Spend and Cut: President Trump wants to increase military spending by a whopping $54 billion —10 percent — while cutting across most of the rest of the budget to compensate for it, the White House announced yesterday.

The US military budget is already bigger than the combined military budgets of the next seven countries, including China, Britain, and Russia.

Trump is expected to explain it in a speech to a joint session of Congress tonight. While promising to preserve Medicare and Social Security as they are, Trump said his budget would send a “message to the world in these dangerous times of American strength, security and resolve.”

Trump wants to add tens of thousands of troops and increase the size of the navy fleet to 300 to meet threats from Russia and China.

  “We have to start winning wars again,” Trump said. “When I was young, in high school and college, people used to say we never lost a war,” the president told a gathering of US governors. “We need to win or don’t fight it all. It’s a mess like you have never seen before.”

The Russia House: In a Republican effort to dampen reports about Trump campaign contacts with Russian intelligence, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters in a hallway press conference that so far there’s no evidence of it.

“As of right now, I don’t have any evidence of any phone calls. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist. . . . What I’ve been told by many folks is that there’s nothing there,” Nunes said.

Who Knew?: In a meeting with the nation’s governors, Trump promised yesterday to replace Obamacare with something “fantastic.” He said, “We have come up with a solution that’s really, really I think very good.” He cautioned,

“Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Well, anyway, he didn’t know.

Gold Star: The father of a Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen refused to meet with President Trump. “I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him, “William Owens, father of Ryan Owens, said of the president in an interview with The Miami Herald. William Owens, said he wants a full investigation of the messy operation.

“Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why?” Owens asked. For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”

Hate Rising: Twenty-nine bomb threats were phoned in to Jewish centers across 11 states yesterday in a growing wave of anti-Semitic incidents. The caller’s voice often was electronically disguised.

Over the weekend at least 100 grave stones were toppled in a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, less than a week after a similar incident in Philadelphia.

Carry-on Extra: The SpaceX corporation announced plans to send two space tourists around the moon next year. In a self-inflated statement, the company said, “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.” Oh, please. They’ll be paying their own way, the price, so far, unannounced.

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