Bulwark Takes - Secret Air Force One Deal? Is The DOD HIDING SOMETHING From Congress?!

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein talk about the Defense Department’s shady behavior, the absurd lack of transparency, and what it means when even top-line budgets are kept secret.

Hey guys, Tim Miller from the Bullwork here with managing editor Sam Stein. I want to talk about a couple different stories about how the administration, particularly the Department of Defense, is keeping some secrets from the folks in Congress on matters that are sensitive, that are potentially embarrassing, that are who knows. And so, you know, as we've been discussing from the military parade towards to taking control of the National Guard, there are these little baby steps, you know, towards a more authoritarian centralized power. And that gets particularly alarming when it has to do with the military.

So Sam, I want to play a clip for you to kick this off from Pete Hegs's testimony today over in the Senate. He's being questioned by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. Let's watch that. You've signed a contract with a company to reconfigure the aircraft. What is the price of that contract? That cannot be revealed in this setting.

Why can't it be revealed in this setting? This is the appropriation committee of the United States Senate. We appropriate the money that you will spend after it's authorized by my committee. And you cannot tell us how much the contract is for. You will have that number, Senator. It just can't be talked about in a public realm.

The contract has been signed, correct? The contract has been signed? The memorandum of understanding is not complete. I'm talking about the contract with the American contractor. Has it been signed. The memorandum of understanding is not complete. No, no, I'm talking about the contract with the American contractor. Has it been signed? It's nothing on that front that I'm aware of as being executed.

Well, that's contrary to what we've all heard. Can't be revealed. Yeah. Maybe there are, look look the most generous interpretation I'll start there and then we'll get to what I think is real most generous interpretation is This is supposed to be a retrofitted Air Force one. We don't want to talk about What goes into putting an Air Force one together the security steps that you have to take obviously It's it's the most sensitive aircraft that we own I presume

that you have to take. Obviously, it's the most sensitive aircraft that we own, I presume. And so you might want to cover this in a closed door hearing. That seems fine, but he was just asking for a top line number. And those are public. And what stood out to me, like Jack Reed has been doing this for a while. He's a senior Democrat on this committee. The lack of even remote desire to participate in some sort of congressional back and forth or even bipartisan exchange. These people act like they will be in power forever and that they are entitled to their in secrecy on every front, as if the appropriators of Congress are immaterial to them. And maybe they are in this current iteration of Congress.

But it's like, at some point in time, I assume power is going to change, and this type of shit is going to come back. Yeah, the tone is really noteworthy, right? It's so dismissive. Why would I tell you this. Yeah, the tone is really noteworthy, right? It's just so dismissive. Why would I tell you this? Yeah, right. And, and I definitely that's noteworthy. So a slightly less generous interpretation, but I think equally possible before we get to kind of the ominous possible interpretation is just that it's really embarrassing. I mean, just

like the notion of this, right? Like, obviously, you know, part of the rationale for this was that the budget got out of control from the other Air Force one, the Boeing, Boeing, and now and now that they've actually looked, you know, they did this fucking, just because Trump wanted to, it's not like they did due diligence on this. Nobody thinks that they did. Right? Right. Trump wants this plane. It's like, Oh, whatever. Okay, we'll figure it out. And now they've actually looked at it and figure out what they got to do. And they're like, Oh, you know what I mean? Like, there's a little bit of potentially that it's just as simple as that, that this is very embarrassing that we took this plane from, you know, the sand

dictator over and over in the Middle East. And now I get kind of, and we got kind of, maybe the art of the deal wasn't quite there. Maybe, maybe we got hosed on this old plane by the Qataris. There's also a lot of unanswered questions, which Roger also brought up in this hearing, which is, is this a done deal? Who asked for the plane initially? That was pushed by Brian Schatz, I believe. Sorry, it kind of matters. We asked for this plane.

Do they offer up this plane? These things actually do matter. And they were just totally non forthcoming about that. But I'm with you, I think, ultimately, they're looking at this, they have to strip it down, they have to reconstitute it, it's going to look like the dumbest waste of money. And they're humiliated by that. And they don't want it in public. And maybe they'll give us some, they'll give Congress

some figure in private and it will leak out. But I'm sure they't want to have pete hexeth on on camera being like yeah actually it's going to be 800 billion dollars okay uh which takes us to this next item uh this was a story in semaphore it was an exclusive the headline was republican senators republican senators that's pretty key, mystified by one billion that has been added to the mega bill. I just want to read a little bit from this. One billion has been added to the BBB that lets the president mobilize certain industrial sectors during an emergency. Republicans hold 7-4 for they're not sure what this defense production act money is for. The funding has become somewhat of

a mystery among banking committee Republicans who said they won't tell us. Kevin Kramer in North Dakota, it's hard to be supportive of it if we don't know what it's for. It's uncomfortable for sure. A billion dollars is a billion dollars. And then the kind of this goes on to suggest some other things that we could do production act stuff for maybe aluminum and coal, maybe some of the rare earth something from I have an idea. Really? I have an idea for Kevin Kramer. This is radical. It's the strip it out. Strip it out. You have agency like what the fuck man? Strip it out. No one's making you spend a billion dollars on shit you don't know about. Strip it out.

That is a radical idea. Goes on. It's not just Kevin Kramer, by the way. Cynthia Loomis, she said she would have had a duck fit had she known about it earlier. I guess that's a Wyomingism, a Wyoming colloquialism I'm not familiar with. I don't understand. Why isn't she, this goes to your point about Kramer? Why isn't she having the duck fit now? Straight out too late Mike rounds said he's asked the same question hasn't been told so I don't again There's another there's a generous interpretation of all this. There's not generous interpretation

Well, the general the generous interpretation in this case is that, you know, this is fucking arcane, arcana being put into the bill and these guys can't fucking just like are too, too lazy or stupid to figure it out. Right. And then they dumped it in and they want a little billion billion dollar slush fund for some random stuff. That's not possible. That's generous. Well, that's generous compared to my ungenerous description, which is that, that they are doing everything in their power to consolidate power and control within the very, you know, the power ministries, and they want to make sure that they have budget to do various things. And

they don't give a fuck what the Senate thinks anymore. And they can take, you know, uh, Sharia law, theocrats planes and make it work and make it Air Force one and they can send troops into California at a hundred million dollars and they can take a billion dollars and use it, you know, for whatever their ends are. I mean, like that gets you to a pretty bad place. Oh yeah. Well, I thought maybe the two stories might be connected, right? The billion dollars is actually retrofit the plane.

But let's say that's not the case. Let's say they just want a slush fund. That's a lot of money for a slush fund to do fucked up shit that you want to do. But I do agree with you. I mean there's plenty of evidence now that they're just trying to consolidate power. The other story that you kind of went under the radar was the FEMA. He wants to basically on down unwind FEMA and then place the spending authority under the presidential office. How about who can imagine how bad that will go? It's just like I decide which states get disaster relief

funding. That should be great. So yeah, the consolidation is about living in Louisiana. Take that all you libs who made fun of me for moving to a red state. At least I'm going to get my FEMA money now. Tough cookies. No, I'm just joking. No, you're joking, but you're dead serious. The other thing I would say, this is kind of a meta-analysis here, but to me, these stories really kind of underscore what is colloquially known as the hack gap. And by that I mean, had Joe Biden snuck a

billion dollar slush fund into a spending bill that he didn't explain and that no senators possibly could have understood and were struggling to get an explanation for, the amount of coverage and criticism from Republican senators, righteously, would have been amazing. They would have been like, this is unreal. Yeah, this is unreal. Yeah. This is funding. Who knows what this is funding? Sex change operations for undocumented immigrants across the country. They would have had a field day with it, but there's a hack gap here. Democrats don't take advantage of this shit. Yeah. Well, they absolutely should. You had Jason Crowe on earlier. And he's doing pretty good good out there my Colorado boy I the other thing related to this is when you're just sort of tie this up together. DHS is also right now. Just spending more than has been appropriate. This is like another story that's out there that like we've covered but you know, I mean, just in the in the midst of everything. It's like, Kristi Noem is just basically like, fuck you. Like, like, I don't have the numbers in front of me. But you know, they've been appropriated x, and DHS is spending like x plus, you know,

why, like more on top of it. I asked Jim Comey about this when I said Monica weeks ago, I was like, what is it? I kind of that work, you know, I've never been in an agency, like, what happens if you're at the FBI? And you're like, shit, we need more money than we appropriate for this threat. And and commies, it's like, you know, you have some leeway, or you can move some money from this pile to that pile for a little while. He's like, eventually, you just

run out of that. And you got to go back to Congress and get it re appropriated. And he said, I did that many times. And DH and gnome is just like, no, not doing that. So they're just spending now out of DHS. And they just don't care. You know, they're doing it to send these, you know, they're doing it with immigration enforcement. That's where most of this stuff is going to. And and they're just basically saying to Congress, pound sand. And so, you know, I think all of that,

it's an attitude, you know, just a dismissive attitude towards the democratic process is kind of the highfalutin way to put it. But it's it's an inspiring way to just say, fuck you, we can we can do what we want. But at some point, you need money, right? Like, or you can just act like it's gonna appear magically. I think that as long as the republic, this will this is why the midterms will matter. I think as long you know, these

are among the things that will matter in the midterms, like as long as the republicans control Congress, why would it? Why would she? They have to appropriate it. I mean, I know there's a huge up in border money and nice money in this big beautiful bill, but I mean, it hasn't passed yet. But let's say it does and then they continue to spend beyond their means and they hit a limit. Who's going to stop them from spending the money? I agree. But like, where do they get the money to spend?

Maybe I'm not making sense, but you can't just be like, ooh, magical money here. Or at the beginning of the fiscal year and you're spending money that you had for later in the year. Yeah, but at some point you run out. Yeah. Where do you borrow from? I guess we'll trade real. The idea is that the Hill's going to fund them eventually.

Okay. Anyway. It's all fucking made up Bullshit, whatever you mean the monetary system. Yeah It's all built on trust, you know, it's kind of fake. It reminds me of when one of my crypto friends At the very beginning I was trying to understand it and I was like I'm coming over to your house I want you to take out a whiteboard and treat me like a child and I want you to just do like The blockchain is this I want to start from square one whiteboard and treat me like a child. And I want you to just do like the blockchain is this. I want to start from square one.

And we sat in their kitchen for three hours and we went over everything. I asked all the questions at the end of the like, do you understand the crypto? Do you get it now? And I was like, you've not at all made any progress in making me believe that crypto is real. But you have done is it's weakened my resolve in the fact that our current the fiat that crypto is real, but what you have done is weakened my resolve in the fact that the fiat monetary system is real. Oh my god, you became a gold standard guy, basically.

Anywho, Sam Stein, if I ever want to spend any of the Bullwerx money, I'm going to make sure you approve it. Alright, I'm not going to do it. Thank you. That's important. Thank you. I appreciate that. Alright, we'll see everybody soon.

We'll see everybody soon. Subscribe to the feed. Peace.