Defense Contractors Are Making More Money Than Ever Before

There’s been a ton of coverage of US domestic policy recently, and what the US is doing overseas is being largely ignored. But let’s not forget that we’re still actively bombing around the globe and defense contractors are making a killing. Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.

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There's been a ton of coverage US domestic policy recently. And what the US is doing overseas, is being largely ignored. But let's not forget, we're still actively bombing around the globe, and defense contractors are making more money than they have made in generations. So, this story that's developing right now, as I'm looking at this story, I'm thinking about how sometimes you watch MSNBC, we've talked about this, you'll watch CNN, you'll watch one of the other shows, and you'll see a Boeing missile advertisement, and we've talked about this before. I think this really makes an important point. You'll see a Boeing missile advertised on MSNBC. Now, you have to ask yourself, and I gonna go buy a Boeing missile? No, of course not. But it's on MSNBC because Phil Griffin, who runs MSNBC, likes the advertising dollars, and he's willing to chum up a war at the drop of a hat. One war they've been chumming up, I really do believe, you can argue with me, I know you don't totally buy into what I'm selling you, I think there's a direct connection here, this dissent between Russia and the US.

It started off as a political ... you had Hillary lose and Podesta was shown to be the idiot that we've always said Podesta is. And the next thing that happens is the arms industry gets involved in the discussion and says, "Yeah, they're pretty bad. We maybe need another Cold War." And then you have Democrats out there that buy into it like lemmings, "Russia's bad. Russia's bad. They hacked our election." That's not where the weapons industry really cared. They didn't care about hacking elections. The weapons industry wanted to sell more weapons. And if you have a good old-fashioned Cold War, baby, you see a lot of weapons. What's your take on this increase in international killing by the weapons industry?

17 years straight now, we've been bombing all around the world, ever since the first year of the Bush administration, basically, bombing everywhere. This is not a Democrat thing, this is not a Republican thing. This is the way the United States is-type thing. We are spending, what is this, just in 2017, $750 billion to the Pentagon, which then handed $350 billion of that-

To the weapons industry.

To the weapons industry. You're talking GE, Raytheon, Boeing, all the usual suspect, because they need wars. And yeah, they would love a way in Russia, which would be one of the dumbest things we could ever, ever do.

China or Russia, the would love a war in either place.

Right. But, since they can't get that, thank God, they're more than happy to just keep bombing the Middle East, because as a whole, the US doesn't necessarily care about that. They can't point to where Yemen is on a map. They don't know, as Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, they don't know what Aleppo is. So, sure.

They think it's a dog food.

If we just bomb somebody or we're launching these airstrikes, it obviously means it's because there was a bad guy over there and we probably got him. That's all they know. They don't understand war is an industry. War, fighting, death, those are profits for these companies that, as you point out, you do see-

War is one of the biggest industries in the country, in America. It has been for a long time.

Right. Always.

So, if you figure you give $750 billion to the Pentagon ... by the way, during a time when the Pentagon said, "I don't think we really need that much money." Do you remember that? "We don't really need that much money. Keep your money." Well, the weapons industry came in and said, "No, give us $350 billion, and by golly, a good old-fashioned Cold War with Russia would be just perfect."