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@BretBaier - Bret Baier
My full interview with @elonmusk #SpecialReport @FoxNews https://t.co/VKBPz6igjg
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speaker believes government moves with lightning speed relative to its usual pace, but slower than desired. Reconciling government databases to eliminate waste and fraud is a priority, though a painful process. The Pentagon hasn't passed an audit in years, with trillions of dollars unaccounted for.
The speaker says Tesla is a peaceful company being targeted by violence fueled by far-left propaganda, and those pushing the propaganda will be held accountable. He believes the lies being spread almost got the president killed. He considers the president a good and honest man.
He defends calling a senator a traitor for prioritizing another country's interests over the US. He advocates for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, criticizing those who virtue signal without offering solutions to stop the daily deaths.
The administration aims to enshrine changes into law, like improvements to the treasury financial system. The speaker emphasizes the importance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race to prevent gerrymandering and protect government reforms. He worries about the low birth rate and the strength of America as the central column of Western civilization. He denies any conflict of interest between his government role and his companies, stating his actions face extreme scrutiny and his companies are suffering because of his position. He believes in a great future if America remains the land of freedom and opportunity.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: We asked on axe, your platform,
Speaker 1: for some questions. And
Speaker 0: here is c Sperling.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: He writes, are they happy with the speed at which they're making changes? Are there any changes they would like to make but haven't yet? Well,
Speaker 1: I I think in the context of the government, we're moving like lightning. In the context of what I'm used to moving, it's slower than I'd like. So what what seems like incredibly fast action by government standards is it's slower than I'd like to be totally frank. But we are making solid progress. A very sort of thorny problem, a tough problem.
Really, it's kinda like painful homework, frankly, is reconciling all of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud. These databases don't talk to each other, and that's really, the source of of, that that's the biggest vulnerability for fraud is the is the the fact that these databases don't talk to each other. So we need to reconcile databases. It's a frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.
Speaker 0: We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at the Pentagon. You're in there.
Speaker 1: You know, the Pentagon has not passed an audit in a very long time. I mean, as crazy as it sounds, will lose $2,030,000,000,000 dollars a year, and they don't know where they literally don't know where it went. I mean, senator Collins was telling me about how she gave the navy twelve billion dollars for extra submarines, got zero extra submarines. And then when she held a hearing, said where'd the $12,000,000,000 go? They didn't know.
Speaker 0: Talking to those guys, and you have a a great team from all over the country. You don't have to be here. You don't have to be here. You know, there's now been these many cases of violence and vandalism at Tesla dealerships. How does that affect your employees, your customers?
What does it mean to you? Like, how have you taken that in?
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think a great wrong is being done to the people of Tesla and to our customers. Tesla is a peaceful peaceful company that has made great cars, great products. That's what it's done. It hasn't harmed anyone, and yet people are committing violence. They're firebombing Tesla dealerships.
They're shooting guns into stores. They're threatening people. They're, you know, they're issuing death threats against me and and another Tesla personnel. What are they doing this for? Why?
And and the what's happening, it seems to me, is they're being fed propaganda by the far left, and they believe it. It's really unfortunate. The but the the the real the real problem is not not the people it's it's not like the the the, you know, the the crazy guy that that firebombs a Tesla dealership. It's the people pushing the propaganda that that that caused that guy to do it. Those those are the real villains here, and we're gonna go after them.
And the president's made it clear, we're gonna go after them. The ones providing the money, the ones pushing the lies and propaganda, we're going after them.
Speaker 0: And it's been this evolution. I mean, the last administration was going to mandate electric vehicles, and now you see on the far left, some efforts to go after electric vehicles. It's quite something.
Speaker 1: It is ironic. I mean, it seems like the most ironic outcome is the most likely. But
Speaker 0: yeah. I mean Personally, it's gotta take a toll. It does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It does. I think there's some real evil out there, and we have to overcome it.
Speaker 0: I mean, you have been called a Nazi, a white supremacist, a fascist.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got this sort of the a name of you. Yeah. I mean, they've they've still got it. They haven't I guess, they still need to call me Stalin, Mussolini, you know, whatever, Gengist Khan or or whatever. I mean, they've called the president all these things.
I think at one point, there was a magazine cover which which said the president was worse than that president Trump was worse than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. The president hasn't killed anyone. He hasn't started any wars. In fact, he's he's he's good at stopping wars. So this is obviously they're pushing the these lies.
And why do they push these lies? And and I think that we need to hold people responsible for pushing these lies because those lies almost got the president killed.
Speaker 0: What's something that people wouldn't know about the president? You're pretty close to him now. You spent a lot of time with him. What's something that people wouldn't know?
Speaker 1: I think the president is a good man. I I think he is an honest man, and and I I've yet to see him do anything mean or anything that is wrong, that I would say morally wrong, not even once.
Speaker 0: You know, a lot is coming your way, but sometimes you say stuff or post stuff that gets attention. You give it out. In other words, Democratic Arizona senator Mark Kelly posted on x about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send US weapons and support there, and you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?
Speaker 1: Well, I think, somebody should be should care about the interests of The United States above the interests of another country. If they don't, they're a traitor.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But he's a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting US senator.
Speaker 1: It's that doesn't mean, he's it's okay for him to put the interests of another country above America.
Speaker 0: Obviously, there are some Republicans who think supporting Ukraine is the right thing still, but there is a battle back and forth about how that how do you think it comes to an end?
Speaker 1: Well, I think there will be a negotiated peace. And the thing that we should be concerned about is we should have empathy for the thousands of people that are dying every day in trenches for no movement in the in the lines. So the the borders remain the same for the past two years. Thousands of people have died every every week for nothing. For what?
And I I I take great great offense at those who those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say, oh, we can't give in to Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of of kids dying every day. They just want that to continue forever. Have contempt for such people. I don't wanna make that clear.
Yeah. So you're optimistic. Because they're virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don't have a father. It means that parents lost a son. For what?
Speaker 0: Nothing. So you're optimistic that the president's plan might work?
Speaker 1: The the president's plan is the only thing that will work.
Speaker 0: Keith on x says executive actions can be undone with the next president. What is the team doing to ensure the government waste and over regulation is permanently reduced? I assume you're working with congress. That's part of it. But
Speaker 1: Yeah. We we certainly would like a lot of what we're doing to be permanently enshrined in law. But a lot of the changes we're making are are very basic things that I think are likely to remain in place, such as the improvements to the treasury financial system to have better a better understanding of of how and why payments were made. So the fact that payments now must have a payment code that corresponds to a congressional appropriation and must have an explanation for the payment and someone to call to ask about the payment. So we made those changes to to the system.
They weren't there before. I think those changes will remain. And that so all these changes that we're we're doing like like the one I just mentioned will enable the government to actually pass an audit. It's at such a basic level that you have to you have to stand back and and and recalibrate just how bad things can be because you think it can't possibly be that bad, but and and it is. It'll it'll blow your it basically would blow your mind.
There's no way that any commercial company could possibly survive if if it operated like the federal government.
Speaker 0: You're still involved in politics. You were big in the election, obviously, in Pennsylvania. Now, I guess you're in the Wisconsin supreme court race. Why why plug in?
Speaker 1: Well, the the Democrats are trying to redraw the districts in Wisconsin, and the the we're trying to stop the the Democrats from gerrymandering Wisconsin to remove two house seats. That's what this whole supreme court justice case is about. So I really wanna emphasize people out there. If you're in Wisconsin, go out and vote. You can do early voting for the supreme court.
If you have friends and family in Wisconsin, please urge them to vote for Brad Schimmel. If if we don't, we could lose control of the house, and and all of the government reforms could be shut down.
Speaker 0: Finally, what's the biggest thing for you that keeps you up at night?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of things that I suppose that I worry about, but and and some of these things will seem esoteric to people. You know, the birth rate is very low in in almost every country. And some unless that changes, civilization will disappear. America had the lowest birth rate, I believe, ever. That was last year.
Places like Korea, the birth rate is one third replacement rate. That means in three generations, Korea will be three or 4% of its current size. And nothing seems to be turning that around. Humanity is dying. And people it's it's just not something we evolved to react to.
And I I mean, I worry generally about the the strength of America. You know, America is the central column that holds up holds up all of western civilization. So if you like, we've we've we've got the the temple of western civilization, America is the central column. If that column fails, it's all over. You can't run off to New Zealand or some other place.
It's it's over. So either we strengthen that column and make sure America is is strong and will be strong for a long time or or or that roof's coming down.
Speaker 0: You know, I think we got into detail today about what you all are doing and maybe demystify some of that. For the people who look at you and your business sense about SpaceX or Starlink, can you tell them specifically there's not a conflict of interest in how you're doing or what you're doing and the contracts that you're getting with the government?
Speaker 1: Everything I do is under extreme scrutiny. Every day? Yeah. So there's not an action I can take that that doesn't get ex like, scrutiny six ways to Sunday. You know, every action that the Doge team does is is publicly put on the website.
It's the most amount of transparency there's been about any government thing ever. So it would be even if I wanted to, I couldn't get couldn't get away with it. In fact, it would be it's actually disadvantageous for me to be in the government, not advantageous. Yeah. If I wasn't in the government, I could lobby, and I I I could I could I could push for for for for things that that are advantageous to my to my companies and probably get it, probably receive them.
I my companies are suffering because I'm in the government. You just pointed that out a moment ago. Right. Do think it helps sales if if, you know, dealerships are being a firebond? Of course not.
And and and Tesla customers are being intimidated all over all over the country and all over Europe. Mhmm. Does that help Tesla? I mean, you had Tim Waltz. He's a huge jerk.
Right. You know, running around on stage with with the Tesla stock price having where the stock price had gone in half, and he was overjoyed. What what an evil thing to do. What a creep. What a jerk.
Like, who who derives joy from from that? And it was pointed out to him that actually, you know, Minnesota State Pension Fund is a major investor in Tesla. But he didn't care. He was so overjoyed by Tesla stock going off. Does that sound like a good person to you?
I don't think so.
Speaker 0: You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have Internet, then we didn't have cell phones, then we got them, then we got the Apple phone, and all the technology that I've just seen in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: The fact that we are where we are. If you're talking to an audience, where are we in five years? Where are we in ten years?
Speaker 1: I do think there's the potential for a great future. So long as America remains the land of freedom and opportunity. So what is so freedom means that the government does not infringe upon your personal liberties, that that you you can do what you want as long as it doesn't harm another person. Land of opportunity means that you succeed on on the basis of your merits on on how hard you work and how good you are at your job. Those fundamental principles will ensure a great future, and that's what president Trump is committed to doing.
That's what the Doge team is committed to doing. And if we succeed, I think we'll have a wonderful future.
Speaker 0: Well, Elon, we really appreciate the time. And I think we dispelled some some rumors and got into some very specifics that people wanted to hear. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're welcome.
@BretBaier - Bret Baier
My interview with the @elonmusk and the @DOGE team tonight on #SpecialReport https://t.co/KKpxEPtu1Z
Video Transcript AI Summary
Doge aims to cut the deficit by $1 trillion by reducing waste and fraud, targeting a 15% reduction in federal spending. Astonishingly, billions are wasted routinely, like a billion-dollar charge for a simple online survey. The goal is to cut $4 billion daily, with success dependent on President Trump's support.
Doge publishes findings on doge.gov for transparency. Congress is kept informed, emphasizing that eliminating waste aligns with the law. A mine in Pennsylvania houses 400 million paper retirement documents, a process from the 1950s, which Doge plans to digitize for faster processing.
Government IT costs $100 billion, maintaining systems over 50 years old. Social Security faces fraud, with 40% of direct deposit change calls being fraudulent. Doge aims to ensure legitimate recipients receive more benefits. There are 15-20 million potentially fraudulent Social Security numbers.
NIH has 27 centers with 700 IT systems that don't connect, and 27 CIOs. Treasury uses one bank account for all federal payments, lacking proper financial controls, leading to $500 billion in annual fraud. There are 4.6 million government credit cards for 2.3 million employees. Small business loans have been given to those under 11 and over 120 years old. Fraudsters exploit system gaps, like claiming benefits for dead people.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Disparate.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having us and doing this. I know there's a lot of interest in this. You know, first, let me start with you, Elon. What are the what are the budgetary savings goals, and and how much do you think you've achieved so far?
Speaker 2: Our our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. So, from a nominal deficit of 2,000,000,000,000 to try to cut the deficit in half to 1,000,000,000,000, or looked at it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from 7,000,000,000,000 to 6,000,000,000,000. We wanna reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud, reduce the spending by fifth 15%, which seems really quite achievable. The government is not not efficient, and there's a lot of lot of waste and fraud. So, we feel confident that a 15% reduction can can be done without affecting any of of the critical government services.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk to all the guys
Speaker 2: making it better.
Speaker 1: And talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you found out in this process?
Speaker 2: The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more casually. You know, for example, like the simple the simple survey that was literally 10 question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey cost about $10,000 was the government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that.
For just the survey? A billion dollars for for a simple online survey. Do you like the national park? And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the survey would just go to nothing.
Speaker 1: It was like a time. You technically are a special government employee, and you're supposed to be a hundred and thirty days. Are you going to continue past that, or do you think that's the what you're gonna do? Or Well, I I
Speaker 2: think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.
Speaker 1: So in that time frame, a hundred and days. And and the process is a report at some point, a hundred
Speaker 2: days or Not really a report. We we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes, our goal is to reduce the the waste and fraud by $4,000,000,000 a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk of the specifics, but there there obviously are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff. Obviously, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are attacking you. And he they characterize the approach as this, fire, ready, and then aim. And how do you approach that? How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2: Well, I I do agree that we actually wanna be careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. And, actually, that is that is our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that, which is not to say that we make we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying you someone in baseball's gonna bat a thousand.
That's impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly, and we we move on.
Speaker 1: Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist. Used to be. Yeah. Know.
And now, essentially, you're the chief operating officer of Doge, day to day operations. Fair to say?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Part part of the Doge team.
Speaker 1: What so how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge you see?
Speaker 3: The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the tax payers in the country would agree that in order to have the the country going bankrupt would be a very bad thing, and therefore, the country going not bankrupt is a good thing, that all of us are willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to do. I think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that's supportive, and a great cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring mission and given the, nonzero chance of success, it it was worth down.
Speaker 2: I just just like to sort of re upsize that point. The success of those is only possible with president Trump and with the outstanding cabinet that he selected. It would be impossible without the support of the president and the cabinet.
Speaker 1: But you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers. Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like Elon said, the minimum impulse bid is often a billion dollars. So for example, the $830,000,000, which was the online survey, that's an enormous amount of money. That wouldn't have been found if the Doge team wasn't working with it, in that case, the Department of Interior. But then taking it one step further, Doge then publish publishes these things on our website for maximum transparency.
So now the general public it would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. Now anyone can just log in to doge.gov anytime and see these payments as they're not yet in real time. They're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: But the process still involves congress. Right? At some level?
Speaker 2: We're trying to keep congress as informed as possible, but it it the law does say that money needs to be spent correctly. It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully. It's not contrary to congress to avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law and consistent with congress, and we've seen actually great support at least from the Republican side of the of the house and occasionally some Democrats too. You know, it's nice to see people cross the aisle once in a while.
But usually, when they attack Doge, they never attack any of the specifics. So they'll they'll say what we're doing is somehow unconstitutional or legal or whatever. We're like, well, which line of the cost savings do you disagree with? And they can't point to any. And we list them all on on doge.gov and and the doge handle on x.
And you'll see just outrageous things, one outrageous thing after another.
Speaker 1: Joe Gabbian, besides Elon, you're one of several billionaires here, cofounder of Airbnb, and you wanted to help out.
Speaker 4: I bumped into Anthony Dewan probably back in February, and they told me something about a a mine that was dealt with retirement. And they said that he needs somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. I I love the challenge, I jumped on board. And it turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. Now picture this.
This this giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400,000,000 pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the nineteen fifties and largely hasn't changed in the last seventy years. And so as he dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. So the process takes many months, and we're gonna make it just many days.
Speaker 1: Will it be digitized or how
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: So this will be an
Speaker 4: online digital process that will take just a few days at most. And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. So we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience, beautifully designed, great, easier experience, modern systems.
Speaker 1: Because right now, it's by hand.
Speaker 2: Yes. The the the retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into this gigantic mine.
Speaker 1: So they can't retire more than a certain number every month?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 5: About about 8,000 a month.
Speaker 2: That that that's how we the reason we discovered it was we were saying like, well, let's encourage voluntary retire retirement. That's the most you could be that could they could do is 8,000 a month. And and even don't know what circumstances it can take six to nine months just to just to have your time and paperwork processed, and they often get the calculations wrong. So like, well, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, well, because of the mind.
You're like, what do mean a mind? What's a mind got to do with retiring? And that's where we discovered that all the retirement stuff is done by still done by paper in a process that looks identical to what occurred in the nineteen fifties. Like, we took a snapshot of the mind when it first started in the fifties to today. It looks the same.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. So how long do you think it'll take take to turn over?
Speaker 4: We're working as fast as we can. Probably next couple of months, we'll have this this overhauled. And, you know, I really think, again, like, why are we subjecting our federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training just to retire from the government. There's a whole training program that people have to go through in order to retire. I I think we can do better for them.
Speaker 1: Aram Mogadasi, a Doge engineer. Yeah. You go into these places, one of the more than a dozen engineers, first people to go into the agencies and view the computer datasets. Tell me what you're finding. And for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it for them.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about Doge was learning basically, the state of government computers. By some estimates, government IT costs about a hundred billion dollars, and it's funding systems that are over 50 years old in the case of something like Social Security or the IRS. So really critical systems are are old. They cost a lot of money to maintain, and, they could be the the efforts to improve them are often very delayed.
So I I thought I'm a software engineer, that that maybe could make a difference here, and, that's that's really what inspired me at a high level.
Speaker 1: There's lot of history about Social Security and a lot of words about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about
Speaker 3: It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security.
Speaker 0: Elon Musk and president Trump have set their sights on cutting Social Security.
Speaker 1: Their goal is clear, destroy Social Security from within. You're in the building. I mean, you're in the computers. What's happening there? What are you doing?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 0: It doesn't line up with my experience on the ground. And I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also make the experience better. And I'll give you one one example is at Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
Speaker 1: Forty percent?
Speaker 0: That's right. Almost half.
Speaker 2: Yes. And and they they steal people's social security is what happens. Is they they call in, they say, they claim to be a retiree, then they they and they convince the post the Social Security person on the phone to change the where the where the money is flowing. It it actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day every day.
And and then and then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security is because of of all the the forward loopholes in the Social Security system.
Speaker 1: How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not gonna affect their benefits?
Speaker 2: No. In fact, what what we're doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of Doge, will receive more social security, not less. Wanna emphasize that. As a result of the work of Doge, legitimate recipients of social security will receive more money, not less money.
Speaker 1: Alright.
Speaker 2: And and and and let the record show that I said this and the it will be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on this in the future.
Speaker 1: So it's Washington Post. The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in ten days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that gonna change?
Speaker 2: Yes. We're gonna make sure that the website stays online.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, but is it a result of going in there No. Or something you're doing?
Speaker 3: It's No. No. The the amount of issues that were the social security system are are enormous. As an example, there are over 15,000,000 people that are 20 that are marked as alive in the social security system.
Speaker 1: And that's an accurate figure.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Correct. 15,000,000.
Speaker 3: Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem. Again, preexisting problems since February at least from an IG report. So there are some great people working at the social security administration Social Security Administration that found this 02/2008 and nothing was done. And so 15 to 20,000,000 social security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions.
There'd be no way to use those for good intentions. And so what one of the things the Doge team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
Speaker 1: Brett Smith, working at HHS, and obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid, NIH. What are you finding?
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, I'd say there's a couple of things we're really committed to in our work at HHS. Number one, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world. And number two, making sure which president Trump has said over and over again that we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example, today, if you're an NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar grant at your university, today, you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that.
The policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by congress and they're typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different IT systems today at NIH.
Speaker 1: Seven hundred different IT systems.
Speaker 2: IT software systems. They don't connect.
Speaker 6: They can't speak to each other.
Speaker 1: So they don't talk to one.
Speaker 6: They have 27 different CIOs. And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.
Speaker 1: Time out. Time out. You said 27 different chief information officers?
Speaker 6: Correct. Correct.
Speaker 2: And most of them are nontechnical.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot there.
Speaker 6: There's a there's a lot of opportunity. It will make science better, not worse.
Speaker 2: And when I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it. Yeah. We have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the computers can't go stay online, people won't receive their social security.
So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their their benefits, that are preventing people from preventing research from happening, that are, extremely vulnerable to fraud, and we're fixing it.
Speaker 1: And does that include AI? Does that include kind of changing the system overall? That's, I guess, what people are afraid of is they don't know
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What this is all looking like, and is it gonna affect me in the long term?
Speaker 2: It's gonna affect them. It's gonna affect people very positively. So the the changes that we're doing here will ensure the solvency of the American government, of the American of of The United States Of America. This is what this is what we're trying to do is ensure that people do receive their benefits in the future. And you can only receive your benefits if the if the if the country is operating in a in a healthy and competent way.
Speaker 1: Anthony Armstrong, Doge, office of personnel management, Morgan Stanley banker, m and a guy. Yeah. You know money, and this is a lot of money sloshing around.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of money sloshing around. It's a lot of money sloshing out the door. And if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce works, it's really a one way ratchet over decades.
Speaker 1: You It's only going up.
Speaker 5: It's only going up. You never you never take it away. So that leaves you with duplicative functions. It leaves you with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So a couple of examples, duplicative functions.
Brad mentioned 27 CIOs. If you had kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk about the communications office. I think you've got forty forty distinct communications offices in HHS. Yeah. 40?
Yeah. Yeah. And that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple offices like It's like anyone healthy. This is not about the employees there.
There's many many hardworking, well meaning people who who took jobs. These jobs were out there. They applied for them. They took them. They're doing what's there.
It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that. You've got over staffing. A good example of over staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and and cell phones. So if you join the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned.
So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So 12 times a year
Speaker 2: 1,400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop and a phone.
Speaker 5: Right. The the whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't that doesn't make any sense. And president Trump's been very clear. It's scalpel, not hatchet, and that's the way it's it's getting done.
And then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and if you look at how people have started to leave the government, it is largely through voluntary means. There's voluntary early retirement. There's voluntary separation payments. We put in place deferred resignation, the eight month severance program.
So there's a very heavy bias towards programs that are long dated, that are generous, that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector. And you've you've heard a lot of a lot of news about rifts about people getting fired. At at this moment in time, less than point one five not 1.5, less than point one five of the federal workforce has actually been given a riff notice.
Speaker 1: So So they've selected if they're a leader.
Speaker 2: It it is Basically, almost no one's gotten fired That's what we're saying.
Speaker 1: Tom Krausz, working at treasury, you are having access to the payment system, oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially, payments were going places we didn't know where they were going. Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah. Unfortunately, that's the case, Brett. You know, as an ex CFO of a big public tech company, really what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to the federal government. And it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today. There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government.
Speaker 1: Time out. One bank account.
Speaker 2: It's a big one.
Speaker 1: It's a
Speaker 3: big one. It's a
Speaker 7: big one. One. A couple weeks ago, had $800,000,000,000 in it, but it's the the treasury general account. So when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here, what they're talking about in terms of the fraud, you have to ask, well, why is this allowed to happen at a financial level? Well, it's actually quite simple but alarming.
The treasury up until now, and thanks to president Trump, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that he just signed, the other day, which is protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayers' money. One, we're changing the culture. The culture has been not a lot of caring and not a lot of commitment to doing what's right relative to financial operations. There's a $500,000,000,000 of fraud every year.
There's hundreds of billion dollars of improper payments, and we can't pass an audit. The the consolidated financial report is produced by treasury, and we cannot pass it on. We have material weaknesses. What that means is that if I was a public company CFO, I would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements.
I couldn't issue securities. Can't on. Can't it on.
Speaker 2: Right. The the federal government cannot pass an order. It's impossible. In fact, the the in order to pass an order, you need the information necessary to pass an order. You need to have the payment codes.
You need to have the payment explanation, and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment was made. None of those things were mandatory Yeah. Until until just recently, just a few weeks ago. In fact, maybe last week?
Speaker 7: Yeah. We're serving 580 plus agencies. And up until very recently, effectively, they could say make the payment and treasury just sent it out as fast as possible. No verification. And so what we're doing is what any household would do.
But imagine you're a household, you have a bank account, everyone has an ATM card connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook connected to that account. It's not just your children. It's not just your parents. It's your in laws. It's your extended family.
And they all can go to the account and disperse funds. No questions asked. No justification. No verification.
Speaker 1: Tyler, Hasson, interior department, you're a form former oil company CEO. You're reviewing contracts before they're approved for funding. What what are you finding?
Speaker 8: Well, Elon and Steve kinda stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract. I actually have an example of one right here. I could have done this in high school. And I I found it
Speaker 2: It's that bad.
Speaker 8: I found it on the weekends because under the Biden administration, there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever. None. We are now reviewing every single contract, every single grant. And when things come to my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing him to secretary Bergam, and he has been fantastic. He's he's a businessman.
He's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful
Speaker 2: to work with Is
Speaker 1: the battle between government of decades and decades of buildup and business, which you guys are, is that like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it seems like it's pretty disruptive. Well, this is a revolution.
Speaker 2: And I think it it might be the might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America is gonna be in much better shape. America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work, and it's gonna be a fantastic future. And but are we gonna get a lot of complaints along the way?
Absolutely. You know, one the things I learned at PayPal was the you know, who complains the loudest and the with the the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters. That's it's a tell. You know these NGOs that are crazy?
Like the the $2,000,000,000 to Stacey Abrams NGO that basically didn't exist and suddenly gets $2,000,000,000 awarded from the federal government. She has why. And there are many such cases like that.
Speaker 1: I think that most people, common sense wise, would say the fraud's gotta end.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're concerned about the 94 year old mother who skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get.
Speaker 2: Right. And what we're trying to say is actually the that that the 94 year old grandmother is is actually, as a result of Joe Doge's work, going to get her check. She's not going to be robbed by fraudsters like she's getting robbed today. And the solvency of the of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those social security checks that Medicare continues to work without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're doing this is because if if we don't do it, America's gonna go insolvent.
We're gonna go bankrupt, and nobody's gonna get anything.
Speaker 1: Why are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up, but it you don't have to be here. Right? I mean, you don't you don't have to be doing this.
Speaker 7: I have four blessed with four beautiful children, my wife and I, But we have a real fiscal crisis, and and this is not sustainable. And what's worse, back to my children and everyone else's children, is we are burdening them with that debt, and it's only gonna grow.
Speaker 1: Steve, there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are kind of all approaching it in different, you know, silos, but with the same kind of goal. Right? I mean,
Speaker 3: this is really Silicon Valley private sector colliding with government. Yeah. Exactly. And we're headed in a bad path, but then the chance of success exists. And just the one that just is in my head right now, which is a fairly mundane one, but I think is very illustrative is credit cards.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: There are in the in the federal government around 4,600,000 credit cards for around 2.3 to 2,400,000 employees. This doesn't make sense. Right. And so one of the things all of the teams have have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used?
Can you tell us physically where they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good. It costs. That's a whole other It's a negotiation.
Right. Yeah. Exactly. But so far, the teams have worked together, and they've reduced it from 4,600,000.0 to to 4,300,000.0. So So we're taking we're taking it easy.
Speaker 7: Yeah. But but
Speaker 2: clearly, there should not be, you know, more there should be more credit cards than there are people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Joe, middle level employees, are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out bureaucracy? I mean
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is taking the best Silicon Valley in the business world and bringing it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and the best methodologies. And people are inspired, right, especially on the retirement process, which I can speak to. They've been trying to modernize and get off of paper since early two thousands, very unsuccessfully.
Every attempt has gone over budget, and been canceled, because it hasn't been successful. And so, you know, I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and good engineering and really create a better experience for everybody.
Speaker 2: They were we're talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for any company to function. So, like, if if these can if if if the federal government if if if a commercial company operated the way the federal government does, then it would be go immediately go bankrupt. It would be delisted. The officers would be arrested. And the changes we're putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit.
It will enable enable taxpayers to know where the money is going and know that their hard earned tax tax dollars are being spent well. But the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems systems don't talk to each other, then it you you can you can exploit that gap and and forces exploit that exploit that gap, take advantage. If, for example, there were over $300,000,000 of small business administration loans that has been given out to people under the age of 11.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, to add to this, 300,000,000 under the age of 11 and over three hundred million to over the age of 120.
Speaker 1: Definitely Small business loans.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: The the oldest American is a hundred and 14. So it's safe to say if their age is 15 or above, they're they're fake, or they should be in the Guinness Guinness Book of World Records. And we we should not be giving out loans to babies. So the youngest recipient of a small business administration loan is a nine month year old, which is a very very cautious baby we're talking about here. So obviously, it was just fraudulent.
And what they and and they do terrible things. They actually will see that a a kid's been born. They will steal that kid's social security number and then take out a loan, and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit rating. There was literally a baby. The terrible things are being done is what we're saying.
And how? We're stopping these terrible things.
Speaker 1: And you can stop it?
Speaker 4: I mean Well, we are stopping
Speaker 2: The reason this is happening
Speaker 5: is because the the two systems are not talking to each other.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 5: Right? And so you don't know at the small business administration that you're giving a loan to a nine month old, which happened in one case, because you're not cross referencing that with the social security administration data that has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix Yes. Eliminates tremendous fraud. And and that there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking with one another.
And if you just solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised? One of ways
Speaker 2: that like, one one of the the key tricks that the fraudsters pull is that they will use the fact that someone is mocked as live and as as sort of just that that Social Security number is mocked as live in Social Security, and then then get disability and unemployment insurance for a dead person. Because the databases don't talk to each other, all they got was from Social Security is like, is this person alive? Yes. They're not they're not alive. It's falsely marked person is falsely marked as alive in social security, but they didn't but but that first a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability for from a dead person.
This is happening all the time at scale.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised at some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about eight or 10 now of these cases that are at least temporary holds. They're being challenged by the DOJ. Right. Are you surprised by that pushback?
Speaker 2: Well, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for having a very far left bias. And when you look at the people close to some of these judges, who who who are where are they working? Are they working at these NGOs? Are they getting the the other ones getting this money? Does that seem like system that lacks corruption?
It sounds like corruption to me.
Speaker 1: Last thing. Do you guys all see this as a patriotic duty? I mean, is that really what this is about? It's essential. Very
Speaker 8: much. I do. A %. I I was running five businesses in Houston, and and I left that. I left great people to do this.
And my wonderful wife said, go for it. And here I am. But I I feel like this is me giving back to the country.
Speaker 2: If if we don't do this, we're sunk. The ship unless unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time today. And hopefully, it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Thank you.