Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / ELON MUSK: 'There are dead people working in government.' Speaks at Trump Cabinet Meeting on DOGE

Transcript

ELON MUSK: 'There are dead people working in government.' Speaks at Trump Cabinet Meeting on DOGE · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:05
  Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a
• 0:10
  show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's
• 0:14
  doing with his various companies, including Tesla,
• 0:16
  SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neurolink, and of course, X.
• 0:21
  And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share a
• 0:24
  quick insight from our show's analytics.
• 0:27
  It turns out the 45% of you listening right now are
• 0:31
  subscribed to the show. And thank you for that.
• 0:33
  But that means that 55% of you are not.
• 0:36
  So I'm offering you a deal. I promise to do everything in my
• 0:39
  power to keep bringing you the latest and most interesting news
• 0:43
  about Elon Musk every single day and about his companies.
• 0:47
  If you'll do me one favor and hit the subscribe or follow
• 0:50
  button on your podcast platform right now, that's it.
• 0:55
  Pretty simple and straightforward.
• 0:56
  It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference
• 1:00
  for the show Elon Musk News. As crazy as it sounds that that
• 1:05
  that is almost a literal description of the work that the
• 1:09
  Doge team is doing is helping fix the government computer
• 1:12
  systems. Many of these systems are
• 1:14
  extremely old. They don't communicate.
• 1:16
  There are a lot of mistakes in the systems.
• 1:18
  The software doesn't work. The so we are actually Texas
• 1:23
  hold. It's it's, it's ironic, but it's
• 1:26
  true. The the overall goal here with
• 1:29
  the Doge team is to help address the, the enormous deficit.
• 1:33
  We simply cannot sustain as a country, $2 trillion deficits,
• 1:38
  the interest rates that just the interest on the national debt
• 1:42
  now exceeds the Defense Department spending.
• 1:45
  We spend a lot on the Defense Department, but we're spending
• 1:47
  like over a trillion dollars on interest.
• 1:50
  If this continues, the country will go become de facto
• 1:53
  bankrupt. It's not an optional thing.
• 1:56
  It is an essential thing. That's the reason I'm here and
• 2:01
  taking a lot of Flack and getting a lot of death threats,
• 2:03
  By the way, I like stack them up.
• 2:07
  But if we don't do this, America will go bankrupt.
• 2:10
  That's why it has to be done. I'm confident at this point.
• 2:15
  Knock on wood. You know, look on my wooden
• 2:17
  head, the it's got a lot of work there that we can actually find
• 2:25
  a trillion dollars in savings. That would be a roughly 15% of
• 2:28
  the $7 trillion budget. And obviously that can only be
• 2:32
  done with the support of everyone in this room.
• 2:35
  And I'd like to thank everyone for your support.
• 2:37
  Thank you very much. This can only be done with your
• 2:39
  support. So this is really there is a
• 2:43
  support function for the president and for the the
• 2:47
  agencies and departments to help achieve those savings and to
• 2:51
  effectively find 15% in reduction in fraud and waste.
• 2:58
  And we bring the receipts. So people say like, well, is
• 3:01
  this real? Just go to doge.gov.
• 3:03
  We line item by line and we specify each item.
• 3:06
  So and we, and I should say we also, we will make mistakes.
• 3:11
  We won't be perfect, but when we make mistake, we'll fix it very
• 3:15
  quickly. So for example, with USAID, one
• 3:19
  of the things we absolutely cancelled very briefly was
• 3:22
  Ebola, Ebola prevention. I think we all wanted Ebola
• 3:24
  prevention. So we restored the Ebola
• 3:27
  prevention immediately and there was no interruption.
• 3:31
  But we, we do need to move quickly if we're if we're to
• 3:35
  achieve a a trillion dollar deficit reduction in in
• 3:40
  financial year 2026, it requires saving $4 billion per day every
• 3:45
  day from now through the end of September.
• 3:48
  But we can do it and we will do it.
• 3:51
  Thank you. Would you have any questions of
• 3:53
  Elon while we're on the subject of those because we'll finish
• 3:55
  off with that. And if you would have any
• 3:58
  questions, please ask. You could ask me or Eli.
• 4:01
  Go ahead, please. Thank you.
• 4:02
  Mr. President, thank you. Mr. Musk, just wanted to ask you
• 4:06
  that the President Trump put out a true social today saying that
• 4:10
  everybody in the Cabinet was was happy with you.
• 4:13
  I just wondered if that's if you had heard otherwise and if you
• 4:16
  had heard anything about members of the Cabinet who weren't happy
• 4:18
  with the way things were going, and if So, what are you doing to
• 4:22
  address those dissatisfaction? And let the Cabinet speak, just
• 4:27
  for a second. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:29
  Is anybody unhappy with a? If you are, will throw them out
• 4:34
  of here. Is anybody?
• 4:44
  Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing
• 4:47
  this, and some disagree a little bit.
• 4:49
  But I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's
• 4:52
  not only happy, they're thrilled.
• 4:53
  So go ahead, Elon. Grateful.
• 4:56
  And President Trump has put together, I think, the best
• 4:59
  cabinet ever, literally. So I and I do not give false
• 5:05
  praise. This, this is an incredible
• 5:07
  group of people. I don't think such a talented
• 5:10
  team has actually ever been assembled.
• 5:13
  I think it's literally the best cabinet that the country has
• 5:15
  ever had and I think the company should be incredibly
• 5:18
  appreciative of the people in this room.
• 5:19
  Thanks. Go.
• 5:21
  Ahead, please, yeah. Mr. President, thanking Mr.
• 5:25
  Musk, are there about half of the government employees so far
• 5:29
  appear to have responded to your request for what they've been
• 5:32
  doing over the past week. Is there a timeline in place for
• 5:35
  next moves for people being fired?
• 5:37
  And when can the American people expect to see results from them?
• 5:42
  Yes. Well, to be, to be clear, like
• 5:45
  the, I think that e-mail perhaps was first interpreted as a
• 5:49
  performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review.
• 5:52
  Do you have a pulse? Do you have a pulse and two
• 5:56
  neurons? So if you have a pass and two
• 6:00
  neurons, you can reply to an e-mail.
• 6:02
  This is, you know, I think not a high bar is what I'm saying.
• 6:07
  This is, should be anyone could accomplish this.
• 6:10
  But what we are trying to get to the bottom of is we think there
• 6:12
  are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead,
• 6:17
  which is probably why they can't respond.
• 6:20
  And, and some people who are not real people, like they're
• 6:23
  literally fictional individuals that are collecting paycheck.
• 6:25
  Well, somebody's collecting paychecks on a fictional
• 6:27
  individual. So we're literally trying to
• 6:29
  figure out, are these people real?
• 6:31
  Are they alive and can they write an e-mail, which I think
• 6:34
  is a reasonable expectation for the American.
• 6:37
  You know, the American public would have at least that
• 6:39
  expectation of someone in the public sector.
• 6:41
  Mr. Master mask roughly this. Is not, it's not on my bar,
• 6:45
  guys. Go on.
• 6:47
  Employees have responded so far to this e-mail.
• 6:50
  Does that mean that the remaining 1 million or so
• 6:52
  federal employees now risk being terminated?
• 6:55
  And is it your understanding and expectation when you post a
• 6:58
  directive on X that the Cabinet secretaries will follow that
• 7:01
  order? Because several agencies have
• 7:03
  instructed employees that this is voluntary or not to respond.
• 7:08
  Yeah, Well, I mean, so I guess there was a like last week, the
• 7:13
  President encouraged me via through social and also via
• 7:17
  phone call to be more aggressive.
• 7:20
  And I was like, OK, you know. Yes, Sir.
• 7:23
  Mr. President, we will indeed do that with the President as
• 7:27
  commander in chief. I do what the president asks.
• 7:30
  So, and I said, can we send out an e-mail to everyone just
• 7:35
  saying, what did you get done last week?
• 7:36
  The president said yes. So it did that.
• 7:40
  And you know, we got a partial response.
• 7:45
  We're going to send another e-mail.
• 7:46
  But our goal is not to be capricious or unfair.
• 7:50
  It's we want to give people every opportunity to send an
• 7:53
  e-mail. And the e-mail could simply be
• 7:56
  what I'm working on is 2 sensitive classifieds to
• 7:58
  describe. Like literally just that would
• 8:01
  be sufficient. You know, I think this is just
• 8:05
  common sense. And what is your target number
• 8:08
  for for how many workers employees you're looking to
• 8:11
  catch? We, we wish to keep everyone who
• 8:14
  is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well.
• 8:19
  But if if they're if the job is not essential or they're not
• 8:22
  doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the
• 8:26
  public payroll. Hey, thank you so much for
• 8:34
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 8:36
  support. If you could take a second and
• 8:38
  hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
• 8:40
  platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly
• 8:43
  appreciate it. It helps out the show
• 8:45
  tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
• 8:48
  And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
• 8:51
  caught up quickly. And please, if you want to
• 8:54
  support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero.
• 9:00
  And please take care of yourselves and each other.
• 9:02
  And I'll see you tomorrow.