Protection Division Secretary Pete Hegseth apparently has a smooth spot and a hankering for shellfish, particularly crab legs and lobster tails.
A brand new report finds that amid authorities cuts to meals stamp advantages and different desperately wanted packages for American kids and households, Hegseth blew by $93 billion in a single month alone final September, and many of the cash had nothing to do with protection packages.
A brand new jaw-dropping report from the authorities watchdog Open Books finds Hegseth spent $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tails, and a whopping $15.1 million on ribeye steak for the division. Between March and October of final yr, Hegseth OK’d greater than $7 million in spending on crab.
Open Ebook additionally reported that the protection head signed off on a Steinway & Sons grand piano for the house of the Air Power chief of workers at a value of greater than $98,000, and on Apple merchandise totaling greater than $5 million.
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The division splurges have been probably the most in a single month since 2008, in keeping with information stories, and it didn’t finish there. Open Books additionally documented $124,000 spent on ice cream machines, greater than $139,000 on doughnut orders, and extra on fruit baskets and furnishings.
In truth, the watchdog says the Pentagon spent extra on furnishings final yr, $225 million, than prior to now 10 years, together with $12,000 for fruit basket stands and greater than $60,000 for Herman Miller recliners.
President Donald Trump’s nemesis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, after all, weighed in on all this frivolous spending with an epic publish on X and Threads displaying a meme of a smiling Hegseth lounging again in a leather-based recliner, holding a lobster tail in a single hand and napkins within the different.
He’s surrounded by steak dinners, fruit baskets and a piano. The caption reads, “HEGSETH BLOWING $93 BILLION OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS IN 1 MONTH !!”
The Pentagon spending in September occurred on the finish of the division’s fiscal yr, the place the federal government operates on a use-it-or-lose-it coverage. Any a part of the funds not spent by the deadline must be returned.
Social media exploded in rage, pouncing on the expenditures and calling out Hegseth, framed by the Trump administration’s large cuts in security packages that had benefitted hundreds of thousands of low-income People.
Pennsylvania Congressman Malcom Kenyatta identified, “They are saying we don’t have cash to fund SNAP.”
Trump slashed as a lot as $187 billion from the federal government’s Supplemental Diet Help Program, or SNAP, beneath his One Huge Lovely Invoice Act, which Republicans handed final summer season. It contains stricter work necessities, lowered advantages, and elevated monetary burdens on states.
“Keep in mind once they defunded meals for hungry kids just a few months in the past?” podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen questioned on X.
Others chimed in, together with Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, “Hegseth spent $93 billion in a single month – roughly the price of extending the ACA tax credit for THREE YEARS … A real grifter in each sense of the phrase.”
Schumer is referring to the expiration of COVID-era subsidies for medical health insurance premiums on the finish of 2025, which Republicans refused to increase, inflicting hundreds of thousands of People to lose medical care.
X person Jerry Rig Every little thing declared, “Individuals on meals stamps aren’t the issue. Its the insatiably grasping wealthy dudes.
