The Young Turks co-host Ana Kasparian made a complete fool of herself when she let one of her anti-Israel brain drain episodes affect her so much she tried to convince the world America spends more on Israel than Social Security. Kasparian went on a tear against Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro during the September 2 edition of CNN NewsNight for correctly suggesting that America’s massively inefficient approach to Social Security would bankrupt the country.
Kasparian, clearly triggered, was livid that Shapiro didn’t focus on what she considered to be the real culprit behind America’s debt bomb. “I totally reject what you just said about how we’re going bankrupt because of Social Security? Really? You don’t think the trillions of dollars that we spent on wars in the Middle East might have something to do with that?” She proceeded down the logical toilet, crying over how “we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Israel — on Ukraine.”
Seriously, a simple Google search would have cleared this right up.
The Brown University Watson School for International Affairs estimated that the United States appropriated and is obligated to spend $8 trillion for the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East from 2001 to 2022. For the same period, government data suggests Social Security roughly cost the U.S. government around $17 trillion, not even counting Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.
CNN commentator Scott Jennings honed in on the Israel point Kasparian brought up as a matter of basic mathematics. “You think Israel is a bigger portion of our budget than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” Jennings asked with a smirk. Kasparian didn’t directly answer the question, and deflected: “You think Social Security is more of an issue compared to how much we just shell out for conflicts abroad?” Bewildered by her answer, Jennings clapped back: “As a matter of expenditures and math, yes!”
Kasparian’s rant gave new meaning to the phrase the math isn’t mathing. Social Security in 2024 cost $1.461 trillion. From the October 7, 2023, Hamas genocide on Israelis through September 2024 by comparison, the U.S. only spent just over $22 billion on Israel’s military operations and related U.S. operations in the region. Per year, Israel receives just $3.3 billion in foreign aid, which the Jewish State “must” pay back to the US by purchasing “U.S. military equipment and services,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In summary: It’s not even close. But the lefties on The Young Turks brigade are not exactly known for sending their best and brightest anyway.