The panel on Friday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast discusses President Trump hosting a Congo–Rwanda peace accord signing yesterday at the U.S. Institute of Peace (now rebranded as the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace”). Three cheers for peace or another useless think tank? “Just to remind people, the Peace Institute was an early victim of DOGE. It’s been called a ‘$ 50 million-per-year waste of taxpayer funds’ by the White House, but now it is apparently back,” Andrew Walworth explained. “Is the Peace Institute back? All it needed was a new name?” “They should all be defunded, in my opinion. Washington has grown so big. We see these stories of fraud and waste. One thing that’s universally true about bureaucracies: They grow, they hardly ever shrink, and they’re magnets for fraud,” Tom Bevan added. “Congress was going to start this thing in the mid-’80s, and Ronald Reagan decided to name to the Peace Institute as many neoconservatives as he possibly could. It was a hotbed for the most pro-interventionist, pro-war crowd, if you want to look at it that way,” Walworth commented. “It became-maybe not a total waste of money-but certainly captured by the Washington establishment. When DOGE came along, I hadn’t heard about the Peace Institute for years. They were just, honestly, quietly spending.” “I’ll give you a perspective. The Somalis in Minnesota were stealing that much from Medicaid every month for years,” Carl Cannon said. “You could work for years cutting out government waste before you get to the Peace Institute.” Walworth said to pay attention to the new Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace: “Is it going to be filled with Trump acolytes who need jobs? That would be something to keep an eye on, because that is the story of Washington in a nutshell.”
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