Pete Hegseth has resorted to using cartoons in a bid to justify the Defense Department’s eye-watering budget proposal.
The self-styled “secretary of war” made a two-minute, 35-second video plea for funding after lawmakers flamed the Trump administration’s bid to boost the Pentagon’s budget to $1.5 trillion for 2027, a staggering 50-percent increase from this year as the U.S. continues to wage war on Iran.
Hegseth, 45, awkwardly stood in front of a green screen as animated graphics behind him helped make his case for more money.
“A broken Pentagon bureaucracy was doing the same thing for decades,” he began. “But today, President Trump’s war department is flipping this rigged system on its head.”
An animated Trump joined Hegseth in the bizarre video, at one point giving a thumbs up as one of his goons cracked down on imaginary businessmen the defense secretary accused of “delays in production or cost overruns.”
“We now move at the speed of business, not bureaucracy,” Hegseth said. He promised a “series of videos” coming over the next month that will highlight how the trillion-dollar budget “will make a generational investment in our arsenal of freedom.”
“This investment will secure and protect the homeland and ensure America’s military remains the most lethal fighting force on earth for generations to come,” he concluded. “We’re gonna spend every dollar of that money responsibly, because that’s what you deserve, that’s what America needs, and that’s what this president demands.”
In January, Trump wrote an impassioned Truth Social post arguing in favor of a massive jump in the Defense Department’s budget.
“This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,” the president said at the time, adding that his tariffs could help cover some of those funds.
But the administration’s budget proposal faces an uphill battle, even on the Republican side of the aisle.
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a scathing statement over the weekend that “President Trump successfully campaigned on a Peace Through Strength agenda, but his advisers at the Office of Management and Budget were apparently not listening.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, pointed out that the money would be better spent elsewhere.
“You know what that money could do instead? Provide healthcare for every uninsured American. Housing for every homeless veteran. Childcare, Pell Grants, high speed rail — all of it,” he said.
