‘He can’t control China. China’s our enemy,’ Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said.
WASHINGTON—In a Feb. 25 press conference, Republicans with the House DOGE Caucus spoke about their alignment with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a time-limited organization created via executive order to address waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
But some sounded skeptical of one massive possible spending cut that Trump has also floated—namely, working to halve the defense budget if Russia and China agree to the same.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times that Trump “can only control America.”
“Putin’s a thug,” Norman said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He can’t control China. China’s our enemy,” Norman added.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the co-chair of the DOGE Caucus, told The Epoch Times that the talk from Trump amounted to “a negotiation.”
“Do I think it’s worthy? Yes, I do. Am I willing to listen? Yes, I am. But it needs to be with a by-and-large understanding about what the world’s going to look like. I am not at all for us leaving ourselves unprepared in the future,” Sessions said.
“I’m going to say there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on the military,” he said, adding that he hoped to move towards denuclearization alongside those two great powers on the world stage.
“I want to say, ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to,” Trump said of prospective meetings he would like to have with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Shares of the defense companies Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and General Dynamics dropped after that executive-level talk.
The Department of Defense, led by Pete Hegseth, is already making moves geared toward efficiency, though nothing on the scale of halving spending.
Additionally, on Feb. 19, the Pentagon announced plans to redirect 8 percent of planned defense spending, or $50 billion, to the president’s goals.
In a statement on the move, Darin Selnick, who is acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said that the department was acting on the new president’s intentions.
“Including securing our borders, building the Iron Dome for America, and ending radical and wasteful government DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] programs and preferencing.”
As the Republicans spoke at the DOGE Caucus press conference, activists with Code Pink protested nearby. They held signs calling on lawmakers to cut the Pentagon’s budget. The group describes itself as “a feminist grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives.”
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, told The Epoch Times that Trump’s plan to redirect 8 percent of Pentagon funding was “a scam,” aimed at, among other things, “focusing on China as our adversary.”
The activist was more supportive of the sweeping defense cuts with Russia and China and denuclearization that the president mentioned earlier in the month.
“We think all of those things are great,” she said. “The problem is, there’s this huge military-industrial-security complex, and they’re not going to want him to do that. So that’s why we’re here.”
