The Pentagon can’t explain why it has failed an audit five times in a row, nor what happened to billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars, and you ask them about potential corruption, their main defense is to insult your intelligence. Even the beloved leftist Jon Stewart received that treatment as he tread too closely to the topic during an interview with the Department of Defense’s number two in command.
Stewart recently sat down with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks for an interview on C-SPAN. During that conversation, Stewart brought up the Pentagon’s inability to keep its books straight, but Hicks denied that its failure was in any way sign of corruption or irresponsibility.
“The ability to pass an audit or, the fact that the DoD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false, right there,” Hicks said during the back and forth, in a rather dismissive tone.
“So, what it is suggestive of?” Stewart replied.
“It’s suggestive that we can’t – we don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where,” she responded defiantly. “That is not the same as saying, ‘We can’t do that because waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred.'”
Of course, a sharp observer would question how she can so definitively say that “waste, fraud, and abuse” has not occurred when the Pentagon does not have reliable data on the topic, by their own admission. Stewart wasn’t done though, and offered a reasonable rebuttal.
“So, in my world, that’s waste,” he said.
Hicks didn’t get it, asking, “How is that waste?”
“If I give you a billion dollars and you can’t tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful,” the former Comedy Central host explained. “That means you are not responsible. But if you can’t tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think? And when there has been reporting – I mean, this is not, look, I’m not saying this is on you and that you caused this.”
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks loses composure when pressed about government fraud, waste, and abuse pic.twitter.com/SBajxUOJpH
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 9, 2023
As numerous people pointed out on Twitter, Stewart often behaves as a de facto propagandist for the Democratic Party. He asked a pretty straightforward question that was met with contempt. In turn, the Biden administration’s incompetence at best and willful obtuseness at worst were exposed. Why is it up to a Democrat-Media Complex-friendly comedian to shed light on potential corruption?
This video shows why the media is the way it is. Government officials can’t even respond to BASIC questions from fellow stooges of the regime like Jon Stewart. He poses not threat. He coddles them. But even basic questioning and it’s a meltdown. Imagine if we had a real press. https://t.co/SNZYPQc4HX
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 9, 2023
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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