While President Donald Trump told hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals yesterday that the military should use U.S. cities as “training grounds” for soldiers, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, presented his fictitious Department of Pentagon Excess (DOPE) — a play on Elon Musk‘s DOGE — at a press conference near the U.S. Capitol building.
As reported by ABC News reporter Beatrice Peterson, who shared the videos below, Cohen took a chainsaw to a model of the Pentagon and when the blade cut through the model, paper money flew out.
.@BenCohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, launched the Department of Pentagon Excess, or D.O.P.E.
To make his point, he hoisted an electric chainsaw on the steps of the Capitol and carved into a mock Pentagon as $1,882 bills spilled to the ground.
A thread
pic.twitter.com/HWump6JiT9 — Beatrice Peterson (@MissBeaE on all platforms) (@MissBeaE) September 30, 2025
Each bill was marked as being worth $1882, the amount Cohen says could be returned to every U.S. taxpayer if the government were to cut 30 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.
(NOTE: The United States spent $997 billion on defense in 2024, which is “more than the next nine countries’ spending combined,” according data sourced from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s military expenditure database, which notes that China, the second biggest defense spender, “spent $314 billion on military expenditures in 2024.”)
The bills were not Monopoly money. Each one carried a weary image of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the seal of the “Department of Forever Wars,” printed by the “National Bank of D.O.P.E.”@YoBenCohen said they symbolized Pentagon waste that could go back to taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/hGb0hzmzEt
— Beatrice Peterson (@MissBeaE on all platforms) (@MissBeaE) September 30, 2025
At the event, Cohen was joined by Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush‘s Secretary of State — and former Joint Chiefs Chairman — Colin Powell. Wilkerson said: “Defense spending is important, but you’re not getting any national security right now. What you get is drones in Somalia, extrajudicial killings on the high seas, war crimes par excellence.”
Retired Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Sec. Colin Powell: “Defense spending is important, but you’re not getting any national security right now. What you get is drones in Somalia, extrajudicial killings on the high seas, war crimes par excellence.” pic.twitter.com/wtTmPfIR6V
— Beatrice Peterson (@MissBeaE on all platforms) (@MissBeaE) September 30, 2025
Wilkerson, a lifelong Republican, warned in 2020 that “military spending has become an ideological article of faith on the political right —and it is ruining America,” and that the Republican party must change.
He also noted reports from the Congressional Budget Office and said: “By 2030, we’ll have no federal dollars for anything other than the military and entitlements. That’s a very foreboding future, fiscally.”
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, also attended and spoke at Cohen’s DOPE press conference.
CODEPINK is the group that orchestrated the disruption of Trump’s dinner in Washington D.C. earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Ben Cohen from “Ben & Jerry’s” & Medea break it down: The Pentagon is bloated with 800 bases, endless generals, and F-35s that take 40 hours of maintenance for every 1 hour in the air. They call it a “jobs program,” but those jobs come at the cost of endless wars and $23M CEO… pic.twitter.com/sJsZ1yWGZG
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) September 30, 2025