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@RealAlexJones - Alex Jones
Alex Jones Interviews Elon Musk! Tune in here: https://t.co/F3j26jVEg4
@RealAlexJones - Alex Jones
Alex Jones Interviews Elon Musk For 2 Hours! #AlexIsBack #1A https://t.co/dilow5m9QH
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this video, the speaker talks about their recent interview with Elon Musk on a popular program. They mention that the interview will be posted on their channel and will also be featured on their radio and TV shows. The speaker encourages people to visit their website and follow them on Twitter to get a better understanding of their beliefs and what they stand for. They express excitement about the interview and emphasize the importance of free speech. The speaker thanks their supporters and mentions Tucker Carlson for helping them. They end by inviting viewers to join them in fighting for the future.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Less than a day after being reinstated to X, I was on Mario Nafal's number one X spaces program. It had over a 120,000 people watching at one time. More than 8,000,000 watched by the time it was over. Elon Musk came on for more than 2 hours, and I asked a lot of good questions. So, officially, I was the guy getting interviewed, but I turned it around, made it about Elon Musk because quite frankly, he's even more interesting than I am.
We're gonna be posting this interview with just my questions. Cut down the full interviews, obviously, on Mario's channel. We'll be posting it to X here in the next few hours. We're playing on my radio show and TV show tomorrow, 11 AM central. Infowars.comforward/show.
So for all the people that heard about Infowars but didn't know what we really stood for because it was misrepresented. This is your chance to go to infowars.comforward/show, banned out video, or at real Alex Jones back on Twitter and actually see what I say, see what I stand for and see it in context. At real Alex Jones, please follow us there. You can also find us where we've still been on air 5 years after we're deplatformed at infowars.comforward/showband.video and news wars.com, but this is historic. It's way bigger than Alex Jones.
This is about Renaissance 2 point o. It's about free speech winning. It's about the deep state failing. This is beyond cool. And, again, Elon Musk talks about everything, including subjects he's never been asked about before in this interview.
So I'll be on my regular show. I'll be breaking it down weekdays, 11 AM CST, but you wanna hear the Alex Jones, Elon Musk interview at band.videoinfowars.com and at Real Alex Jones on Twitter. I wanna salute the crew. I wanna sub salute our supporters. I wanna salute the folks that have kept us on air, Tucker Carlson, for interviewing me last week.
They took us over the top, and I wanna salute Elon Musk. Freedom of speech is paramount to a free human society. We're pro human. We're on team human as Elon Musk said. The t shirt's coming soon.
Team humaninfowars.com. I'll see you on the front lines of the fight for our future. Visit infowars.comforward/show.
@AutismCapital - Autism Capital 🧩
🚨FULL ELON MUSK AND TUCKER CARLSON LIVE FROM MAR-A-LAGO https://t.co/OJ089EkqvO
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alright, we have Benimi here. The early voting data in Pennsylvania shows a significant Republican advantage compared to 2020, suggesting a potential victory for Trump. Despite heavy spending and media bias against him, Trump continues to gain support. The Republican ground game has improved, particularly with outreach to the Amish community, which has historically not voted in large numbers. Engaging voters and maximizing registrations were key strategies. The discussion also touches on the importance of long-form conversations in podcasts for connecting with voters. Overall, there's optimism about Trump's chances in the upcoming election and a call for government efficiency to reduce bureaucratic hurdles.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Okay. I guess so.
Speaker 1: This is
Speaker 0: Alright. We got Benimi here.
Speaker 1: I can certainly yes.
Speaker 0: Benimi, you complete me.
Speaker 1: What's your name?
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm gonna show you. And then as a a fit to this store.
Speaker 0: X, we're on TV.
Speaker 2: I think it is. This
Speaker 1: is wild.
Speaker 0: X, did we help president Trump?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Well, you have. You have.
Speaker 0: Truth from the mouth of babes.
Speaker 1: It looks like I mean, it looks
Speaker 2: I sort of did this, the quiet week. You know what
Speaker 0: you're saying, x? You're getting you you you have the general vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Florence, Space Dax, and quietly just do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: I like your laugh. That's a laugh of an honest
Speaker 0: man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this what what's your assessment? Is this do this work? Is he gonna win?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It is. Not for now. No.
I'm excited. This is really I think
Speaker 0: it's done. You think it's done? Yeah.
Speaker 2: But never know.
Speaker 1: Not for long. So where are we? 89 per I mean okay. So it's, 1052. Dead.
It's a little earlier than Obama told us we're gonna have to wait a month or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0: I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: just looking
Speaker 0: at the the data as it as it comes in from every county in Pennsylvania. And,
Speaker 1: oh, he can tell us. It's alright.
Speaker 0: And, it it seems, extremely likely that no. If if not a certain No.
Speaker 2: No. No. No. No. No.
No. No.
Speaker 1: So the so then we're done.
Speaker 0: Got it.
Speaker 1: I mean, are you surprised? Because I'm I'm shocked by how quickly this happened.
Speaker 0: I'm not particularly surprised, because the, No. That's is that it's like okay. I still we might have to No.
Speaker 1: Sammy, Timo, it's oh, she's so nice. You don't need to worry. She's really nice.
Speaker 0: So, let's see. So, I think more relevant than the polls is looking at the the early voting data. And if you look at the early voting data, in in Pennsylvania, for example, and you compare the the Republican minus Democrat vote across all of the swing states, but certainly in Pennsylvania, the the delta was, as of this morning, I believe, 602,000. So meaning, like, the relative to 2020. So if you say, like, okay, how is President Trump doing relative to 2020, the difference in early voting was 6 over 600,000.
The margin of victory Biden's margin of victory in 2020 was only 80,000, which, if so a reasonable extrapolation assuming that let's assume that the in person voting is no better than 2020, then you would expect, a margin of victory for President Trump of approximately half a1000000.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 0: So, yeah, I don't think you necessarily need to be, like, some incredible prognosticator if you just look at the data.
Speaker 1: But they were telling us, you know, on CNN,
Speaker 0: You know, they'll But but
Speaker 1: but why particularly what was the point of lying about it? Would you Well,
Speaker 2: I don't
Speaker 0: know if they lie maybe they just don't understand. I mean, I've been posting on X about this. I mean, I literally post the charts and I post the data. You know, I'm just looking at the data.
Speaker 1: How did Trump win? I mean, they after they indicted him. He's a rapist. He's a criminal. I mean, they've been attacking Trump, like, every day for 9 years, and and he wins bigger this time than in 2016 against a candidate who's outspending him 3 to 1 all in.
How could that happen?
Speaker 0: No. It's remarkable. In fact, it's not just that the that the Kamala machine, puppet machine campaign is outspending. So not the Dems are massively outspending Republicans in the swing states, including any contribution that I make. But, you also have the the sort of legacy mainstream media, which is overwhelmingly in favor of of common law.
They might as well be an extension of the DNC.
Speaker 1: Well, they are. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. You know, the DNC just sends them, whatever the talking points are, and they all just talk like NPCs essentially all day long, but instantly. And then you've also got, I mean, God knows how many celebrity endorsements. I mean, it's like sort of running out of, like, is any way call 80%, 90% of celebrity endorsements on the Dem side. So basically, you you have what what appears to be a deck that is very much stacked in favor of the Dem like you said, like, how can a Republican win?
I don't see it. Now, I mean, one of the things that that we we did do to kinda even the odds was we massively improved the Republican ground game, My America PAC, massively improved the Republican ground game in the swing states. So the the Democrats don't only have the best ground game, you know, just in terms of knocking on doors, talking to people, sounds simple. Just having, you know, a good sort of word-of-mouth virality campaign, having good, you know, messaging that that that appeals to people's specific interests. It just and and then making sure people get to the polls.
You know, just make sure that people have transport. The the demo customer will be extremely good with getting just Yes. You know, making it convenient. Because for a lot of people, it's just if if they'll vote, it's just maybe they don't have a ride. Yeah.
So we just made sure everyone had a ride. We made sure, that any we we we paid particular attention to the Amish community in Pennsylvania. It's a bit It's a bit just, why
Speaker 1: Had anyone ever gotten the Amish out to vote before?
Speaker 0: Not in significant numbers. But the Democrats did make a mistake because they there there was government overreach, and with some of the Amish farmers. Yes. And, you know, they're just for them. There's no such thing as like like organic farming or not organic.
They're just they're farmers. They're like they've been farming the same way for a long time, you know. And and, and there was some, you know, just government overreach that that shut down some Amish farmers, which really, you know, made them pretty upset. And, you just need to be able to channel that, you know, the fact that they're upset. And, like, well, there's a thing you can do about it, which is called voting.
And, and we're happy to, you know, transport you to they're allowed to ride ride in vans, if so long as they're not driving the van. So, you know, we're just making sure we bring them to the polls, and they vote how how they wanna vote, which is gonna be, like, 99.9 percent. Actually, call it a 100. Call it a 100. Call it a 100.
Call a 100.
Speaker 1: You said the yeah. These are raw American producers.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you endorsed Trump within minutes of him being shot. I mean, how many I mean, it was literally minutes, I think, as I remember. Yeah. And then you just went more all in than I've ever seen anybody ever.
Yeah. What what was the did you ever doubt? Or do you just decide to go all in and you just did it?
Speaker 0: I mean, my philosophy is you you play, you play to win. You don't play it by half measure. So, yeah. I mean, as with the team every day, 7 days a week, just working the early votes in Pennsylvania and other swing states. First first registrations.
First, like, if people don't register, they can't vote. So the initial focus was just maximizing registrations, and, and then once the registration deadline is over, just getting the early votes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 0: You know? Yeah.
Speaker 1: X, from my perspective, played a pivotal role, not just in this election, but in keeping the country alive.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, x is, I think, the one one place where you can find out the truth.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: And
Speaker 1: The only place.
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how much pressure, to the extent you can say, has there been on you to shut it down or to censor it?
Speaker 0: Well, I mean, apart from the multiple Democrats, saying that I should go, they want to put me in jail, take away all government contracts from my companies, nationalize my companies, deport me as an illegal, and, have me arrested because I'm apparently Putin's best friend. Nothing besides those things.
Speaker 1: So you saw what Phil Maddow sort of casually was the single most popular media figure on the left. Yeah. For the right. Say, just sort of casually, will Elon Musk obviously need to be separated from his companies? You know, he can't be a government.
He can't hold government contracts going forward. What what like, how do you respond to that?
Speaker 0: Rachel Maddow is a crazy person. You know, she's just surprising at the mouth, crazy fascist, basically. Dresses sort of pretending to be a liberal, but she's just really, like, I can't imagine the many would die. Yes. So do you expect the pressure will lessen now that Trump I mean, we'll see.
I mean, certainly, last time president Trump was elected, I mean, I think they they tried to impeach him within, like, 20 minutes of him taking office. Yes. This time, I I don't know. I we'll see. They may I don't think they'll be quite as, intense as last time.
Well, because I think I think I think we actually we actually have a decent chance here of of a significant victory, not not, not a small victory. Yes. And the point at which you clearly just have the public mandate, then you have the public mandate. I mean, I think numbers I've seen were close to winning the the, you know, popular vote in addition to the electoral vote, even though there's basically been zero campaigning in California, which is the biggest state in the country. So, you know, sometimes people say, oh, you know, the Republican didn't win didn't win the, popular vote.
I'm like, that's because he wasn't trying. If you actually try to win the popular vote, then you do it. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't take didn't take that much.
I think it made a big difference that, President Trump and, soon to be Vice President Vance, went on, lengthy podcasts. Yes. I think this makes like, this is this really makes a difference because, you know, people look at, like like, Joe Rogan's podcast, which is which is great, and, Alex Friedman's and the All In podcast. Yeah. And, you know, to to a reasonable minded smart person who's not, like, hardcore one way or the other, they just listen to someone talk for a few hours, and they they that's how they decide whether you're, you know, a good person, whether they like you.
And and, you know, especially like like Rogan's podcast, 3 hours long. I mean, you know, you could do this is why, like, I actually posted on x, like, the the the, nothing would do more damage to Kamala's campaign than going on Joe Rogan because, she would run out of non sequiturs after about 45 minutes.
Speaker 1: But you can't hide in 3 hours.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Like, hour 23 would be a complete melted puddle of of nonsense. So it it would just be absolute game over. That's why it shouldn't go on.
Speaker 1: So I mean, how does But
Speaker 0: Trump but on the head, Trump is he's there. He's there. He's there. There's no there's no talking points. He's just he's just being an all in person.
He's having a conversation, on, you know, and doing 3 hours of Rogan. No problem. What do
Speaker 1: you think of him? You spent a lot of time with him in the last several months.
Speaker 0: I think he's, I think he's a very interesting funny funny person and, you know, much maligned by the media, obviously. And, he's withstood a lot, you know, and I think he's he's, you know, you mentioned that I as you mentioned, I endorse him immediately after he was shot. Because I, you know, when you see somebody under fire, what what is their reaction to that? Because you know immediately is someone brave or are they cowards?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Yes. Okay. The bullets, they get hit by bullets. Bloods, you know, come down face. It could be it could have been a second shooter, and yet, you know, it's going fight by fight, you know.
That's that's true true courage.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Can't fake it. Impossible. And, America is the the home of the free and land you know, land of the brave. So, that's who we want as president. It was So what we want, we want a brave a strong, brave you person as president.
Amen. And he is that.
Speaker 1: How how are you gonna be involved?
Speaker 0: Well, I you know, I've said I'd be happy to help improve the, you know, government efficiency, obviously. Department of government efficiency, which, you know, I think is sorely needed. We've we've got a gigantic government bureaucracy. We've got over regulation. You've got agencies that have overlapping responsibilities.
There's something like 450 government, federal government agencies. You know, almost 2 per year that company since America was founded. So I mean, we're just creating new agencies all the time. And, it's getting to the point where basically everything's legal. You just can't get anything done.
I've noticed. And this translates to these become real costs to people. They're hidden costs, but they're very substantial. You It's very hard to build new housing if you're burdened with massive requirements that don't make any sense. It drives up the housing cost, it slows down new housing starts.
So yeah, we need to let the builders of America build.
Speaker 1: Amen. Yeah. So you're not going to the Gulag, it turns out?
Speaker 0: Well, not immediately. I mean, maybe in 5 years. I don't know. They might be probably pretty grumpy about this one. But, I think I got at least several years before I go to the gulag.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations. I've never seen anything like this in my life.
Speaker 0: Exciting times.
Speaker 1: Amazing. And
Speaker 0: here's to a fantastic future. Elon Musk. Thank you. Thank you.
@MJTruthUltra - MJTruthUltra
Trump is speaking now https://t.co/ki1FF8yyuR
@dogeofficialceo - Sir Doge of the Coin ⚔️
Elon Musk’s full speech at Donald Trump’s Presidential Parade. 🇺🇸 https://t.co/gy806Y6aC9
Video Transcript AI Summary
This victory is a pivotal moment for humanity. Unlike other elections, this one truly matters, and I want to express my gratitude for making it happen. Because of you, we can look forward to safe cities, secure borders, and sensible spending. Imagine American astronauts planting our flag on Mars—how inspiring that will be! Life has its challenges, but we need things that inspire us and give us hope for the future. I'm committed to working hard for you, and I'm excited about what lies ahead. As the president said, we’re entering a golden age filled with optimism. Thank you all for your support; I can't wait for the future!
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Yes. This this is what victory feels like. Yeah. And this was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization.
Okay. This this you know, there there are elections that the elections, they come and go. Some some elections are, you know, important. Some are not. But but this one this one this one really matters.
And I just wanna say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured. Thanks to you.
We're gonna have safe cities. Finally, safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending, basic stuff. And we're gonna take those to Mars. I mean, can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Yeah.
How inspiring would that be? You know, there's always there's there's always problems in problems in life. You know, if there's this problem, solve that problem, solve that problem. But, you know, there there need to be things that inspire you. There need to be things that make you glad to wake up in the morning and say, I'm looking forward to the future.
Yeah. I love you guys. So and and and and let me tell you, I'm gonna work my asshole for you guys. I really will. I really will.
So and, yeah. But I'm I'm super fired up, for the for the for the future. It's gonna be very exciting. As the president said, we're gonna have a golden age. It's gonna be fantastic.
And one of the fundamental things that one of the most American values that that I love is optimism And and and this feeling like we're gonna we're gonna make the future good. We're gonna make it good. So, man, I can't wait. This is gonna be fantastic. So thanks to thank you.
Thank you again. And, yeah. It's I'm just so excited about the future. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
@TeslaHype - Tesla Hype
Elon Musk Post-Inauguration Full Speech https://t.co/HLJcRiPCQH
Video Transcript AI Summary
This victory is significant, marking a pivotal moment for human civilization. Thank you for making it happen; your support ensures a brighter future. We will achieve safe cities, secure borders, and sensible spending, and even aim for Mars exploration, where American astronauts will plant our flag. Life has its challenges, but we need inspiration to look forward to the future. I am committed to working hard for you, and I am excited about what lies ahead. As the president mentioned, we are entering a golden age filled with optimism. Together, we will make the future great. Thank you once again; I am thrilled about what’s to come.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Yes. This this is what victory feels like. Yeah. And this was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization.
Okay. This this you know, there there are elections that the elections, they come and go. Some some elections are, you know, important. Some are not. But but this one this one this one really matters.
And I just wanna say thank you for making it happen. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured. Thanks to you.
We're gonna have safe cities. Finally, safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending, basic stuff. And we're gonna take those to Mars. I mean, can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Yeah.
How inspiring would that be? You know, there's always there's there's always problems in problems in life. You know, if this this problem solve that problem solve that problem. But, you know, there there needs to be things that inspire you. There needs to be things that make you glad to wake up in the morning and say, I'm looking forward to the future.
Yeah. I love you guys. So and and and and let me tell you, I'm gonna work my asshole for you guys. I really will. I really will.
So and, yeah. But I'm I'm super fired up, for the for the for the future. It's gonna be very exciting. As the president said, we're gonna have a golden age. It's gonna be fantastic.
And one of the fundamental things that one of the most American values that that I love is optimism. And and and the feeling like we're gonna we're gonna make the future good. We're gonna make it good. So, man, I can't wait. This is gonna be fantastic.
So thanks to thank you thank you again. And, yeah, It's I'm just so excited about the future. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
@BGOnTheScene - Brendan Gutenschwager
Elon Musk speaking at today’s post-Inauguration rally at Capital One Arena https://t.co/lGbS0vLzYK
@TrumpWarRoom - Trump War Room
🚨 President Trump signs an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE https://t.co/0hsYFy0KmO
Video Transcript AI Summary
An order has been established to create the Department of Governmental Efficiency, known as DOS, which will hire around 20 people to ensure implementation. There is a significant issue with delays in approvals, as seen with the January 6th hostages, where processes can take weeks or months. Despite a favorable Supreme Court ruling six months ago, there has been no action. The treatment of individuals involved has been harsh, with brutal handling by judges and prosecutors. Regarding the sentencing of those who assaulted police officers on January 6th, there is a review of cases involving two Washington police officers who faced five-year sentences for their actions, and considerations are being made to offer them leniency.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: This is an order creating and implementing the Department of Governmental Efficiency known as DOS. K. That's a big one. Is he on us gonna get out of the West Lien office? No.
He's getting an office for about 20 people that we're hiring to make sure that these get implemented. We have a problem in this country. He's not an executive order. It doesn't get done for 6 months. As an example, when we allow the j six hostages to go out, it might not be approved in under the old days by for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 6 months.
You know, they had a good ruling for the Supreme Court, and it's like nothing happened. That ruling was 6 months ago. You know that. And it was like they didn't have a ruling. They've been treated very unfair.
The judges have been absolutely brutal. The prosecutors have been brutal. Nobody's ever treated people in this country like that. Mister president, are you committing the sentences of anyone who assaulted the police officer on January 6th? Well, we're looking at 2 police officers, actually, that Washington police officers who who went after an illegal and things happened, and they ended up putting them in jail.
They got 5 year jail sentences. You know the case. Yes, ma'am. And we're looking at that in order to give them a, we gotta give them a break.
@AutismCapital - Autism Capital 🧩
🚨BREAKING: Trump signs executive order ushering in DOGE https://t.co/xoTS7ObYib
Video Transcript AI Summary
An order has been issued to create and implement the Department of Governmental Efficiency, known as DOS. This initiative involves hiring around 20 staff members to ensure effective implementation.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Is an order creating and implementing the Department of Governmental Efficiency known as DOS.
Speaker 1: K. That's a big one. No. He's getting an office for about 20 people that we're hiring to make sure that these get implemented.
@bennyjohnson - Benny Johnson
🚨BREAKING: Elon Musk and DOGE have gained access to Treasury payment systems. https://t.co/jY4qFxJc2V
@RealAlexJones - Alex Jones
DOGE Bombshell! Elon Musk and President Trump CAUGHT By The Democrats Launching Operation BIG BALLS!!! Weeding Out Government Corruption Has Never Been So Much Fun! Alex Jones Is Breaking It All Down Here: https://t.co/mgceKv3fXX
Video Transcript AI Summary
We're now 17 days into President Trump's term. There's been a humorous leak in the media regarding a member of Elon Musk's Doge team, nicknamed "Big Balls." This 19-year-old, who has founded several companies, including one called Tesla.sexy LLC, is now working with Musk. The media's serious coverage of this nickname is quite comedic.
In other news, our top-selling product, concentrated Irish sea moss, has sold out at AlexJonesStore.com. However, you can still find it and other products at realalexjones.com, which shares inventory from the same warehouse. These products are designed to empower and enhance your health while supporting our operation. Check them out!
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Everybody We are seventeen days. Twenty three hours forty four seconds into the new presidency of president Trump.
Speaker 1: Everybody said I've got great balls on fire. I
Speaker 0: And now it has come out big bones. That they've been leaking and doxing in the corporate media, different members of Elon Musk's Doge team, and one of them has the nickname big balls, and they're all over the corporate media reporting it all very, very seriously. This is some of the greatest unintentional comedy ever. Here's a club.
Speaker 2: This is a 19 year old high school graduate, who has used, the unfortunate nickname, Big Balls online, so that would be one way that we could refer to him. He is now working at Musk's behest, inside Doge, and we looked into his background. And so we found, you know, several notable things, Erin. One of which, is that this individual has founded multiple companies, including one, with another unfortunate name, Tesla dot sexy LLC, which he established in 2021. He would have been around 16 years old.
Now this LLC controls dozens of web domains.
Speaker 0: Wow. Sexy. Shoes on Tesla. Drag queen story time is a bit of pedophiles, little kids is okay. And, you know, little kids giving male strippers money, three year olds, that's okay.
But if you call yourself sexy Tesla, that is unfortunate. And this person registered some domain names years ago. Woah, man. You talk about dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty people. This is just incredible.
Speaker 1: She's got big balls.
Speaker 0: No one elected big balls. Personally, I voted for big balls. You want my snacks?
Speaker 1: Oh, the
Speaker 0: best part about this is it's so much fun.
Speaker 1: My balls are always bouncing to the left and to the right. It's my belief that my big ball should be held overnight.
Speaker 0: My fellow patriots, I've got some bad news for you. I've also got some good news. Our number one all time best selling product at the AlexJonesstore.com has sold out. The concentrated Irish sea moss, we call it ultimate sea moss because it's the strongest, most concentrated out there, the superfood. It has sold out.
But there is a clone of the site with our same sponsor that runs it, and it has its own inventory right of the same warehouse in Arkansas. That is realalexjones.com. So not just the CMOS that's not available at the Alex Jones store, but some of the other products that are sold out as well are still available at realalexjones.com. They're incredible products. They empower you, make you healthier, and they fund our operation.
So if you love these products, which I know a lot of you do, or if you haven't tried these products, go now to realalexjones.com and find out how amazing these products are.
@Freedom_Toons - FreedomToons
Elon and DOGE decimating USAID🤣 https://t.co/4qx1b5CPd5
Video Transcript AI Summary
Okay, team, we need to address some serious budget overspending. I'm talking millions on bizarre projects like body positivity initiatives for captive Haitians, glitter bombs for Saudi Imams, and chocolate fondue for Ukrainian Hebrews.
And it doesn't stop there: McFlurries for Pakistani furries? Kool-Aid fountains for North Korean accountants? Abortion on demand for Japanese pandas?
Some of these programs are getting cut, including those Iraqi slumber parties and destigmatizing marijuana in Uganda. Sausage male dancers for Australians with COVID, gender-fluid Iraq zodiac lessons, high-speed trains for Ukrainian hermaphrodites, and sex changes for polar bears. Even Saudi Arabian easy bake ovens are in question.
And lastly, we're cutting free handgun ammunition for all USAID positions.
Now, a word from our sponsor, Hollow, the prayer app.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Okay, people. We've discovered some incredible abuses of the budget. I mean, really, where are you getting off with these insane expenditures? $10,000,000 spent on body positivity for Haitians in captivity, 8,000,000 on glitter bombs for Saudi Arabian Imams, and $9,000,000 on chocolate fondue for East Ukrainian Hebrews.
Speaker 1: They have just as much a right to chocolate fondue as anyone, you Nazi.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm sorry, but it it has to be cut
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: If you cut 10,000,000
Speaker 4: from the CFEUH budget, what's next? Cutting our $3,000,000 budget
Speaker 5: to give free McFlurries to Pakistani furries?
Speaker 0: Well, now that you bring it up
Speaker 6: Oh, come on.
Speaker 0: Oh, wow. Wow. That's, yeah. No. We're definitely cutting that.
Speaker 1: This is insanity. You're letting our budget get cut by literal babies.
Speaker 0: Because even an infant can balance these books better than you. I mean, come on, people. Come on. 50,000,000 taxpayer dollars for Kool Aid water fountains for North Korean accountants, abortion on demand for pandas in Japan, a thousand packs of Smarties for Iraqi slumber parties.
Speaker 4: If you touch any of the Iraqi slumber party budgets, I will shoot you myself.
Speaker 0: I'm sorry, but it has it has to go.
Speaker 2: This is clearly a slippery slope
Speaker 7: to canceling our program to destigmatize marijuana for Latinx folks in Uganda.
Speaker 0: Your budget for that is 9,000,000. And frankly, I think you can do it for 8.
Speaker 1: You genocidal freak.
Speaker 0: We also definitely need to cause
Speaker 8: Please not. Sausage male
Speaker 6: dancers for Australians with COVID cancer.
Speaker 0: Yes. Well, while we're at a squirt, we're going to trim. Teaching zodiac for a more genderfluid Iraq, a high speed train for hermaphrodites in Ukraine, welfare benefits for aboriginal feminists, and the 12,000,000 you are spending on sex changes for polar bears. This this just says sex changes for polar bears. It it doesn't even rhyme.
Speaker 9: It didn't mean to rhyme. It was important that I felt
Speaker 10: it didn't mean to rhyme.
Speaker 11: The only program left in my department is 12,000,000 to buy IUDs
Speaker 4: for corgis and police.
Speaker 0: Yeah. We're going to reduce that. Oh, Edward, one thing. I really think we need to be spending at most half as much as we currently are on easy bake ovens for Saudi Arabian covens.
Speaker 1: I don't wanna live. I don't wanna live. I don't wanna live.
Speaker 11: Don't do it. You have so much to live for. Like what?
Speaker 0: If it's promoting alternative fuels to Afghani polycules, I I have bad news for you. Oh, and lastly, we cut all funding for free handgun ammunition for all USAID positions. Testing one, two, three. Okay. Hollow ad take one.
Speaker 12: Stealing is wrong. Get your screaming lines in your apartment is inconsiderate to your neighbors. Learn to be more courteous with hollow. Hollow offers 2,000 guided prayers and meditations that help you grow closer to God in five days. Start with the world famous bible of the year podcast with father Mike Smith, which makes the depths of bible accessible every single day.
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@robbystarbuck - Robby Starbuck
Radical transparency has arrived. Thank you @realDonaldTrump @DOGE and @elonmusk. Every American should watch this. Also, little X is such a cool kid. Really legendary. 😂 https://t.co/eriG6tPWte
Video Transcript AI Summary
The goal is to restore democracy by fixing the feedback loop between the people and the government. An unelected bureaucracy shouldn't have more power than elected representatives; it must be responsive to the people. We also need to address the $2 trillion deficit to avoid bankrupting the country. Reducing federal expenses is essential for solvency.
We've found odd instances, like bureaucrats with inexplicably high net worths. Basic payment controls are missing, leading to unauditable expenses. Payments lack categorization, comments, and proper "do not pay" lists. We're adding common-sense controls to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. There are Social Security payments going to people over 150 years old or with no identifying information. We also want to right-size the federal bureaucracy by encouraging eligible people to retire.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: We'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Sure. So the, at a high level, you say what is the goal of Dojo or and I think a significant part of this presidency is to restore democracy. This may seem like, well, are we in a democracy? Well, if you don't have a feedback with FX, we'd have to sorry, gravitas can be difficult sometimes. So if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge and then then what meaning does democracy actually have?
If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the in the form of the president and and the senate and the house, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop, and that the public, the public's elected representatives, the president, the house, and the senate decide what happens as opposed to an a large unelected bureaucracy. This is not to say that there aren't some good there are good people who who, are in the federal bureaucracy, but but you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that's responsive to the people.
That's the whole point of a democracy. And so, and if if you look at the if you ask to look the founders today and said, what do you think of the way things have turned out? Or what we have this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of of government, which which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative. And this is, this is not something that people want, and it's it's not it does not match the will of people. So it's just something we've got to we've got to fix.
And we've also got to address the the deficit. So we've got a $2,000,000,000,000 deficit. And if this if we don't do something about this deficit, country's going bankrupt. I mean, it's it's really astounding that the, the interest payments alone on national debt exceed the defense department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot we spend a lot of money on defense. But and and if that just keeps going, we're essentially gonna bankrupt the country.
So what what I really wanna say is, like, it's not optional for us to sit to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country, and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.
Speaker 0: And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30,000,000, etcetera?
Speaker 1: Well, we we we are we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there there are quite a few, people in in in the bureaucracy who have a ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know, what what happened to USAID. We're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing. They, in which case, we should take their investment advice perhaps. But, just this seems to be mysteriously they they get wealthy.
We don't know why. Where does it come from? And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at taxpayer expense. That's that's the honest truth of it. So, you know, we're looking at, say, well, we just if you look at, say, Treasury, for example, basic controls that should be in place, that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if it if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually pay it.
None of those things are true currently. So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks checks just flying out the building. So you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got comment fields that are also blanks.
You don't know why the payment was made. And then we've got this truly absurd, a do not pay list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on the do not pay list. And this we're talking about terrorist organizations, we're talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation can take up to a year to get on the list. And even what's on the list, the list is not used. It's mind blowing.
So so what we're talking here, we're really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present, that that haven't been present. So you say, like, well, how could such a thing arise? That's that seems that seems crazy. But when you understand that that really everything is geared towards complaint minimization, so that that then you understand the motivations. So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously.
But if people don't receive money, they do complain. And and the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest. So, then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that's why everything just they approve all the payments at Treasury because if you approve all the payments, get complaints. But now now we're saying that, no, actually, we we are going to complain.
If if money is spent badly, if the if your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and approvable manner, then that's not okay. Your your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on the things that matter to the people. I mean, these things, like, it's just common sense. It's not it's it's it's not draconian or radical, I think. It's it's really just saying, let's look look at each each of the expenditures and say, is this actually in the best interest of the people?
And if it is, it's approved. If it's not, we should think about it. So, you know, there's crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 50 years old. Now do you know anyone 50? I don't.
Okay. This they should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out. So, you know, that's a case where, like, I think they're probably dead. It's my guess.
Or or they should be very famous. One of the two. And then there's a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identify identifying information. Well, why is there no identifying information? Obviously, we wanna make we wanna make sure that people who deserve, to receive Social Security do receive it.
And that they receive it quickly and accurately. Also another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like we are trying to sort of right size the federal bureaucracy just to make sure this obviously needs to there needs to be a lot of people working for federal government, but not as many as currently. So we're saying, well, okay, well, let's if if people can retire, you know, with full benefits, benefits, everything, that would be good. They can retire, get their retirement payments, everything.
And then we were told this is actually, I think, a great anecdote, because we were told that the the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why why is that?
@Breaking911 - Breaking911
LIVE NOW: President Trump signs Executive Orders at Mar-a-Lago https://t.co/JoyE3RjXx3
@libsoftiktok - Libs of TikTok
Trump says DOGE already saved over $55 billion in under a month. YUGE https://t.co/2JHkeESpg0
Video Transcript AI Summary
In just under a month, the Department of Government Efficiency has already saved over $55 billion, and this is only the beginning. We're on track to eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, which will lead to significantly lower inflation and interest rates.
This will also result in reduced payments on mortgages, credit cards, and car loans, and a much stronger stock market. I anticipate the stock market performing exceptionally well. Our strategy involves rapidly expanding the economy by significantly reducing the size of the federal government, and this is a crucial step we must take.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: In less than a single month, the Department of Government Efficiency has already saved over 55 this is just a short period of time, $55,000,000,000. And we're just getting started. That's nothing compared to the numbers that you're talking about. Right? We're ending trillions of dollars in waste, and it'll mean much lower inflation, lower interest rates, lower payments on mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and much higher stock markets.
I think the stock market's gonna be great. In other words, we will rapidly grow our economy by dramatically shrinking the federal government, and we have to do it.
@libsoftiktok - Libs of TikTok
OMG. Argentina President Javier Milei just gifted Elon Musk a chainsaw for DOGE🤣 https://t.co/CWZandGxik
@TheUnitedSpot__ - The United Spot
Trump & Elon’s Wild DOGE, USAID, IRS & Fort Knox Probe: Uncovering the Most Boring Million-Dollar Jobs EVER! https://t.co/T7wVUdr6fc
Video Transcript AI Summary
So, we're from the Department of Government Efficiency, and we're here because we have no idea what you guys actually do around here.
Where's the gold, where's the money going and how many 50-year-olds are you paying every month? All the funds are allocated, but what exactly are they allocated for? Also, why do 50,000 federal employees owe $1.5 billion in taxes?
After an audit of the IRS, we found you owe $50 million. What about your chief of the flat office navigation team getting paid $20,000,000 a year to find the edge of the office?
I want to see every receipt. If I find out even one cent went to funding secret IRS strip clubs, I'll throw you in the deepest, darkest prison cell in America!
Ultimately, we're going to fire some people, abolish the IRS, and turn IRS workers into ICE workers.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Hello, Daniel. What's happening? Oh, hey, Trump. It's actually president Trump. Oh, sorry.
President Trump. Yeah. We have somewhat of a problem here. What's the problem? Well, we can't really figure out what it is you actually do around here.
What? Oh, well. Yeah. I'm gonna need to see what you've gotten done this week. How you doing?
Who the hell are you guys?
Speaker 1: We're from the Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 0: What's that? Go. Alright, Nancy. We asked a hundred morons. What's the first thing Democrats will cry about when USA gets shut down?
Elon's a racist? Good answer, Nancy. Show me Elon's a racist. Alright. I'm gonna ask you one time and one time only.
Where's the gold?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where's the gold? Let me see here. The gold.
Speaker 0: Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Think, McFly. Think.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Think good and hot. Where's the gold? Well, I mean, it's here, but it's not here.
Speaker 0: So where's the fucking money going?
Speaker 3: Yeah. How many 50 year olds are you paying every month?
Speaker 0: All the funds are allocated. Allocated? Allocated for what? The great wall of IRS? Or or is it your secret slush fund for auditors gone wild parties?
Speaker 3: Remember the time you guys lost $12,000,000,000 in tax refunds?
Speaker 0: That was unfortunate. Okay. What have you been doing here, Daniel? I plead the fifth. Are you aware there's a 50,000 federal employees who owe 1,500,000,000.0 in taxes?
I plead the fifth. Daniel, one of your 87,000 IRS agents done today? I plead the fifth.
Speaker 1: Daniel, after an audit of the IRS, we found you owe $50,000,000. Boom. Can you explain that? That's the
Speaker 0: first thing Democrats will cry about when USA gets shut down. Impeach Donald Trump. Yes, sir. Show me impeach Donald Trump. Oh my gosh.
This is like total sexual harassment. Says here you chief for the flat office navigation team. Oh my gosh. Would you stop trying to date me? What do you do here?
Duh. It's like totally obvious. I lead team expeditions to the edge of the office. Well, $20,000,000 a year to find the edge of the office is way too much. So been doomed.
Oh my god. I think I'm dying. I wanna see every receipt, every penny, every w 2, every fucking $10.99. And I swear on MAGA, if I find out even 1 fucking cent went to fund in your secret IRS strip clubs, I'll throw you in the deepest, darkest prison cell in America with a bottle of baby oil and Diddy. And you'll get a hands on audit.
You'll never forget. We asked a hundred morons. What's the first thing Democrats will cry about when USAID gets shut down? No one voted for Elon? Did he ask No one voted for Elon.
Alright, Adam. We asked a hundred morons. What's the first thing Democrats will cry about when USAID gets shut down? Come on, Adam. You can do it, Adam.
Come on, Adam. Now January 6. Good answer. Show me January 6. You got three seconds to show me something.
Three two Oh, okay. Okay. I got something. Okay. What do you got?
This is just as good
Speaker 2: as gold. What the fuck is this?
Speaker 0: This is an IOU. An IOU? See right here? This is a 47,300,000 ounces of gold bullion. You might wanna hold on to that one.
You've been dodged. But we're just here to find out exactly what it is you do around here. I only do my brother. I swear. We want to know what your job title is.
Oh, I am a senior consultant for Cloudshape interpretation. What the hell is that? I specialize in predicting racist events based on cloud formations. 20,000,000 a year for cloud formations? You bet.
This about me pooping my pants in the office again, or or what what's what's going on here? Says here you're the chief bubble wrap popper. That that that's right, squirrel. So you just pop bubble wrap all day? Well, I mean, it's it's a little more complex than that.
So what is it that you do around here? Well, I mean, I'm the chief bubble wrap popper. Yeah. You said that, but what does a bubble wrap popper do? And why does a bubble wrap popper need a fucking security
Speaker 2: that? Dooge.
Speaker 0: Alright. So what did you come up with today? Well, we're going to fire this guy and send him to prison. Sounds good. What else?
We're going to abolish the IRS. Good. Anything else? Yeah. We're gonna take the 87,000 IRS workers and turn them into ICE workers.
Excellent.
@cb_doge - DogeDesigner
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump thanked Elon Musk for his contributions to DOGE. The crowd erupted in cheers as the President introduced him. TRUMP: "Thank you Elon. He is working very hard. He didn’t need this. We appreciate it.” https://t.co/vGlZoT4JcV
Video Transcript AI Summary
Perhaps you've heard of it. It's headed by Elon Musk, thank you Elon. He's working very hard and he didn't need to do this. We appreciate it. Everybody here appreciates it, even those who don't want to admit it.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the Thank you, Elon. He's working very hard. He didn't need this.
He didn't need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it, I believe. They just don't want to admit that.
@RWTNews - 🇺🇸🇺🇸Red White and True News🇺🇸🇺🇸
President Trump speaks to Laura Ingraham more about the lawfare and in particular the lawfare against DOGE. https://t.co/ScBFwguTkc
Video Transcript AI Summary
President Trump stated that a judge from a "very liberal state" ruled against his administration's efforts to shut down USAID, despite the fraud and waste they allegedly uncovered. He guaranteed an appeal, claiming "rogue judges" are harming the country.
Trump said tariffs will generate significant revenue, and he doesn't profit from initiatives like "The Trump card." He highlighted car companies building plants in the U.S. instead of Mexico. He believes the judge in the USAID case is a "grandstander" ignoring potential scams within the agency.
Regarding Tesla fires, Trump considers them potential "domestic political terrorism" against Elon Musk, whom he now knows and who supported him. He suggested those responsible are likely paid by the political left.
Trump claimed he instructed Elon Musk to retrieve astronauts stranded in space, blaming Biden for their extended stay. He praised Musk's genius and linked criticism of Musk to hatred of the U.S. He stated the astronauts will visit the Oval Office after recovering from their time in space.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Now more of my interview with president Trump. Moving on to Doge, judge Theodore Chuang is a federal district court judge in Maryland, has ruled against the Trump administration's efforts, mister president, to shut down USAID, ordering the government, on an accelerated basis to basically reinstate the agency's statutory functions. Your reaction to this development?
Speaker 1: Look at the fraud that we've caught. We've caught so much fraud, so much waste, so many employees that never showed up to work, and we have a judge from a very liberal state who ruled like that. So bad for our country.
Speaker 0: So I guess they closed the department. They're gonna have to reopen the department.
Speaker 1: It, I guess. Not I guess. I guarantee you. We will be appealing it. We have rogue judges that are destroying our country.
Speaker 0: Well, do you believe that at this point, given the totality of these lawsuits, it's a cavalcade of lawsuits, that your administration could be further hampered, your agenda could be slowed down. They're throwing monkey wrenches at you with these judicial rulings.
Speaker 1: Well, we have to go through an appellate process. That takes a long time. We have a judge that
Speaker 0: Do you have time?
Speaker 1: We have a judge. That's the point. We have time. We're gonna be making a lot of money because of tariffs. The good news is we've got it on we're going to very soon be on an even keel.
We're gonna be taking in a lot of money, The Trump card, the gold card, whatever they wanna call it, it's okay with me. Whatever's gonna sell better is fine with me. It'd be nice to get a piece, but I don't get a piece. Okay? I get nothing out of it.
All I do is wanna make this country successful again. We're taking in tremendous amounts of money. We have car companies that are building here who, six months ago, we're gonna build in Mexico, massive plants. They're building them in The United States. We have Honda.
It's going to Indiana. We have them opening up in Michigan. It's amazing what's happening.
Speaker 0: But judges for federal judges, district court judges, to order a sitting president to reinstate fired employees that you're the chief executive officer of The United States. You you order that these were agencies
Speaker 1: to be reviewed. Employees, many of whom didn't even report to work, many of whom were scamming this country. And you you see the same thing. Could read them off, and I did during various speeches. I read off deal after deal after deal, all big scams.
And we have a guy that wants to make a name for himself. You know, in many cases, they're just grandstanders. They wanna make a name for themselves. So we'll appeal it, and hopefully, we will meet with reasonable appeals. You know, I've won great cases on appeals.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, some of the maybe people weren't fired. Maybe they were temporarily put on suspended. So we'll see how this plays out, but he's very unhappy with what happened at USAID.
Speaker 1: Well, he shouldn't be. You know what he should do? He should really look at where the money went. They don't ever do wanna do that. You know, the Democrats always talk about, oh, our constitution's been violent.
The one thing they never talk about is where did these billions of dollars go? They never wanna look because when you see where the money went and the scams, it's you don't even have to see anything. Just look at the heading and the scam that they've created, and a judge like him will never look at that. They'll just say, oh, you wanna it sounds so nice. USAID.
Isn't it beautiful? But it's a whole big scam, Laura. And a judge like that is so bad for our country.
Speaker 0: Well, it'd be interesting to see whether you're able to shrink the size of this government. Every Republican president has claimed a desire to. Even Obama said we have to find waste, fraud, and abuse, but you're doing it the judges are trying to stop you.
Speaker 1: We're it. By the way, we're doing it at levels never seen before.
Speaker 0: Lunatics are setting fire to Teslas all across the country. Another horrible incident happened in Las Vegas last night. The FBI is on the scene investigating, and there is an ongoing investigation being led by Pam Bondi. In in in what you've seen so far, do you consider what's happening an act of domestic political terrorism against one of your allies?
Speaker 1: So Elon is a patriot. And, again, I I hardly knew Elon until the, you know, election. And he turned out that he liked me better than he liked these radical lunatics that were in it, better than Kamala, better than Joe, you know, because he's an intelligent person. He like and he backed me, and he went, and he got very much involved. He thought he actually would go around saying if Trump doesn't win, our country is over.
Speaker 0: But do you consider this an act of domestic terrorism?
Speaker 1: I think I think so. Why? I think that if and when they catch the people, and I hope they do, the good thing is they have a lot of cameras in those places, and they've caught some already having to do with that. I think that you will find out that they're paid by people that are very highly political on the left.
Speaker 0: Meanwhile, it's because of Elon Musk. Everything he did with SpaceX that those astronauts, stranded for nine months, they're finally coming home. Mister president, your reaction to what's unfolding.
Speaker 1: So when I came in office, I said, Elon, we gotta get them out. Do you have a rocket ship handy? How many people have a rocket? And Biden left them up. He abandoned them.
You know, we could have done this sooner, but Biden didn't want to because he was embarrassed by what happened. So they were up there. They were supposed to be there for a few days. They were there for many months. And now they're coming back.
But think of it. Elon's able to do that with his genius, and you have people that hate it. And I really believe these are people that hate our country. It's a big problem. But, you know, they don't there aren't so many of them.
There are many more that love our country, and they love our country now more than they have maybe ever in their lives. There's never been a movement like MAGA, like America First, call it, whatever you wanna call it. This is the greatest movement in the history of politics.
Speaker 0: What's the next stop for the astronauts? Are they gonna be coming to the White House?
Speaker 1: No. They're gonna number one, they have to get better. You know, when you're up there and you have no no pull in your muscle, you have no gravity, you can lift a thousand pounds like this. They have to get they have to get better. It's gonna be a little bit tough for them.
It's not easy. You know, they're up a long time. And when they do, they'll come to the Oval Office.
Speaker 0: We have a Fox News alert. President
@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.
@MonicaCrowley - Monica Crowley
🚨MUST WATCH: This @BretBaier interview with @elonmusk & the @DOGE team is OUTSTANDING 🔥🇺🇸 https://t.co/EJaolneGTN
Video Transcript AI Summary
Doge aims to cut the federal deficit by $1 trillion by reducing waste and fraud, targeting a 15% spending reduction without affecting critical services. Astonishingly, billions are wasted routinely, like a billion-dollar charge for a simple online survey. Doge aims to cut $4 billion daily and publishes findings on doge.gov for transparency.
The team found a mine in Pennsylvania housing 400 million paper retirement documents, a process from the 1950s they plan to digitize for faster processing. Government IT costs $100 billion, maintaining systems over 50 years old. Social Security faces fraud, with 40% of calls being from fraudsters trying to steal benefits. Doge aims to protect legitimate recipients and ensure website stability.
There are 15-20 million potentially fraudulent Social Security numbers in the system. NIH has 27 centers with 700 IT systems that don't connect and 27 CIOs. The federal government has a one-way ratchet workforce, leading to duplicative functions like 40 communications offices at HHS. The IRS has 1,400 people provisioning laptops and cell phones, a task that could be done monthly by a fraction of that staff.
Treasury uses one main bank account for all outgoing payments, lacking basic financial controls and auditability. There's $500 billion in fraud annually. Small business loans were given to those under 11 and over 120 years old due to systems not cross-referencing data. Fraudsters exploit the "alive" status in Social Security to claim benefits for dead people. Doge views its work as a patriotic duty to ensure America's solvency.
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 thirty 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 fifteen to twenty million 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.
@america - America
Bret Baier’s full interview with Elon Musk and @DOGE: https://t.co/7KmRs8UJq2
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 casually, like a billion-dollar charge for a simple online survey. Doge aims to cut waste by $4 billion daily and publishes findings on doge.gov for transparency.
A key project involves digitizing the government retirement process, currently a paper-based system housed in a mine with 400 million documents. The goal is to transform it into an online system, processing retirements in days instead of months.
Doge is also addressing IT issues, including outdated systems and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Social Security is a focus, aiming to prevent fraud and improve service, after discovering 40% of calls to change direct deposit information are fraudulent. The team is working to ensure the solvency of the American government.
The federal government has 4.6 million credit cards for 2.3 million employees, and the team is working to reduce the number of cards. There is only one bank account used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government. The team is working to apply public company standards to the federal government.
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.
@SawyerMerritt - Sawyer Merritt
Trump has just posted about Elon Musk on Truth Social: https://t.co/EZ7hUNSwHr
@elonmusk - Elon Musk
@SawyerMerritt What’s Truth Social?
@elonmusk - Elon Musk
@SawyerMerritt Never heard of it
@RonPaul - Ron Paul
What A Shame For DOGE -- Trump Should've Listened To Elon https://t.co/Z6Gr86QVJg
Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0 recalls the initial excitement and caution around Dogecoin, noting some people were euphoric while others were more cautious about its potential to cut spending. He asks David about the early perception and whether there was fear of losing work or reducing government.
Speaker 1 says it was a funny situation because it happened right before the election. He invited Dr. Paul on his show, A Neighbor's Choice, and describes an idea to challenge the “deep state” on Halloween by asking Dr. Paul to help Elon Musk cut $2,000,000,000,000. He explains he asked Dr. Paul if he’d be willing to help, and Dr. Paul responded politely, not seeking a job but willing to help if asked. This led to Elon Musk expressing interest in bringing Ron Paul on board with Doge, generating a big reaction on Twitter, with memes and images, and people saying they would support changes if Ron Paul helped Doge. After the election, however, there was no follow-up, and Speaker 1 suggests Doge did not become the dog that hunts.
Speaker 0 adds a cautious tone, saying he doesn’t like to be overly optimistic or pessimistic, but felt compelled to be cautious about Doge due to momentum from large spending, special interests, and the sacredness of liberty within democracy. He wished well but urged waiting to see what happens, noting the momentum might not last.
Speaker 2 notes the weekend exclusive that Doge does not exist with eight months left on its charter, highlighting acrimony and negative commentary about Ron Paul’s involvement. He emphasizes that Ron Paul did not intend to join any administration and would help any party that wanted to actually cut government. He suggests it’s easy to become black-pilled about the situation. He contends the president has been captured by DC, describing Gaza, a bloodbath in Gaza, Venezuela, and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war as ongoing issues. He asserts that Doge was massively popular and that Trump rode that wave into the White House with libertarian support, but as Trump veered away from that stance, his numbers dropped despite claims of improvement on Truth Social. He argues Trump’s declining numbers are evident in major polls, and that the deep state influenced the situation, with the deep state running DC.
Overall, the discussion centers on the rise and decline of Doge’s political relevance, Ron Paul’s involvement, Elon Musk’s role, and the broader political environment including Trump’s trajectory, foreign conflicts, and the influence of the “deep state.”
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: You know, there is something in the news that I think you know a little bit about and paid a little bit of attention to, and you had the right understanding when it was started when a few people got euphoric about it. But there were a few that were a little more cautious about, you know, Doge. You know? Now how what was it gonna do? Was it gonna cut spending?
And it it was something that it was easy to be cynical if you came from a libertarian view. But, David, do you remember that that event when it was started? Tell me, were you super excited? I'm gonna be out of work. There won't be anything to talk about.
Government's gonna be cut way back. What are we gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: I tell you
Speaker 0: that.
Speaker 1: You know, I tell you what, it was a funny story because it was right before the election, and I asked to have you on, doctor Paul, on my, show, A Neighbor's Choice. And I said, okay. What am I gonna talk about? They and you said you're available for your team said he was that you'd be available for Halloween. And I thought, I I got an idea.
I'll give the deep state a real fright on Halloween. I'll see if I can get doctor Paul to say he'd help Elon. Let me see if I can get a a yes out of you. So I had you on, and I said, hey. Elon wants to cut $2,000,000,000,000.
I think we know the one guy who'd hold him accountable to that. That'd be you, doctor Paul. Would you be willing to help? And, of course, you were very polite and, you know, you said, well, you know, I'm not looking for a job, but I'd be glad to help if he asked. And, all of a sudden, we put that out on Twitter and boom, it's blowing up all over, becomes the number one trending topic.
Your name is going all over Twitter. And Elon finds it and says, I'd love to have Ron Paul join Doge too. And all of you all of a sudden, it's a huge sensation. And he's posting funny memes and images, and people are saying, you know, I wasn't gonna vote for Trump, but if Ron gets to help Doge, then I'll crawl through glass to see that happen. So a lot of people were absolutely thrilled and actually made a big impact.
But, unfortunately, when I saw that they didn't follow-up after the election with you, I said, you know, I think Doge is not gonna be the dog that hunts after all. You know?
Speaker 0: You know, I I never like to be overly optimistic. I I never want to leave everything very down, trodden, and then the world's coming to an end. People should have hope. But in this case, when this came out, I I really, really had to be cautious. I mean, I wished him well, and I'm sure a lot of good libertarians did because there were some good things in there.
But I remember expressing this to many people, may have even on the program, that let's wait and see what happens because there's too much momentum. The momentum is there because the the treatment is so horrendous, and that is when you have all this spending and all these special interests and and this this sacredness sacredness of liberty of democracy. Anybody who can put a majority together can get what they want and the wars that were going on. So I was rather pessimistic, but I kept encouraging it. But it seems like it's not gonna last forever.
It didn't didn't seem to you that it was doing so well at the beginning, then it sort of faded away quick quickly, but they were trying to close the door and not have us notice.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, mean, the reason we're talking about it is it came out over the weekend. Exclusive DOAGE doesn't exist with eight months left on its charter. You know, there's a lot of acrimony and recriminations about it and, people with negative comments and saying, oh, you know, why why did Ron Paul sign on to this? But, you know, what people don't understand, like you like, David said from the beginning, you weren't joining any administration. You would help any any any party that wanted to actually cut government.
And so, Mayne, I think it's easy for us to sit back and be black pilled about the whole thing. Gosh. What could have been? And indeed, the president, unfortunately, has been captured by DC. He's been sucked into the vortex of endless foreign adventures.
He calls them peacemaking, but it's peacemaking with warships. So, you know, we've got Gaza. We've got we've got a bloodbath in Gaza. We've got Venezuela. We've got the ongoing Ukraine Russia war, on and on and on.
And, unfortunately, as both of you gentlemen know, two things. One, Doze was massively popular. And, David, you're right. I mean, he rode that wave. President Trump rode that wave into the White House.
That in libertarian support, rode that into the White House, because it was massively popular. And now that he's veered away from that, look at his numbers. His numbers are in the tank. Despite what he says on Truth Social that his numbers are better than ever, someone underneath that post over the weekend posted the every one of the major polls, and he's down double digits. So it's unpopular to do what he's doing.
He should have listened to Elon. Should He have listened to Ron Paul. He should have gone the Doge route. It's not completely his fault. Congress has a huge role because that's where it hit a brick wall.
But the you know, president Trump does carry a lot of weight, and he could have pushed a lot through if he'd focused on it. But sadly enough, the deep state got him. The d state runs DC.