Yes. I don’t believe much of anything he says, but “dictator on day one” was very obviously his real plan.

Those costs became salaries and paid engineers and skilled tradespeople, lawyers and financiers, auditors and test pilots, illustrators and modelors, janitors and security guards, truck drivers and inventory specialists, logisticians and mathmericians, scientists and metallurgists, flight doctors and software developers… and on, and on, and on - it may be one of the single biggest job creating programs in the USA in a Generation. That money also got routed into mutual funds and 401k’s and into the communities where all those people live and work. While there are certainly more noble and more effective uses for money, the F35 program has provided a living for a great many people.