# Weekly Report: A $1.5 Trillion Military Budget is a Gift to the Grifters

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/ron-paul-liberty-report-5818855/weekly-report-a-1-5-trillion-military-budget-is-a-gift-to-the-grifters.md
Podcast: [Ron Paul Liberty Report](https://stenobird.com/podcast/ron-paul-liberty-report-5818855)
Published: 2026-05-11T21:32:02+00:00
Episode link: https://vigilante.tv/w/hmFY75Vk8AoSrVHHW4gNZp
Audio file: https://vigilante.tv/static/streaming-playlists/hls/8475b985-ea7f-46fd-8a50-53f9110f4e81/99b35556-c8a9-4024-b2ae-5835bdd188e5-720-fragmented.mp4
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Duration seconds: 315

## Resource

Last week “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth insulted Americans by claiming that a 50 percent increase in the US military budget – from an incomprehensible one trillion dollars to an impossible one and a half trillion – was a “fiscally responsible investment.” “Thanks to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, this War Department has moved from bureaucracy to business,” he said last Thursday. In a way he was right, though. The huge increase is much more about “business” than what is needed to protect the United States from potential invasion. But it isn’t the kind of “business” that most supporters of free markets would applaud. On the contrary, this is the business of transferring massive amounts of wealth from the struggling middle and working classes to the well-connected Beltway elite based on lies and scare tactics. The US mainstream media is crucial in manufacturing the fairy tale that if we don’t mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s future to finance this obscene military budget, we will be attacked or invaded by some evil foreign power. It’s not difficult to do a little research and see why the mainstream – and even some “independent” – media outlets push these scare tactics: they are owned or funded by giant corporations with close ties to military contractors. This unhealthy relationship is known as “corporatism” – the intermingling of pseudo-private companies with the government. It is the precursor to actual fascism, where the government takes a stake in such companies. We’re getting there faster than most Americans understand. The whole scam is not about protecting the citizens of the United States. It’s about protecting the US empire overseas, which actually harms the citizens of the United States. Yes, they rob us to fund their empire and lie…

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