Pete Hegseth Might Have To Cut Back On Muscle Milk If Congress Won't Give Him More War Money
Look, the Iran war burned through the first trillion dollars so fast.
The US military has blown so much money on Donald Trump’s pointless war of choice against Iran that the Pentagon is starting to run out of money for some critical operations, the Washington Post reports (gift link).
The timing is a tad inconvenient for our high-testosterone military, since Trump is ramping up the scope and pace of the war even as the funding shortfall is “already leading the Pentagon to limit training and maintenance that help maintain military readiness,” according to four of those “current and former officials” who always show up to anonymously reveal each of the Trump administration’s latest slapdash clusterfucks.
The conflict has put unexpected stress on the Navy and Air Force, which have deployed aircraft and warships to the Middle East. Parts of the 2026 budget covering ongoing military operations for both services are on track to run out by the end of this month […]
To bridge the gap until the 2027 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, the Pentagon is already moving money around. Military exercises and trainings that help keep units prepared for combat are being limited or canceled, the four current and former officials said. The budget for equipment and facility and maintenance is also being drained to cover the shortfalls, the officials said.
In addition, the Pentagon has asked Congress to please authorize it to shift $4.3 billion that would go to training and to buying weapons to address “more urgent priorities” in Iran, although so far Congress hasn’t approved that, either.
The White House has asked Congress to pretty please give the Pentagon an extra $67 billion to keep the war going, but so far Democrats have said Hell Nah, Nothing Doing, not only to the supplemental spending for the Iran war, but also to next year’s Defense budget. Not a penny, not as long as Trump pursues his stupid war. With Dems holding firm, that means any short-term funding deal would have to be made among Republicans, using the budget reconciliation process, which as we’ll see is a whole ‘nother ball of mess.
The House is set to start its “August recess” Thursday, which will still be July, but actual calendar time means nothing when you’re a Republican member of Congress hankering to get out of town while also avoiding holding town halls with your pissed-off constituents. It doesn’t look likely that a funding plan will come together before they GTFO of Washington, but you never know what kind of back-scratching arrangements may lead to a deal.
Of course, as the Post notes, even if the House does pass a planned $73 billion package of Pentagon funding this week, it may already be in trouble in the Senate. Democrats aren’t budging on the defense budget, and Senate Rs are missing two top members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Lindsey Graham has rung down the curtain and joined the choir celestial, and Mitch McConnell, the chair of the subcommittee on Defense spending, is still out while recovering from being Not Dead Yet.
And of course, Trump’s stupid war remains deeply unpopular, with recent polling showing only 28 percent of Americans saying the war on Iran is “worth fighting,” while 68 percent say nossir, it is not. WaPo helpfully notes those percentages are “on par with the worst assessments of the war in Afghanistan.”
In an attempt to get Congress to throw more money down Trump’s Iran war moneyhole, Defensive Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to make the case that Donald Trump deserves praise for starting America’s latest Forever War without even considering the consequences, so please shower more money on the war, which America has won several times already but needs to keep winning over and over again.
Here’s some nice video of President (of our hearts) Jon Ossoff (D-GA) pressing Hegseth on all the times he said the US decisively destroyed Iran’s military, and Hegseth sputtering about it.
It was quite an argument between past-Hegseth and current-Hegseth, as mediated by Ossoff.
JON OSSOFF: You said on day 14 Iran's military had been quote “destroyed” and “made combat ineffective.” Yes or no, was that an accurate statement?
PETE HEGSETH: What the American military has done to the Iranian military is a historic military defeat, and they’re ineffective in that context.
OSSOFF [crosstalk]: Will you answer the question? Will you answer the question under oath?
Ossoff pointed out that just three weeks later, Hegseth once more declared “Operation Epic Fury” had been a “historic and overwhelming victory,” that Iran’s military had been rendered “combat ineffective for years to come,” and that the US had “achieved every single objective” in the war. He asked again, “Were those accurate statements?”
Hegseth sputtered that America’s Iran no longer has a navy, which was “completely sunk,” that its air force was gone, and that its “defense industrial base” had been destroyed. So yes, total victory, except for how Iran keeps firing missiles in the war it decisively lost, with weapons it doesn’t have anymore because the US destroyed them, and Iran’s military has been “set back not just years, but likely decades.”
Ossoff then confronted Hegseth with his insistence — on the third day of the war — that a key objective of the war was to “obliterate Iran’s missiles and drones,” and how exactly does the fact that they’re clearly not obliterated square with Hegseth’s insistence — four months ago, remember? — that the US had achieved every single objective of the war? Here, enjoy more video; it overlaps a teensy bit with the PBS vid above.
Ah, but there’s a loophole, Hegseth explained: “No one ever stated that every single missile was gone.” It’s just that Iran had a lot of its missiles underground, and they can’t get to them now! Except not quite that, either, because “It doesn’t mean they don’t have underground facilities where they put missiles in them and hold onto them because they’re the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
It’s Schrödinger’s underground facility, you see, both destroyed and not destroyed, with missiles Iranian forces can’t get to and also are holding onto for terrorism purposes.
Besides, Hegseth insisted, now Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, so that’s the most important thing, or at least that’s the objective for continuing the war, no matter how many conventional weapons Iran continues fight with.
Ossoff summed up Hegseth’s bloviating simply enough:
“So, just to review, you will not answer whether your statement made on the fourteenth day of the war that Iran’s military had been, quote, destroyed and made combat ineffective was a truthful statement to the American people, as you sit here and ask for tens of billions more for the conflict.”
Why yes, that’s exactly what Hegseth is asking for, so please stop nitpicking about how total our total victory was in this war, and cough up endless billions to ensure that our next total victory will come soon, with other total victories to follow, forever. Probably in two weeks.
Of course, we are probably just smearing the troops, like Pete Hegseth accused Michigan Senator Gary Peters of while he was completely flaming out at him, soon after Ossoff had eviscerated him.
No, Peters explained to Hegseth: “You, sir, are the failure!” And he continued to read him for filth, while Hegseth whined about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and begged for more money to waste losing Trump’s Iran war every single day.
And that’s as good a place as any to end this post.
[WaPo (gift link) / The Fucking News / Jeff Tiedrich
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Well, they probably told Pete he had to be sober for this hearing. And some drunks get *really* cranky when they get nailed to the wagon.
Literally wandering around Europe and apologizing. I can’t not do it. I feel so ashamed and culpable and disgraced. Nice times: everyone hates the putrid lard lad, but I want to hang my head. We hates it, precious, yes, we do.