraine and just how much the US is
pressuring other countries to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.
Anyway, I mentioned all of that because one of the hang ups that Jake and
I have talked about in regard to the military aid that's being funneled
to Ukraine it's not that we don't want to help Ukrainians.
But at the same time, there is some concern that some of this military
weaponry might end up in the wrong hands.
If our Defense Department can't even account for
61% of their assets, how do we know that they are able to account for
the military weaponry that we're sending to Ukraine?
>> We lost tens of billions, maybe more in Iraq and Afghanistan where the Pentagon
just came out and said, yeah, we don't know where the money went.
Billions, billions, imagine if Medicaid had done that?
Like, yeah, tens of billions went to poor people, but we don't know where it went.
I mean, I think it went to poor people, but who cares, right?
The right wing would destroy Medicaid.
They would dismantle it within the week, right?
The Defense Department steals, steals billions of dollars,
where they go and give it to their friends, well, then they hire them later.
I know Kathleen Hicks, I don't trust you at all.
See, this is what's wrong with American politics.
Almost everyone on the left will go.
You can't say that about her.
And I don't mean on the left really, Democrats lips, right?
It will be like, my God, she's part of the Biden administration.
And did you know she worked for Barack Obama, then he's an Angel.
No, no,
she's another one of these bureaucrats when look at her flipping attitude.
I know you guys seem so concerned about the money.
Yeah, goddamn right we are, goddamn right we're concerned about $850 billion, and
you can't not tell me where 61% of it went,
because it went to your corrupt friends.
No, no, no, I'm calling you what Jon Stewart is too polite to call you,
you are corrupt.
You are part of the corruption and the Democratic and Republican administrations,
they all gorge on this.
And by the way, the media is enormously complicit.
They never challenge the defense budget.
Anytime we say, Medicare for all health care for everybody,
just like in other developed countries.
They're like, you're going to pay for that, defense budget, no, yeah,
just steal it, steal our money, steal it, steal it, steal it, we don't mind.
>> One more video.
>> When I see a state department get a certain amount of money and
a military budget be 10 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.
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 dollars to a department means that the rank and
file still have to be on food stamps.
To me that's corruption.
>> The message that he sends there is such an incredibly important one.
I just think it resonates with everyone,
because it is true that members of the military get paid,
especially when they're first starting out, it's abysmal.
What was the exact number you talk about?
>> I looked It up a couple of years ago, it was around $90,000.
So she was bragging later about, we did a 4% increase at some point.
>> No, let me actually tell you what she said.
She was like, actually we have increased the pay for
our service members two years in a row except they didn't do that.
So, last year they raised it to the tune of 4.6%, which might sound okay?.
But then just juxtapose that to how much money gets appropriated every
single year for the Defense Department, right?
>> And there's there's inflation.
>> And there's inflation, exactly, right?.
And that 4.6% did not keep up with inflation.
And then the other thing is, it wasn't two years in a row because then she says, and
we have proposed another 5.2% pay raise this year.
They've proposed it, meaning they haven't accomplished it [LAUGH].
>> Yeah, guys, Jon Stewart run for president, please run for president.
We're desperate, we need someone, anyone who's willing to say anything that's true,
okay, cuz we don't have anything like that in the rest of powerful people, right?
So look, in that case, you're telling me that $850 billion and
you're bragging about 4% increase in one year.
And you're saying we might, might, might in the midst of massive inflation,
do another 5% increase this year, aren't we merciful?
Maybe they're up to $20 or $21,000 a year.
A year that they get paid while we took the other $849 billion dollars and
gave it to the richest people in the country and pretended, God,
I don't know where the money is?
It didn't make it to the troops.
Well, we support the troops so much.
No, they're all liars.
The Democrats are liars, the Republicans are liars.
So, guys, if you're veterans, you're active service members,
now you should be the most pissed, right?
They always lie to you about supporting you, they never support you.
The whole point of that budget is to rob you blind and leave you with the crumbs.
And then they go and ask you to die for their profits.