Jon Stewart’s Jaw Drops When He Hears Pentagon Can’t Yet Use $2 Trillion Jet Program: ‘That’s Insanity!’

Screenshot via The Weekly Show

Jon Stewart called out military waste in the latest episode of The Weekly Show and was genuinely shocked when he heard a jet program that’s cost trillions is currently useless because “the software doesn’t work.”

Stewart brought on Quincy Institute research fellow Bill Hartung and Bloomberg defense reporter Roxana Tiron to discuss the “military industrial complex,” as well as what Stewart argued is a lack of oversight on Pentagon spending. The Pentagon has famously never passed an audit, having failed their last six. Before this, they were not audited at all.

At one point during the discussion on the military, the topic turned to the F-35 jet. The Department of Defense has grand plans for these jets with a $1.7 trillion program and plans to build thousands. The only problem is these jets have been plagued by problems and they are not combat ready and are not expected to be until at least at least 2025.

Tiron pointed out that the Pentagon can’t even accept the jets at this point because the “software doesn’t work.”

“The F-35 works, what, 20% of the time? When does it work? 10%? 15%? Does it work at all?” Stewart asked.

“It’s currently stacked up in a locked tarmac because delivery cannot be accepted on them because the software doesn’t work,” Tiron said.

Stewart broke out into laughter, which quickly turned to outrage.

“We had a child tax credit that cost $94 billion… that reduced child poverty by 30%. We couldn’t keep that going as a country and yet we have this $1.7 trillion boondoggle, and they can’t, what, get the sonos to work it?” he said. “Like, the software doesn’t work…that’s insanity!”

Tiron noted F-35s cost billions to make and trillions over their lifetime to maintain.

Stewart later pulled up a clip from a recent tense conversation he had with Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hinks in April in which Stewart pressed the defense official on the Pentagon’s inability to pass an audit, arguing tracking where billions of dollars in funds is suggests either potential waste or corruption, something Hinks pushed back hard on.

Exchange between @jonstewart and @DepSecDef Kathleen Hicks on the defense budget: “I can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. To me, that’s fucking corruption.” pic.twitter.com/2pu0geUyRE

— CSPAN (@cspan) April 7, 2023

“There is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse in the system,” Stewart told Hinks.

“Audits and waste, fraud, and abuse are not the same thing, so let’s decompose these pieces,” Hinks said, adding that not passing an audit is “not suggestive” of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Stewart argued not passing an audit and not having actual tracking of money may not equate to “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but it’s certainly a red flag.

After playing the clip, Stewart expressed shock that Hinks at one point appeared flabbergasted that he would care about billions or even trillions in tax dollars being completely wasted.

“The conversation goes on to the point where she says to me, ‘you seem awfully concerned about the money,” Stewart said.

Hartung called the response from Hinks “amazingly condescending” and suggested she may have been trying to “muddy the waters.”

“If you don’t know where $400 billion is, how do you know it’s being spent effectively or the way it was intended?” Stewart asked.

He argued later that “even questioning” the Pentagon and how it spends its money is seen as “hostile” by officials caught up in the system. The comedian said questioning Pentagon spending should not be viewed as such especially “given the history of our interventions, given the record of corruption, given the record of ineffectiveness, given the record of a $1.7 [trillion] plane program where the software doesn’t work, where the software in the VA, Veterans Administration, doesn’t talk to the software in the DoD.”

“What really bothered me was this idea that even questioning it is seen as a hostile act,” Stewart said.

Watch above via The Weekly Show.