Late-night “comedians” Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers, along with Paul Begala and other CNN blowhards, went big for a pseudo-story Wednesday, raging about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon bigs supposedly eating high on the hog.
Oops: “Lobstergate” only proved that not one of the on-air geniuses, nor any of their writers or producers, knows a thing about military life.
All the smug fury was based on a news item — from noted military journalism site TMZ! — about the Defense Department spending $22 million on lobster and ribeye steak in a single month.
First Lady Michelle Obama serves steaks to U.S. servicemen during her visit at the U.S. airbase in the south-western German town of Ramstein, November 11, 2010. REUTERSIf they’d bothered to check the (transparently idiotic!) assumption that all the eats were for the top brass, they’d have learned that a “surf & turf” fete is a longstanding military tradition, a treat for troops headed to a deployment or stuck on an extended tour, with all the gastrointestinal joy that a diet of MREs can deliver.
With more than 1.3 million active-duty personnel, that $22 million works out to under $17 a head.
The US Defense budget is around $900 billion; if the Trump team is spending a teeny fraction of that on a slight luxury for the troops … good.
There’s certainly waste in the Pentagon’s budget, but this isn’t it.
(On that note: Team Trump has introduced competitive bidding for these “gourmet” purchases, replacing just two California companies that had controlled the contracts.)
CNN isn’t all bad, by the way: Panelist Scott Jennings challenged Begala’s rant with an on-air appeal: “Internet, do something” — which brought an avalanche of videos from grunts enjoying their steak and lobster.
As for the rest of the brain trust: Your privileged ignorance is still showing.
