Latest / NO FILTER / _This is not the end__ How Elon Musk has impacted U.S. with DOGE efforts(MP3_160K)

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_This is not the end__ How Elon Musk has impacted U.S. with DOGE efforts(MP3_160K) · NO FILTER

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Right joining us out. And we've seen his White House
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: correspondent Von Hilliard, CNBC senior analysts and commentator Ron and Sana,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: National affairs correspondent at the Nation, John Nichols, and Teddy Schliefer,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: who covers Elon Musk for The New York Times. Teddy,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: let's just stick on Elon for a second. This is
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: supposed to be his big goodbye in the Oval Office,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: but both men are adamant that he's going to be
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: sticking around.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has a tricky dance to
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: do right here. He needs to indicate to Trump that
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: he's going to be sticking around enough and be at
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: his service. But he all seems to indicate to Test
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: the shareholders and SpaceX shareholders that he's not going to
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: be around too much, because you know, after all, he
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: runs those companies. So right now, the reason why the
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: messaging is kind of kind of garbl Katie is because
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: he is trying to indicate to everybody that he's going
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: to be there for everyone, and that's just hard to do.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Let's talk it a little bit about Doge for a second,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and what Doge was able to do fifty fifty eight
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: thousand jobs were cut by DOGE. Seventy six thousand government
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: employees took buyouts. Apparently there are one hundred and fifty
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thousand more planned reduction. DOGE estimates it saved one hundred
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and seventy five billion dollars. It's hard to get some
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: hard numbers on that, though, because the accounting that DOGE
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: has offered is sometimes fulfilled with factual errors. Elon Musk
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: had said very early on that he wanted one trillion
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: dollars worth of savings. There's one former DOGE employee who
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: came out and gave an interview. Was fired after this
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: interview where he said that what he experienced Teddy while
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: he was working with DOGE was that the government was
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: pretty efficient and there wasn't a lot that was easy
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to cut because it actually worked.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: It's sure, I mean, I mean that interview you're referencing
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: is kind of funny in its own way. Just this
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: is it sort of you know, you realize the naivete
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: in print on the record. Look, I mean, obviously, like
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of Republicans frankly who
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: were excited about some cuts. You know, I do think
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: that Musk was it was a victim here of the
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: high expectations, he said. I mean, I think if he
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: had gone in at the beginning of the administration set
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: we're just trying to cut one hundred billion dollars, like
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: some people might have thought it was ridiculous, And some
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: people might have thought that even they haven't cut a
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: hundred billion, And then you end up in a debate
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: over the numbers. But if you had set the bar
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: at that level, this would be a different legacy, or
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: at least be a more debatable legacy. But you know,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Muska and his team, you know, came in with such bravado,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: throwing out these preposterous numbers that well, you only cut
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty billion, even with an asterisk, it
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: smells a bit different.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Ron is Elon Musk right now for the White House
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: an asset or a liability? I think it probably I'm
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: gonna give that von.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I think it's a good question.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I think it's in terms of what they wanted to
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: ultimately proved to the American public as a success story
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: of the idea of deconstructing the so called administrative state.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: He was an asset, but far from a success. And
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: I say that because when he set out on this
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Doge mission during the transition with you'll recall Vike Remeswami,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: the two men said that this was going to be it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: The Conservatives for a long time, it talked about downsizing
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: the federal government and ensuring that the workforce was going
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: to be not full of ninety percent the liberal workforce,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: and this was going to be the moment where they
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: were going to come in and successively changed the makeup
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: of these executive federal agencies. And what happened to Viake
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Remswami left before even inauguration day and Elon Musk is
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: leaving after just one hundred and thirty days with based
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: off of the numbers that we have and depending where
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: some of this litigation goes, only downsizing the federal government
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: workforce from five to ten percent. And you noted are
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: from that trillion or even two trillion dollar cut that
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: he had announced at that Medicine Square Garden rally before
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four election. What amounted to a promise,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: and yes, he ultimately dismantled Voice of America, crippled USAID,
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: which is the main agency responsible for humanitarian aid in
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: four and aid, he cut the Department of Education, effectively
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: their workforce in half. He effectively got rid of the
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Consumer Protection Bureau. These are sizable impacts that Elon Musk
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: and his DOZE staff had. At the same time, you
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: heard him and the President suggests that those individuals that
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: he brought in side of these various agencies are going
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: to continue their work. Over at the Treasury Department, they
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: actively DOSE employees have access to the Treasury payment systems.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: They are still in court trying to gain access to
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Social Security information the IRS. Effectively, they downsize their their
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: IT team, their tech team from one hundred workers down
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: to just three workers. Adding these DOSEE employees to the mix.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Here our lasting impacts, and they are indicating that they
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: are going to continue to work at the same time
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: losing Elon Musk, losing Steve Davis, who is really his
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: DOZE right hand, losing Katie Miller, who is an advocate
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: internally for DOGE. Those are big losses here to the mission.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: And I think it's a question of just how much
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: focus is this administration going to put towards this idea
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: of deconstructing the administrative state, Because you could argue that
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: they lost their two champions in the vacan elon Musk
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: in rather quick terms, when they had set out to
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: make this a two year mission, and both of them
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: are now already gone and focusing.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: On the foreign cuts. And you heard Donald Trump at
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the top of this talk about how they were able
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to cut these programs that nobody thought were a good idea.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Nobody could make sense of. Why do we have Sesame
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Street and Arabic what's going on with that? Why is
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Burma getting cash? Pro Publica did a big, long investigation
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: about what the cuts to foreign aid have done overseas,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: especially in some unstable hotspots, created more instability, more chaos,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and is making it easier for terrorism to increase, disease
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to spread, making us less safe here at home, because
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: what happens overseas often doesn't just stay overseas, especially in
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the case with diseases. I mean, they can travel very easily,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: as we all experienced during COVID. Vaughn touched on so
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: much of that. I'm sorry, I've got Ron, John and Vaughn,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: so you're going to I'm going to have to try
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to enunciate. Ron Vaughn touched on so much of so
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: many at the cuts, A lot of the cuts were
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: done so haphazardly that many had to be walked back.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: They were cuts that were made to crucial government services
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: that needed to be walked back really quickly. They in
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: some cases had to rush to find the people that
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: they fired to convince them to come back. I mean,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: it has been a legacy of chaos so far, and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: one that we could very much still feel the effects
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of going forward, even if they're trying to stabilize things well.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: I think chaoticist is the adjective that thus far describes
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: almost every effort undertaken by this administration, Katie, and so
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: far as when you're talking about tariffs, when you're talking
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: about budget cuts, when you're talking about firings and rehirings.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: This has been such a haphazard process that CEO confidence,
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: by the way, plunged by the largest amount in its
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: most recent estimate in fifty years. You have so many
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: people who are confused by what's being done or not
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: done in Washington right now, what's being enacted, overturned by
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: the courts and then restored by the courts until it
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: gets to the Supreme Court. That this is a wildly
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: confusing period, and again also calls into question whether or
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: not DOGE has cut one hundred and seventy five billion
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: dollars at all. Now, we've also seen some additional unintended consequences,
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: like food shipments that we're supposed to go overseas to
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: starving people in other countries, sitting at port rotting, you know,
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: things that were really not supposed to happen as part
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: and parcel these processes. And what really struck me in
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: this conversation that took place in the Oval was that
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: so many things that were said were just so incredibly inaccurate.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: The President talk about transgender mice. The eight million dollars
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: he talked about had to do with what are called
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: transgenic mice, mice that are used in scientific experiments where
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: they alter their genetic structure so that they can see
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: how certain drugs will affect humans. As mice have very
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: similar DNA structures to human beings, and that's why they're
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: used in medical experiments. All of these comments that came out.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: The greatest economy that we've ever seen in the first
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: Trump administration was roughly the same as the last three
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: years of President Obama's administration, very very little measurable difference
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: between the two, and so it's hard when you sit
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: back and listen to that entire conversation to really put
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: any of this into perspective that would make sense to
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: a rational human