Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Until recently, Pete Hegseth was best known for throwing axes at West Point cadets, appearing on Fox News, and drinking a bunch. Since then, he’s risen up the ranks and is currently the Secretary of the United States Department of Defense at the Pentagon, which he’s since christened the “Department of War.”
Since assuming the position there, he’s remained very humble and out of the spotlight, hoping to keep a low profile while reining in spending. Oh wait, no, actually in September of last year, with the 2025 fiscal year coming to a close, he spent $93 billion on food, iPads, and for some reason, a piano.
Your tax dollars went to DC via the sea. (Michele Dorsey Walfred/Creative Commons)
First of all, yes, that’s a “B” in the preceding paragraph, not a measly $93 million of our tax dollars. There’s a reason for this based on some degree of reality, in that if there’s a surplus of funds at the end of a fiscal year, it brings up questions as to why it wasn’t spent, and could result in less funding for subsequent years. There’s also a widely held belief that if steak and lobster show up at military dining facilities instead of, say, rice and beans or chicken fingers, then that means you might as well enjoy it, because you’re about to go to war.
However, suggestions of potential wars (which have since become reality) and bureaucratic precedents aside, Hegseth really seems to have gone a little overboard with this. How overboard? How does $6.9 million worth of lobster tail and $2 million of Alaskan king crab in September alone grab you? Seems like the Pentagon was on the seafood diet – they see food and order millions of dollars’ worth of it. It wasn’t just seafood, though, how about $15 million on ribeye steaks?
The world's most expensive mess hall. (David B. Gleason/Creative Commons.)
If you’re going straight up surf and turf, you may not have room for dessert. But they still ordered about $140,000 across 272 donut orders, at about $511/order. Dunkin and Krispy Kreme are probably pretty psyched, but since the US and Canada aren’t on the best of terms right now, Tim Hortons is probably less so. They also spent over $140,000 on ice cream machines.
It wasn’t just food that the Pentagon threw down on, however – they also spent $225 million on furniture. This seems like a lot until you realize that some of the Herman Miller Aeron chairs they ordered cost $1,800 each. Actually, that still seems like a lot. Haven’t they heard of Facebook Marketplace? There was also $5.3 million spent on Apple devices, which may have made Tim Cook’s dumb gift to Trump the previous month pay off.
And while music may soothe the savage beast, it may have actually helped beat the drums of war. How else to justify $98k on a Steinway grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $26,000 on a violin, and $21,750 for a custom-made flute? Fife and drums, it ain’t. At least their spending spree stimulated the American economy, which is somewhat of a silver lining, eh? Not so fast, as $6.6 billion of that was spent on foreign businesses, breaking the previous record. In fact, perhaps the only way we can see this from a glass-half-full perspective is that since we’re at war now, the Pentagon will probably spend less money on lobster and donuts this year. Probably.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
