Jesse Watters took Abdul El-Sayed to school on federal spending this week, and he did it with a “buddy” that hit harder than most people’s entire arguments. El-Sayed has been telling voters the country is broke because of foreign wars, which sounds great at a rally but falls apart the second anyone looks at an actual budget.
Watters did exactly that. On October 5, he posted a breakdown on X pointing out that only 13% of federal spending goes to the Pentagon. The real budget busters, as Watters put it, are entitlements, healthcare, and servicing the national debt. None of those are foreign wars. Math is funny that way.
Watters put it plainly: “I know you didn’t look it up, buddy… SO I DID.” He then noted that El-Sayed’s big solution to all this is $6 trillion a year in more entitlements, the exact category already doing the most damage. Jesse Watters federal spending fact-check Watters capped it off with “MATH IS HARD,” which, honestly, is being generous.
Readers piled on after that. One user on X pointed out that federal spending on social welfare programs went from 8% of the budget in 1950 all the way to 61% in 2025, while national defense dropped from 54% down to 20% over the same period. So the trend is pretty clear, and it’s not pointing at the Pentagon.
Another commenter noted that providing for the common defense is about the only thing the Constitution actually authorizes the federal government to do, which is a fun detail Democrats tend to find inconvenient. Defending the country? Debatable, apparently. Promising more free stuff? Non-negotiable.
El-Sayed’s war-spending talking point is the political equivalent of blaming your electric bill on the nightlight. The numbers don’t lie, even when the candidate really, really wants them to. If you want to weigh in on where you think the real budget problems are, drop a comment below or sound off on social media, because clearly some people need the help.
