Secret Air Force One Deal? Is The DOD HIDING SOMETHING From Congress?!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes Episode Title: Secret Air Force One Deal? Is The DOD HIDING SOMETHING From Congress?! Release Date: June 11, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts Tim Miller and Sam Stein delve into allegations that the Department of Defense (DOD) may be withholding crucial information from Congress concerning sensitive military contracts and budget allocations. The discussion centers around a controversial contract related to the reconfiguration of Air Force One and a mysterious $1 billion addition to the Defense Production Act (DPA) funding within the latest defense bill.

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1. Alleged Secrecy Surrounding Air Force One Contract

Tim Miller initiates the conversation by addressing recent stories suggesting that the DOD is keeping certain military dealings hidden from Congress. A focal point is the reconfiguration of Air Force One, allegedly tied to a "Project 2025," which is said to continue initiatives from Elon Musk.

• Senate Hearing Clip Analysis:
  The hosts reference a Senate hearing where Senator Jack Reed questions Pete Hegseth about a contract to reconfigure Air Force One. The response given by Hegseth is notably evasive:

  [03:00] Richard Karn (as Hegseth): "That cannot be revealed in this setting."

  [03:14] Richard Karn: "You will have that number, Senator. It just can't be talked about."

Sam Stein critiques this interaction, highlighting the lack of transparency and expressing concern over potential governmental overreach:

[04:30] Sam Stein: "The lack of even remote desire to participate in some sort of congressional back and forth or even bipartisan exchange... they are entitled to... secrecy on every front as if the appropriators of Congress are immaterial to them."

2. Implications of Secrecy and Potential Power Consolidation

The discussion shifts to the broader implications of such secrecy. Stein and Miller express concerns that these actions may be indicative of a move towards centralized, authoritarian control within the military apparatus.

• Consolidation of Power:
  Miller elaborates on his concerns:

  [09:03] Tim Miller: "They are doing everything in their power to consolidate power and control within the power ministries... They can take Sharia law theocrat planes and make it Air Force One... They can send troops into California at $100 million... and use a billion dollars for whatever their ends are."

• Potential Embarrassment and Mismanagement:
  The hosts also consider that the secrecy might stem from embarrassment over possible mismanagement or overinflated costs related to the Air Force One project.

  [05:08] Tim Miller: "Maybe they'll give us some, they'll, they'll give Congress some figure in private and it will leak out. But I'm sure they don't want to have Pete Hegseth on camera being like, yeah, actually it's going to be $800 billion."

3. Mysterious $1 Billion Addition to the Defense Production Act Funding

Transitioning to another critical issue, the podcast discusses an exclusive report from Semaphore highlighting a $1 billion addition to the DPA within the latest defense bill.

• Republican Senators’ Confusion:
  The addition has baffled Republican members of the Banking Committee, who are unsure of its intended use:

  [06:54] Sam Stein: "The Billion dollars is actually to retrofit the plane. But yeah, put it. Let's say that's not the case. Let's say they just want a slush fund. That's, you know, that's a lot of money for a slush fund."

  [07:51] Sam Stein: "They want to make sure that they have budget to do various things and they don't give a fuck what the Senate thinks anymore."

• Calls for Transparency:
  Miller advocates for immediate accountability:

  [07:51] Sam Stein: "Strip it out. Strip it out. You have agency like, what the fuck, man?"

4. DHS Overspending and Potential Budgetary Misconduct

The conversation broadens to include ongoing issues with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allegedly overspending beyond appropriated funds, particularly in immigration enforcement.

• Overspending Concerns:
  Miller cites past interactions with Jim Comey, who indicated that DHS is not adhering to typical spending protocols:

  [11:18] Tim Miller: "DHS is spending now out of DHS and they just don't care... they're doing it to send these... you know, they're doing it with the immigration enforcement."

• Disregard for Democratic Processes:
  The hosts criticize DHS's dismissive attitude towards Congress:

  [12:50] Sam Stein: "They just don't care. You know, they're doing it to send these... they're doing it with the immigration enforcement. That's where most of this stuff is going to."

5. Implications for the Midterm Elections

The episode concludes with a discussion on how these issues may influence the upcoming midterm elections, emphasizing the importance of congressional oversight and transparency.

• Midterm Impact:
  Stein and Miller agree that these transparency issues will be pivotal in the midterms, potentially swaying voter sentiment:

  [12:57] Tim Miller: "This is why the midterms will matter... these are among the things that will matter in the midterms."

  [13:08] Sam Stein: "But like, they have to appropriate it... it hasn't passed yet, but let's say it does, and then they continue to spend beyond their means."

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Conclusion

In this episode, Bulwark Takes brings to light significant concerns regarding the Department of Defense's transparency with Congress, especially concerning high-stakes contracts like the reconfiguration of Air Force One and substantial budgetary additions to defense-related acts. Hosts Tim Miller and Sam Stein urge for greater accountability and foresee these issues playing a critical role in the forthcoming midterm elections, underscoring the necessity for vigilant congressional oversight to prevent potential overreach and maintain democratic integrity.

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Notable Quotes:

• "[09:03] Tim Miller: 'They are doing everything in their power to consolidate power and control within the power ministries...'"

• "[07:51] Sam Stein: 'They want to make sure that they have budget to do various things and they don't give a fuck what the Senate thinks anymore.'"

• "[12:50] Sam Stein: 'They just don't care... they're doing it with the immigration enforcement.'"

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, promotional content, and non-substantive sections of the transcript to focus solely on the critical discussions and analyses presented during the episode.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

From the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. Want to talk about a couple different stories about how the administration, particularly the Department of Defense, is keeping some secrets from the folks in Congress on matters that are sensitive, that are potentially embarrassing, that are, who knows. And so you know, as we've been discussing, from the military parade towards to taking control of the National Guard, there are these little baby steps towards a more authoritarian centralized power and that gets particularly alarming when it has to do with the military. So Sam, I want to play a clip for you to kick this off from Pete Hegseth's testimony today over in the Senate. He's being questioned by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island. Let's watch that.

[Senator Jack Reed]

You have signed a contract with a company to reconfigure the aircraft. What is the price of that contract?

[Richard Karn]

That cannot be revealed in this setting.

[Senator Jack Reed]

Why can't it be revealed in this setting? This is the appropriation committee of the United States Senate. We appropriate the money that you will spend after it's authorized by my committee. And you cannot tell us how much the contract is for.

[Richard Karn]

You will have that number, Senator. It just can't be talked about.

[Senator Jack Reed]

You want it now. The contractors have been signed. Correct? The contract has been signed.

[Richard Karn]

The memorandum of understanding is not.

[Tim Miller]

No, no.

[Senator Jack Reed]

I'm talking about the contract with the American contractor. Has it been signed?

[Richard Karn]

It's nothing.

[Sam Stein]

Nothing on that front that I'm aware.

[Richard Karn]

Of is being executed.

[Senator Jack Reed]

Well, that's contrary to what we've all heard.

[Tim Miller]

Can't be revealed.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, that's a weird. Maybe. Maybe they're look, the most generous interpretation. I'll start there and then we'll get to what I think is real. Most generous interpretation is this is supposed to be a retrofitted Air Force One. We don't want to talk about what goes into putting an Air Force One together. The security steps that you have to take. Obviously it's the most sensitive aircraft that we own. I presume. And so you might want to cover this in a closed door hearing. That seems fine, but that's. He was just asking for a top line number and those are public. And what stood out to me. Look, Jack Reed has been doing this for a while. He's a senior Democrat on this committee. The lack of even remote desire to participate in some sort of congressional back and forth or even bipartisan exchange. These people act like they will be in power forever and that they are entitled to. They're in secrecy on every front as if the appropriators of Congress are immaterial to them. And maybe they are in this current iteration of Congress, but it's like at some point in time I assume power is going to change and this type of shit is going to come back.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. The tone is really noteworthy. Right. It's just so dismissive.

[Sam Stein]

Like why would I tell you this?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Right. And. And I definitely think that's noteworthy. So a slightly less generous interpretation, but I think equally possible before we get to kind of the ominous possible interpretation is just that it's really embarrassing. I mean just like the notion of this. Right. Like obviously you know, part of the rationale for this was that the budget got out of control from the other Air Force One Boeing and now, and now that they've actually looked, you know that they did this just because Trump wanted to. It's not like they did due diligence on this. Nobody thinks that they did. Right, right. Trump wants this plane. It's like, oh, whatever, okay, we'll figure it out. And now they've actually looked at it and figured out what they got to do and they're like, oh, you know what I mean? Like there's a little bit potentially that it's just as simple as that, that this is very embarrassing that we took this plane from, you know, the sand dictator over, in, over in the Middle east and now like it's gonna, and we got kind of, maybe the art of the deal wasn't quite there. Maybe, maybe we got hosed on this old plane by the.

[Sam Stein]

And there's also a lot of unanswered questions which are also brought up, also brought up in this hearing which is is this a done deal? Like who gave, who asked for the plane initially? Like that was pushed by Brian shots, I believe. It's like, sorry, it, it kind of matters. Like we asked for this plane. Do they offer up this plane? Like these things actually do matter and they were just totally non forthcoming about that. But I, I, I'm with you. I think ultimately they're looking at this. They have to strip it down, they have to reconstitute it. It's going to look like the dumbest waste of money and they're humiliated by that and they don't want it in public. And maybe they'll give us some, they'll, they'll give Congress some figure in private and it will leak out. But I'm sure they don't want to have Pete Hegseth on camera being like, yeah, actually it's going to be $800 billion.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. Which takes us to this next item. This was a story in Semaphore. It was an exclusive. The headline was Republican Senators. Republican Senators. That's pretty key. Mystified by 1 billion that has been added to the mega bill. I sort of read a little bit from this. One billion has been added to the BBB that lets the President mobilize certain industrial sectors during an Emergency. Republican sold. 704. They're not sure what this Defension Defense Production act money is for. The funding has become somewhat of a mystery among Banking Committee Republicans. Who said they won't tell us. Kevin Kramer In North Dakota. It's hard to be supportive of it if we don't know what it's for. It's uncomfortable for sure. A billion dollars is a billion dollars. And then kind of this goes on to suggest some other things that we could do. Production act stuff for maybe aluminum and coal, maybe some of the rare earth, something from.

[Sam Stein]

I have an idea. I have an idea for Kevin Kramer. This is radical. Strip it out. Strip it out. You have agency like, what the fuck, man? You know? Strip it out. No one's making you spend a billion dollars on shit you don't know about. Strip it out.

[Tim Miller]

That is a radical idea. Goes on. It's not just Kevin Kramer, by the way. Cynthia Loomis, she said she would have had a duck fit had she known about it earlier. I guess that's a Wyomingism, a Wyoming colloquialism I'm not familiar with. I don't understand. Why isn't she. This goes to your point about Kramer. Why isn't she having the duck fit now? It's not too late. It's not too late. Mike Rounds said he's asked the same question, hasn't been told. So I don't know. Again, there's a generous interpretation of all this. There's not, I think.

[Sam Stein]

What's the generous interpretation?

[Tim Miller]

Well, the generous interpretation in this case is that this is arcane, arcana being put into the bill and these guys can't just are too. Too lazy or stupid to figure it out, right? And then they dumped it in and they want a little billion, billion dollar slush fund for some random stuff that's not possible.

[Sam Stein]

That's generous.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's generous compared to my ungenerous description, which is that they are doing everything in their power to consolidate power and control within the power ministries and they want to make sure that they have budget to do various things and they don't give a fuck what the Senate thinks anymore. And they can take Sharia law theocrats planes and make it Air Force One. And they can send troops into California at $100 million and they can take a billion dol. Use it, you know, for whatever their ends are. I mean, like that gets you to a pretty bad place.

[Sam Stein]

Oh yeah. Well, I thought maybe the two stories might be connected. Right. The billion dollars is actually to retrofit the plane. But yeah, put it. Let's say that's not the case. Let's say they just want a slush fund. That's, you know, that's a lot of money for a slush fund. To do up that you want to do. But I do agree with you. I mean, there's plenty of evidence now that they're just trying to consolidate power. The other story that you kind of went under the radar was the fema. He wants to basically undone unwind FEMA and then place the spending authority under the presidential office. How about, who can imagine how bad that will go? It's just like I decide which states get disasterly funding. That should be great.

[Tim Miller]

So yeah, the concerns about living in Louisiana. Take that all you libs who made fun of me for moving to a red state. At least I'm going to get my FEMA money now. Tough cookies. No, I'm just joking.

[Sam Stein]

No, you're joking, but you're dead serious. The other thing I would say this is kind of a meta analysis here, but to me, like, these stories really kind of underscore what is colloquially known as the hack gap. And by that I mean had Joe Biden snuck a billion dollar slush fund into a spending bill that he didn't explain and that no senators possibly could have understood and were struggling to get an explanation for, the amount of coverage and criticism from Republican senators righteously would have been amazing. They would have been like, this is unreal. Yeah, this is funding who knows what. This is funding sex change operations for undocumented immigrants across the country. They would hurt a field day with it. But there's a hack gap here. Democrats don't take advantage of this shit.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, well, they absolutely should. You had Jason Crowe on earlier and he's doing pretty good out there, my Colorado boy. The other thing related to this is when you're just sort of tying this stuff together. DHS is also right now just spending more than has been appropriate. This is like another story that's out there that like we've covered. But you know, I mean, just in the, in the midst of everything, it's like Kristi Noem is just basically like, fuck you. Like, like I don't have the numbers in front of me, but you know, they've been appropriated X and DHS is spending like X plus, you know, Y, like more on top of it. I asked Jim Comey about this when I had him on a couple weeks ago. I was like, what is. Like, how does that work? You know, never been in an agency. Like, what happens if you're at the FBI and you're like, shit, we need more money than we appropriated for this threat. And Comey Street's like, you know, you have some leeway or you can move some Money from this pile to that pile for a little while. He's like, eventually you just run out of that and you got to go back to Congress and get it reappropriated. And he said, I did that many times. And DH and Gnome is just like, no, not doing that. So they're just spending now out of dhs and they just don't care. You know, they're doing it to send these. You know, they're doing it with the immigration enforcement. That's where most of this stuff is going to. And. And they're just basically saying to Congress, pound sand. And so, you know, I think all of that, it's an attitude, you know, just a dismissive attitude towards the democratic process is kind of the highfalutin way to put it. But it's. It's an inspiring way to just say, fuck you. We can. We can do what we want, but.

[Sam Stein]

At some point you need money. Right? Like. Or you can just act like it's going to appear magically.

[Tim Miller]

I think that as long as the Republic, this. Well, this is why the midterms will matter. Like, I think as long, you know, these are among the things that will matter in the midterms. Like, as long as the Republicans control Congress. Why would it. Why would she.

[Sam Stein]

They have to appropriate it. I mean, now I know there's a huge up in border money and nice money in this big, beautiful bill, but I mean, it hasn't passed yet, but let's say it does, and then they continue to spend beyond their means, and.

[Tim Miller]

They'Re going to stop them from spending the money.

[Sam Stein]

I agree, but, like, where do they get the money to spend? Maybe I'm. Maybe I'm not making sense. But, like, you can't just be like, ooh, magical money here, or at the.

[Tim Miller]

Beginning of the fiscal year and you're. You're spending money that you had for later in the year. Right. Like, that's. Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

But at some point you run out.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

So where do you borrow from?

[Tim Miller]

I guess the idea is that the Hill's going to fund them eventually.

[Sam Stein]

Okay. Anyway, it's all made up. Bullshit. Whatever.

[Tim Miller]

You mean the monetary system.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, it's all built on trust.

[Tim Miller]

You know, the monetary system is kind of fake. It reminds me of when one of my crypto friends, at the very beginning, I was trying to understand it, and I was like, I'm coming over to your house. I want you to take out a whiteboard and treat me like a child. And I want you to just do like, the blockchain is this. I want to start from square one and we trust. I sat in their kitchen. Yeah. For three hours and we went over everything. I asked a lot of questions. At the end they're like, do you understand the crypto? Do you get it now? And I was like, you've not at all made any progress in making me believe that crypto is real. But what you have done is weakened my resolve in the fact that our current the fiat monetary system is real.

[Sam Stein]

Oh my God. You became a gold standard guy. Basically.

[Tim Miller]

Anyhow, Samstein, if I ever want to spend any of the Bulwarks money, I'm going to make sure you approve it. All right? I'm not going to do it.

[Sam Stein]

Thank you. That's important. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Tim Miller]

All right. J.D.

[Sam Stein]

Will appreciate that too.

[Tim Miller]

We'll see everybody soon. Guide to the feed. Peace.

[Sam Stein]

Bye.