The tea party was astroturfed and was their construct from day one, they didn’t coopt it.

I don’t know what he considers waste, but there’s a ton of obvious waste, such as military suppliers

That’s likely an accounting quirk you linked: if they list 9 screws and a tank for $1M but don’t specify individual prices, in some situations they just approximate it by assuming they cost the average - so they assume the tank costs $100k and each screw costs $100k each.