Speaker 1: Thanks for having us and doing this. I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in this, you know. First let
Speaker 1: me start with you elon what are the budgetary savings
Speaker 1: goals and how much do you think you've achieved so far.
Speaker 2: Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,
Speaker 2: so from a nominal depth SIT of two trillion to
Speaker 2: track cut depth SIT in half to one trillion, or
Speaker 2: looked at it in total federal spending, to drop the
Speaker 2: federal spending from seven trillion to six trillion. We want
Speaker 2: to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and forward reduce
Speaker 2: the spending by fifteen percent, which seems really quite achievable.
Speaker 2: The government is not efficient and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: waste and forward, so we feel confident that fifteen percent
Speaker 2: reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical
Speaker 2: government services.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to all the making it better
Speaker 1: and talk to all the guys here about the specifics.
Speaker 1: But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found
Speaker 1: out in this process?
Speaker 2: The sheer amount of waste importing the government. It is astonishing,
Speaker 2: it's mind blowing. Just we routinely encounter wastes of a
Speaker 2: billion dollars or more casually, you know, for example, like
Speaker 2: the simple survey that was literally ten question survey that
Speaker 2: you could do with survey monkey qushed about ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Was the government was being charged almost a billion dollars
Speaker 2: for that for just the survey a billion dollars for
Speaker 2: a simple online survey do you like the National Park?
Speaker 2: And then there appears to be no feedback loop for
Speaker 2: what would be done with that survey, So the say
Speaker 2: we would just go to nothing because like you're saying.
Speaker 1: You technically are a special government employee and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be one hundred and thirty days.
Speaker 3: Are you going.
Speaker 1: To continue past that or do you think that's what
Speaker 1: you're going to do?
Speaker 2: Or well, I think we will accomplish most of the
Speaker 2: work required to reduce the deficit by trillion dollars within
Speaker 2: that timeframe.
Speaker 1: So in that timeframe one hundred out of days, and
Speaker 1: the process is a report at some.
Speaker 3: Point at one hundred days.
Speaker 2: Not really a report. We are cutting the waste and
Speaker 2: prod in real time. So every day that passes, our
Speaker 2: goal is to reduce the waist and prod by four
Speaker 2: billion dollars a day. Every day, seven days a week,
Speaker 2: and so far we are succeeding.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to talk to the specifics.
Speaker 1: But there obviously are DOGE critics who are reading all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. Obviously lawmakers on the other side of
Speaker 1: the aisle are attacking you, and they characterize the approach
Speaker 1: is this fire ready and then aim, and how do
Speaker 1: you approach that? How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2: Well, I do agree that we actually want to be
Speaker 2: careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice,
Speaker 2: if not thrice, and cut once. And actually that is
Speaker 2: our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip,
Speaker 2: but it is anything at that which is not say
Speaker 2: that we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach
Speaker 2: this with the standard of making no mistakes at all,
Speaker 2: that would be like saying someone in baseball's got about
Speaker 2: a thousand. That's impossible. So when we do make mistakes,
Speaker 2: we correct them quickly and we move on.
Speaker 1: Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Steve Davis,
Speaker 1: you are a rocket scientist. It used to be yeah,
Speaker 1: and now essentially you're the chief operating.
Speaker 3: Officer of dough day to day operations.
Speaker 4: Fair to say, yeah, part of part of the Dose team.
Speaker 3: So how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge?
Speaker 2: You see?
Speaker 4: The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is
Speaker 4: that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think
Speaker 4: most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that
Speaker 4: in order to have the country going bankrupt would be
Speaker 4: a very bad thing, and therefore the country going not
Speaker 4: bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are
Speaker 4: willing to kind of put our lives on hold in
Speaker 4: order to do. I think the thing that's special right
Speaker 4: now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed,
Speaker 4: that there's an administration that's supportive and a great cabinet
Speaker 4: and just a great group that will actually make success
Speaker 4: a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring
Speaker 4: mission and given the non zero chance of success, it
Speaker 4: was worth down.
Speaker 2: I just like to sort of reemphasize that point. The
Speaker 2: success but those is only possible with President Trump and
Speaker 2: with the outstanding cabinet that he's selected. It would be
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like Jon said, the minimum impulse bit is often a
Speaker 4: billion dollars. So for example, the eight hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: million dollars which was the online survey, that's an enormous
Speaker 4: amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the
Speaker 4: dog team wasn't working with it, in that case the
Speaker 4: Department of Interior. But then taking it one step further,
Speaker 4: DOGE then publish publishes these things on our website for
Speaker 4: maximum transparency. So now the general public it would have
Speaker 4: been impossible for the general public to have seen that.
Speaker 4: Now anyone can just log into Dodakov anytime and see
Speaker 4: these payments as they're not yet in real time. They're close,
Speaker 4: but they're probably be in real time with the next
Speaker 4: few weeks.
Speaker 1: But the process it still involves Congress, right at some level.
Speaker 2: We try to keep Congress as informed as possible. But
Speaker 2: the Lord does say that money needs to be spent correctly.
Speaker 2: It should not be spent fortunately or wastefully. It's not
Speaker 2: contrary to Congress to avoid waste and for it. It
Speaker 2: is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress. And
Speaker 2: we've seen actually great support at least from the Republican
Speaker 2: side of the House and occasionally start Democrats too. You know,
Speaker 2: it's nice to see people cross the out once in
Speaker 2: a while, but usually when they attack doors, they never
Speaker 2: attack any of the specifics. So they'll say what we're
Speaker 2: doing is somehow unconstitutional or legal or whatever. We're like, well,
Speaker 2: which line of the cost savings do you disagree with?
Speaker 2: And they can't point to any and we list them
Speaker 2: all on door struck up and the doge had line,
Speaker 2: and you'll see just outrageous things, one outrageous thing after another.
Speaker 1: Jill Gabyam, besides Elon, you're one of several billionaires here,
Speaker 1: co founder of Airbnb, and you wanted to help out.
Speaker 5: I bumped into Anthony d Elon probably back in February,
Speaker 5: and they told me somebody about a mine that was
Speaker 5: dealt with retirement, and they said it needs somebody to
Speaker 5: help out to fix retirement in the government.
Speaker 3: I love the challenge, so I jumped on board.
Speaker 5: And it turns out there is actually a mine in
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process
Speaker 5: in the government. Now picture this. This giant cave has
Speaker 5: twenty two thousand filing cabinets stacked ten high to house
Speaker 5: four hundred million.
Speaker 2: Pieces of paper.
Speaker 5: It's a process that started in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 5: largely hasn't changed in.
Speaker 3: The last seventy years.
Speaker 5: And so as he dug into it, we found a
Speaker 5: retirement cases that had so much paper they had to
Speaker 5: fit it on a shipping palate. So the process takes
Speaker 5: many months, and we're going to make it just many days.
Speaker 5: Well it would be digitized or how absolutely so this
Speaker 5: will be an online digital process that will take just
Speaker 5: a few days at most. And I really think, you know,
Speaker 5: it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to
Speaker 5: these processes that are older than the age of half
Speaker 5: the people watching your show tonight. So we really believe
Speaker 5: that the government can have an Apple Store like experience
Speaker 5: beat if we designed great, easier experience modern systems.
Speaker 3: Because right now it's by hand.
Speaker 2: Yes, the retired processes all by paper, literally, with people
Speaker 2: carrying paper and Manila envelopes into this gigantic mind.
Speaker 1: So they can't retire more than a certain number every month.
Speaker 3: About eight thousand a month.
Speaker 2: That's how we do. The reason we discovered it was
Speaker 2: we were saying, like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. Well,
Speaker 2: the most you could do is eight thousand a month.
Speaker 2: And even I don't know a second houses it can
Speaker 2: take six to nine months just to have your time
Speaker 2: at pavework process and they often get the calculations wrong.
Speaker 2: So we're like, well, why would it take so long
Speaker 2: to retire? And they're like, well, because of the mind.
Speaker 2: We're like, what do you mean of mine? What's the
Speaker 2: mine got to do with retiring? And that's where we
Speaker 2: discovered that all the retirement stuff is done by still
Speaker 2: done by paper, in a process that looks identical to
Speaker 2: what occurred in the nineteen fifties. Like if you took
Speaker 2: a snapshot of the mind when a posts ot in
Speaker 2: the fifties, today it looks the same.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. So how long do you think it'll take
Speaker 3: to turnover.
Speaker 5: Orgon as vast If we can, probably the next couple
Speaker 5: of months, we'll have this overhauled. And you know, I
Speaker 5: really think again, like why are we subjecting our federal
Speaker 5: workers to processes that they actually have to go through
Speaker 5: a training just to retire from the government. There's a
Speaker 5: whole training program that people have to go through in
Speaker 5: order to retire. I think we can do better for them.
Speaker 3: Arem Mogandaci doje engineer?
Speaker 1: You go into these places one of the more than
Speaker 1: a dozen engineers. First people to go into the agencies
Speaker 1: and view the puter data sets. Tell me what you're finding,
Speaker 1: and for people who don't understand how that process works,
Speaker 1: explain it for him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really
Speaker 6: excited about DOGE was learning basically the state of government computers.
Speaker 6: By some estimates, government it costs about one hundred billion
Speaker 6: dollars and it's funding systems that are over fifty years
Speaker 6: old in the case of something like Social Security or
Speaker 6: the IRS. So really critical systems are old, they cost
Speaker 6: a lot of money to maintain, and they can be
Speaker 6: the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. So
Speaker 6: I thought, I'm a software engineer that that maybe can
Speaker 6: make a difference here. And that's really what inspired me.
Speaker 3: At a high level, I gave a.
Speaker 1: History about social Security and a lot of words about it.
Speaker 1: From here's what Democrats have been saying about it.
Speaker 4: It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions
Speaker 4: of dollars from Social ste Security.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk and President Trump have set their sites on
Speaker 7: cutting social Security.
Speaker 1: Their goal is clear, destroy social security from within. You're
Speaker 1: in the building, I mean you're in the computers. What's
Speaker 1: happening there? What are you doing?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it doesn't line up with my experience on the ground.
Speaker 6: And I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to
Speaker 6: make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits,
Speaker 6: protect them from fraud that they experience every day on
Speaker 6: a routine basis, and also make the experience better. And
Speaker 6: I'll give you one example is at Social Security. One
Speaker 6: of the first things we learned is that they get
Speaker 6: phone calls every day of people trying to change direct
Speaker 6: positive information. So when you want to change your bank account,
Speaker 6: you can call Social Security. We learned forty percent of
Speaker 6: the phone calls that they get are from frauds stars
Speaker 6: that's right, almost half.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they steal people's social Security. Is what happens
Speaker 2: is they call in, they say they claim to be
Speaker 2: a retiree. Then they they and they convinced the post
Speaker 2: the Social Security person on the phone to change the
Speaker 2: where the where the money is flowing. It actually goes
Speaker 2: to some fraudster. Is this happening all day every day?
Speaker 2: And then and then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security
Speaker 2: it's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social
Speaker 2: Security system.
Speaker 1: How do you reassure people that what you all are
Speaker 1: doing is not going to affect their benefits.
Speaker 2: No, in fact, what we're doing will help their benefits.
Speaker 2: Legitimate people, as a result of the work of doage
Speaker 2: will receive more social security, not less. When emphasize that,
Speaker 2: as a result of the work of Doge, legitimate recipients
Speaker 2: of social security will receive more money, not less money.
Speaker 3: All right, I'll emphasize that.
Speaker 2: Point and then and let the record show that I
Speaker 2: said this and it will be proven out to be true.
Speaker 2: Let's let's check back on this in the future.
Speaker 1: So, Washington Post, the Social Security Administration website crashed four
Speaker 1: times in ten days this month because the servers were overloaded,
Speaker 1: blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into
Speaker 1: their online accounts. Freaked people out. Is that going to change, Yes,
Speaker 1: We're going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But is it a result of going in there something
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 4: Since the amount of issues that were the Social Security
Speaker 4: system are enormous. As an example, there are over fifteen
Speaker 4: million people that are over the age of one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty that are marked as alive in the Social Security.
Speaker 3: System, and that's an accurate figure. Correct.
Speaker 4: Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a
Speaker 4: problem again pre existing problems since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: at least from an IG report. So there are some
Speaker 4: great people working at the Social Career Administration in Social
Speaker 4: Security Administration that found this two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 4: nothing was done. And so fifteen to twenty million the
Speaker 4: Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent, we're floating around
Speaker 4: that can be used only for bad intentions. There'd be
Speaker 4: no way to use as for good intentions. And so
Speaker 4: one of the things the DOOSE team is doing is
Speaker 4: carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure
Speaker 4: that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
Speaker 1: Brad Smith working at HHS, and obviously another element is
Speaker 1: Medicare and Medicaid NIH, what do you finding.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Well, I'd say there's a couple of things we're
Speaker 8: really committed to in our work at AHHS. Number one,
Speaker 8: making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research
Speaker 8: in the world. And number two, making sure which President
Speaker 8: Trump has said over and over again that we one
Speaker 8: hundred percent protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot
Speaker 8: of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today,
Speaker 8: if you're inih researcher and you get one hundred dollars
Speaker 8: grant at your university today, you get to spend sixty
Speaker 8: of that and your university spends forty of that. The
Speaker 8: policy that we're proposing to make is that you get
Speaker 8: to spend eighty five of that and your university spends fifteen.
Speaker 8: So that's more money going directly to this scientists who
Speaker 8: are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is today
Speaker 8: they have twenty seven different centers. They got created over
Speaker 8: time by Congress and they're typically by disease state or
Speaker 8: body system. There's seven hundred different IT systems today at NIH,
Speaker 8: seven hundred different IT software systems. They can't speak to
Speaker 8: each other, so they don't talk to them. They have
Speaker 8: twenty seven different CIOs, and so when you think about
Speaker 8: making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.
Speaker 3: Time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, time, twenty seven different chief information officers correct, correct.
Speaker 2: And most of them are non technical.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot there.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of opportunity, and it will make science better.
Speaker 2: Now, yurse, And when I say that, our job is
Speaker 2: tech support I really mean it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to fix the computers.
Speaker 2: If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't
Speaker 2: get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people
Speaker 2: won't receive as social security. So what we have here
Speaker 2: are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing
Speaker 2: people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing people from
Speaker 2: preventing research from happening, that are extremely vunerable to fraud.
Speaker 2: And we're fixing it.
Speaker 1: And does that include AI does that include kind of
Speaker 1: changing the system overall?
Speaker 3: That's what I guess what people are afraid.
Speaker 1: Of is they don't know what this is all looking
Speaker 1: like and is it going to affect me in the
Speaker 1: long term.
Speaker 2: It's going to affect them, It's going to affect people
Speaker 2: very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will
Speaker 2: ensure the solvency of the American government, of the American
Speaker 2: of the United States of America. This is what this
Speaker 2: is what we're trying to do is ensure that people
Speaker 2: do receive their benefits in the future. And you can
Speaker 2: all receive your benefits if the if the country is
Speaker 2: operating in a healthy and competent way.
Speaker 1: Up next, how the Doze team plans to streamline some
Speaker 1: federal jobs and agencies, and later Elon Musks answers some
Speaker 1: of your questions that you asked Vax Anthony Armstrong, Doze,
Speaker 1: Office of Personnel Management, Morgan Stanley Banker M and a
Speaker 1: guy you know money and this is a lot of
Speaker 1: money slashing around.
Speaker 9: There's a lot of money slashing around. There's a lot
Speaker 9: of money slashing out the door. And if you look
Speaker 9: at the federal government in the way the workforce works,
Speaker 9: it's really a one way ratchet over decades.
Speaker 3: So it's going up. It's only going up. You never
Speaker 3: take it away.
Speaker 9: So that leaves you with duplicative functions, It leaves you
Speaker 9: with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the
Speaker 9: wrong places. So a couple of examples duplicative functions Brad
Speaker 9: mentioned twenty seven CIOs.
Speaker 2: If you had kept going.
Speaker 9: With Brady, probably talk about the communications office. I think
Speaker 9: you've got forty forty distinct communications offices in HHS, right, forty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not unusual, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, multiple offices like anyone healthy.
Speaker 9: This is not about the employees. There there's been many
Speaker 9: many hard working, well meeting people who took these jobs.
Speaker 9: These jobs were out there, they applied for them, they
Speaker 9: took them. They're doing what's there. It's just that they're
Speaker 9: duplicating the effort of forty offices. So you've got that,
Speaker 9: you've got overstaffing. A good example of overstaffing would be
Speaker 9: the IRS has got fourteen hundred people who are dedicated
Speaker 9: to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join
Speaker 9: the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone.
Speaker 9: You're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or
Speaker 9: employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the
Speaker 9: entire IRS in a little more than a month, so
Speaker 9: twelve times a year.
Speaker 2: You can read this. Why would you have fourteen hundred
Speaker 2: people whose only job it is to give a laptop
Speaker 2: and the phone.
Speaker 9: The whole IRS could be one a month, So that
Speaker 9: doesn't make any sense. And President Trump's been very clear
Speaker 9: scalpell not hatchet, and that's the way it's getting done.
Speaker 9: And then once those decisions are made, there's a very
Speaker 9: heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and
Speaker 9: treating everyone with dignity and respect. And if you look
Speaker 9: at how people have started to leave the government.
Speaker 3: It is largely through voluntary means.
Speaker 9: There's voluntary early retirement, there's voluntary separation payments, we put
Speaker 9: in place, deferred resignation.
Speaker 3: The eight month severance program.
Speaker 9: So it's a very heavy bias towards programs that are
Speaker 9: long data, that are generous, that allow people to exit
Speaker 9: and go and get a new job in the private sector.
Speaker 3: And you've heard a lot of.
Speaker 9: A lot of news about riffs about people getting fired.
Speaker 9: At this moment in time, less than zero point one five,
Speaker 9: not one point five, let's than point one five of
Speaker 9: the federal workforce has actually been given a riff notice, so.
Speaker 3: They're selected, if they're living.
Speaker 2: It is mostly almost no one's gotten fired.
Speaker 3: That's what we're saying, Tom Crass.
Speaker 1: Working at Treasury, you are having access to the payment system,
Speaker 1: oversees all the outgoing payments. Essentially those payments were going
Speaker 1: places we didn't know where they were going.
Speaker 10: Right, Yeah, Unfortunately that's the case, right you know, as
Speaker 10: in CFO of a big public tech company. Really what
Speaker 10: we're doing is we're applying public company standards to the
Speaker 10: federal government.
Speaker 2: And it is.
Speaker 10: Alarming how the financial operations in financial management is set up. Today,
Speaker 10: there is actually really only one bank account that's used
Speaker 10: to disburse all monies that go out of the federal government.
Speaker 3: About one bank account.
Speaker 10: It's a big one. It's a big one. It's a
Speaker 10: big one. It's a big one. A couple weeks ago,
Speaker 10: I had eight hundred million dollars in it. But it's
Speaker 10: the Treasury diedital account. So when you hear, you know,
Speaker 10: some of my colleagues here what they're talking about in
Speaker 10: terms of the fraud, you have to ask, well, why
Speaker 10: is this allowed to happen at a financial level. Well,
Speaker 10: it's actually quite simple but alarming the Treasury up until now,
Speaker 10: and thanks to President Trump, we're fixing this. In fact,
Speaker 10: there's an executive order that he just signed the other
Speaker 10: day which is protecting America's bank account because it really
Speaker 10: is the taxpayer's money, you know.
Speaker 3: One, we're changing the culture.
Speaker 10: The culture is and not a lot of caring and
Speaker 10: not a lot of commitment to doing what's right relative
Speaker 10: to financial operations.
Speaker 2: There's a five.
Speaker 10: Hundred million dollars a fraud every year. There's one hundreds
Speaker 10: of million dollars of improper payments, and we can't pass
Speaker 10: it on it. The Consolidated financial report is produced by Treasury,
Speaker 10: and we cannot pass it on we have material weaknesses.
Speaker 3: What that means is that if I was a public.
Speaker 10: Company CFO, I would effectively be removed. I couldn't file
Speaker 10: financial statements, I couldn't issue securities.
Speaker 2: Of course, can't pass it on right, The federal government
Speaker 2: cannot pass it in ordered, it's impossible. In fact, in
Speaker 2: order to pass order, you need the information that's pass
Speaker 2: and ordered. You need to have the payment code, you
Speaker 2: need to have the payment explanation, and you need to
Speaker 2: have a person who can contact to understand why that
Speaker 2: payment was made. None of those things were mandatory until
Speaker 2: until just recently, just a few weeks ago, in fact,
Speaker 2: maybe last week.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we're serving five hundred and eighty plus agencies, and
Speaker 10: up until very recently, effect they could say make the
Speaker 10: payment and Treasury just sent it out as fast as possible,
Speaker 10: no verification. And so what we're doing is what any
Speaker 10: household would do. But imagine you're a household. You have
Speaker 10: a bank account. Everyone has an ATM card connect to
Speaker 10: that account, everyone has a check book to that account.
Speaker 10: It's not just your children, it's not just your parents
Speaker 10: at your in laws, it's your extended family and they
Speaker 10: all can go to the account and disperse funds, no
Speaker 10: questions asked, no justification, no verification.
Speaker 1: Up next, the DOSE team targets government contracts and we'll
Speaker 1: show you what they're finding. Tyler Hasson, Interior Department. You're
Speaker 1: a former oil company CEO. You're reviewing contracts before they're
Speaker 1: approved for funding.
Speaker 3: What do you find?
Speaker 7: Well, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a
Speaker 7: little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract.
Speaker 7: I actually had an example of one right here.
Speaker 3: I could have done this in high school, and.
Speaker 2: I found it that bad.
Speaker 7: I found it on the weekends because under the Biden
Speaker 7: administration there was no departmental oversight within the Department of
Speaker 7: Interior whatsoever.
Speaker 3: None.
Speaker 2: We've now reviewing every.
Speaker 7: Single contract, every single grant, and when things come to
Speaker 7: my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing him to
Speaker 7: Secretary Bergham, and he's been fantastic. He's a businessman, he's
Speaker 7: very supportive of DOGE. It's been wonderful to work with them.
Speaker 1: Is the battle between government of decades and decades of
Speaker 1: build up and business, which you guys are, is that
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 3: Train hitting each other. I mean, it seems like it's
Speaker 3: pretty disruptive.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a revolution, and I think it might
Speaker 2: be the biggest revolution in government since the original Revolution.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, America is going
Speaker 2: to be in much better shape. Mecca will be solvent,
Speaker 2: the critical programs that people depend upon will walk, and
Speaker 2: it's going to be a fantastic future. But we're going
Speaker 2: to get a lot of complaints along the way. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things I learned at PayPal was,
Speaker 2: you know who complains the loudest and with the most
Speaker 2: amount of fake righteous indignation the fraudsters. That's it's a tell.
Speaker 2: Is that a crazy like the two billion dollars to
Speaker 2: Stacey Aprons ANDNGO that basically didn't exist and suddenly gets
Speaker 2: two billion dollars awarded from the federal government. She has why?
Speaker 2: And there are many such cases like that.
Speaker 1: I think that most people, common sense wise, would say
Speaker 1: the fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the ninety
Speaker 1: four year old mother who skips a check or somehow
Speaker 1: doesn't get what she's supposed to get.
Speaker 2: Right, And what we're trying to say is actually that
Speaker 2: the ninety four year old grandmother is actually, as a
Speaker 2: result of jo Dog's work, going to get her check.
Speaker 2: She's not going to be robbed by frauds's like she's
Speaker 2: getting robbed today. And the solvency of the of the
Speaker 2: federal government will ensure that she can tinages to receive
Speaker 2: those Social Security checks that Medicare continues to work, without
Speaker 2: which we're all doomed. And the reason we're doing this
Speaker 2: is because if we don't do it, America is going
Speaker 2: to go insolve it. We're going to go bankrupt and
Speaker 2: nobody's going to get anything.
Speaker 3: Why are you guys all doing it? I mean, you
Speaker 3: can pipe up, but you don't have to be here, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you don't have to be doing this.
Speaker 10: I have four blet's with four beautiful children with an eye,
Speaker 10: but we have a real fiscal crisis and this is
Speaker 10: not sustainable. And what's worse, back to my children and
Speaker 10: everyone else's children, is are burdening them with that debt
Speaker 10: and it's only going to grow.
Speaker 3: See, there's not a lot of hierarchy here.
Speaker 1: You guys are kind of all approaching it in different
Speaker 1: you know, silos, but with the same kind of goal, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really silicon Valley private sector colliding
Speaker 1: with government.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, we're heading in bad path, but that the
Speaker 4: chance of success exists. And just the one that I
Speaker 4: just is in my head right now, which is a
Speaker 4: fairly mundane one but I think is very illustrative, is
Speaker 4: credit cards. There are in the federal government around four
Speaker 4: point six million credit cards for around two point three
Speaker 4: to two point four million employees. This doesn't make sense,
Speaker 4: and so one of the things all the teams have
Speaker 4: have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said,
Speaker 4: do you need all of these credit cards? Are they
Speaker 4: being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?
Speaker 3: I hope they're getting frequent flyers.
Speaker 4: Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal
Speaker 4: government has is actually not very good because that's a
Speaker 4: whole other negotiation, right, yeah exactly, But so far the
Speaker 4: teams have worked together and they've reduced it from four
Speaker 4: point six million to four point three million, So we're
Speaker 4: taking it easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but clearly the should not be, you know more,
Speaker 2: they should go more credit cards than there are people.
Speaker 3: Joe, middle level employees.
Speaker 1: Are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking
Speaker 1: out bureaucracy?
Speaker 5: I mean absolutely, I mean I think what you're seeing
Speaker 5: is taking the best of silk combelling in the business
Speaker 5: world and bringing it into the government. We're bringing the
Speaker 5: best practices and the best methodologies, and people are inspired
Speaker 5: right especially on the retirement processors I can speak to.
Speaker 5: They've been trying to modernize and get off of paper
Speaker 5: since early two thousands, very unsuccessfully. Every attempt has gone
Speaker 5: over budget and been canceled because it hasn't been successful.
Speaker 5: And so you know, I showed up and I feel
Speaker 5: like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We can
Speaker 5: use design to solve it and good engineering and really
Speaker 5: create a better experience for everybody.
Speaker 2: We're talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for
Speaker 2: any company to function. So like if these can if
Speaker 2: the pedal comment, if a commercial company operated the way
Speaker 2: the pedal comma does, then it would be immediately go bankrupt,
Speaker 2: it would be delisted, the officers would be arrested, and
Speaker 2: the changes were putting in place will enable the federal
Speaker 2: government to pass an ordered It will enable taxpayers to
Speaker 2: know where the money is going and know that they're
Speaker 2: harder and tax tax dollars are being spent well. The
Speaker 2: ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer
Speaker 2: systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer
Speaker 2: systems don't talk to each other, then you can you
Speaker 2: can exploit that gap, and frauds that exploit that gap
Speaker 2: take advantage. For example, there were over three hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars of small Business Administration loans that has been given
Speaker 2: out to people under the age of eleven.
Speaker 4: We'll actually to add to it three hundred million under
Speaker 4: the age of eleven and over three hundred million to
Speaker 4: over the age of one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 3: Definitely small business loans.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, the oldest American is one hundred and fourteen,
Speaker 2: so it's safe to say if their age is one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen or above, they're fake or they should
Speaker 2: be in the games. Spoke on world records, and we
Speaker 2: should not be giving out loans to babies. So the
Speaker 2: youngest recipient of a Small Business Administration loan is a
Speaker 2: nine month year old, which is a very very concious
Speaker 2: baby we're talking about here, So obviously it was just
Speaker 2: fraudulent and what they and they do terrible things. They
Speaker 2: actually will see that a kid's been born, they will
Speaker 2: steal that kid's Social Security number and then take out
Speaker 2: a loan and leave that kid with a bad credit rating.
Speaker 2: There's literally a baby. The terrible things are being done,
Speaker 2: is what we're saying, and how we're stopping these terrible things,
Speaker 2: and you can stop it. I mean, well, we are stopping.
Speaker 9: The reason this is happening is because the two systems
Speaker 9: are not talking to each other.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, And.
Speaker 9: So you don't know at the Small Business Administration that
Speaker 9: you're giving a loan to a nine month old, which
Speaker 9: happened in one case, because you're not cross referencing that
Speaker 9: with the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates.
Speaker 9: So that very very simple fix eliminates tremendous frat and
Speaker 9: that there are multiple systems across the government where the
Speaker 9: systems are not speaking with one another.
Speaker 2: And if you just.
Speaker 9: Solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount
Speaker 9: of fraud.
Speaker 7: Are you.
Speaker 2: One of the ways, like one of the key tricks
Speaker 2: that the frauds is pull is that they will use
Speaker 2: the fact that someone is marked as live as sort
Speaker 2: of just that that Social Security numbers marks is live
Speaker 2: in Social Security and then then get disability and unemployment
Speaker 2: insurance for a dead person. Because the databases don't talk
Speaker 2: to each other. All they got was from Social Security?
Speaker 2: Is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not. They're
Speaker 2: not alive if it's falsely mark person's falsely markerslive Social Security,
Speaker 2: but they didn't. But fraudser can now get unemployment and
Speaker 2: disability from a dead person. This is happening all the
Speaker 2: time at scale.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised at some of the legal efforts and
Speaker 1: some of the judges that have weighed in there's about
Speaker 1: eight or ten now of these cases that are at
Speaker 1: least temporary holds. They're being challenged by the d JAY.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised by that pushback?
Speaker 2: Well, it's the DC circuit is notorious for having a
Speaker 2: very far left blias. And when you look at the
Speaker 2: people close to some of these judges, who are where
Speaker 2: are they working? Are they working at these NGOs they're
Speaker 2: getting the other ones getting this money? Does that seem
Speaker 2: like a system that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Last thing, do you guys all see this as a
Speaker 1: patriotic duty?
Speaker 3: Is that really what this is about?
Speaker 2: It's essential?
Speaker 7: So I do one hundred percent. I was running five
Speaker 7: businesses in Houston and I left that. I left great
Speaker 7: people to do this and my wonderful wife said go
Speaker 7: for it, and here I am. But I feel like
Speaker 7: this is me giving back to the country.
Speaker 2: If we don't do this, we're sunk the ship. Unless
Speaker 2: unless just exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink.
Speaker 2: That's why we're doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the today, and hopefully it
Speaker 1: took some of the myth and mystery out of DOGE
Speaker 1: and what's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: We asked on AX your platform for some questions, and
Speaker 1: here is c.
Speaker 3: Spurling.
Speaker 1: He writes, Are they happy with the speed at which
Speaker 1: they're making changes? Are there any changes they would like
Speaker 1: to make but haven't yet?
Speaker 2: Well, I think in the context of the government, we're
Speaker 2: moving like lightning. In the context of what I'm used
Speaker 2: to moving, it's slower than I'd like. So what seems
Speaker 2: like incredibly fast action by GOUTMA standards is slower than
Speaker 2: I'd like to be totally frank but we're all making
Speaker 2: solid progress. A very sort of thorny problem, a tough problem. Really,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like painful homework. Frankly is reconciling all
Speaker 2: of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud.
Speaker 2: These databases don't talk to each other, and that's really
Speaker 2: the source of that's the biggest vulnerability for fraud is
Speaker 2: the fact that these databases don't talk to each other.
Speaker 2: So we need to reconcile the databases. It's a frankly
Speaker 2: painful homework, but it has to be done and we'll
Speaker 2: greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at
Speaker 1: the Pentagon.
Speaker 3: You're in there.
Speaker 2: The Pentagon has not passing udits in a very long time.
Speaker 2: I mean, as crazy as it sounds, they will lose
Speaker 2: twenty thirty billion dollars a year and they don't know
Speaker 2: where They literally don't know where it went. I mean,
Speaker 2: Senator Collins was telling me about how she gave the
Speaker 2: Navy twelve billion dollars for extra submarines, got zero extra submarines,
Speaker 2: and then when she held a hearing, said where the
Speaker 2: twelve billion dollars go? They didn't know.
Speaker 1: Talking to those guys, and you have a great team
Speaker 1: from all over the country, you don't have to be here.
Speaker 3: You don't have to be here.
Speaker 1: You know, there's now been these many cases of violence, vandalism,
Speaker 1: at Tesla dealerships. How does that affect your employees, your customers,
Speaker 1: What does it mean to you? Like, how have you
Speaker 1: taken that in?
Speaker 2: Well? I think I think a great wrong is being
Speaker 2: done to the people of Tesla and to our customers.
Speaker 2: Tesla is a peaceful company that has made great cars,
Speaker 2: great products, that's all it's done, hasn't harmed anyone, and
Speaker 2: yet people are committing violence. They're firebombing Tesla dealerships, they're
Speaker 2: shooting guns into stores, they're threatening people that you know,
Speaker 2: they're issuing death threats against me and another Tesla personnel.
Speaker 2: What are they doing this for? Why? And what's happening?
Speaker 2: It seems to me is they're being fed propaganda by
Speaker 2: the far left and they believe it. It's really unfortunate.
Speaker 2: But the real problem is not not the people. It's
Speaker 2: not like that, the you know, the crazy guy that
Speaker 2: fire bombs at Tesla dealership. It's the people pushing the
Speaker 2: propaganda that that caused that guy to do it. Those
Speaker 2: are the real villains here, and we're going to go
Speaker 2: after them. And the Presence made it clear we're going
Speaker 2: to go after them, the ones providing the money, the
Speaker 2: ones pushing the lies, and propaganda. We're going after them.
Speaker 3: And it's been this evolution.
Speaker 1: I mean, the last administration was going to mandate electric
Speaker 1: vehicles and now you see on the far left some
Speaker 1: efforts to go after electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: It's quite something.
Speaker 2: It is ironic. I mean, it seems like the most
Speaker 2: ironic outcome is most likely.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, un personally, it's got to take
Speaker 3: a toll.
Speaker 2: It does. Yeah, it does. I think there's some real
Speaker 2: evil out there and we have to overcome it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have been called a Nazi, a white supremacist,
Speaker 1: a fascist.
Speaker 2: I mean they've got this sort of.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean they've still got it. They haven't. I guess
Speaker 2: they still needs to call me Stalin, Mussolini, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever or whatever. I mean, they've called the president all
Speaker 2: these things. I think at one point there was a
Speaker 2: magazine cover which which said the president was worse than
Speaker 2: the president. Trump was worse than Hitler and Mussolini and
Speaker 2: Stalin combined. The president hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't started
Speaker 2: any wars. In fact, he's good at stopping wars. So
Speaker 2: this is obviously they're pushing these lies. And why do
Speaker 2: they push these lies? And I think we need to
Speaker 2: hold people responsible for pushing these lives because those lies
Speaker 2: almost got the present killed.
Speaker 1: It's something that people want to know about the president.
Speaker 1: You're pretty close to him now, you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time with them. What's something that people wouldn't know.
Speaker 2: I think the President is a good man. I think
Speaker 2: he is an honest man. And I have yet to
Speaker 2: see him do anything mean or anything that is wrong
Speaker 2: that I would say, Mali wrong, not even once you.
Speaker 3: Know a lot is coming your way.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you say stuff or post stuff that gets attention,
Speaker 1: you give it out. In other words, Democratic Arizona Senator
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly posted on ACT about his trip to Ukraine
Speaker 1: to push for continuing to send US weapons and support there,
Speaker 1: and you posted that he was a trader.
Speaker 3: Why I do that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think somebody should be should care about the
Speaker 2: interests of the United States above the interest of another country.
Speaker 2: They don't. They're a trader.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's a decorative veteran, a former astronaut, a
Speaker 1: sitting US senator.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean it's okay for him to put the
Speaker 2: interest of another country above me.
Speaker 1: Obviously, there are some Republicans who think supporting Ukraine is
Speaker 1: the right thing still, but there is a battle back
Speaker 1: and forth about how do you think it comes to
Speaker 1: an end?
Speaker 2: Well, I think there will be a negotiated peace. And
Speaker 2: the thing that we should be concerned about is we
Speaker 2: should have empathy for the thousands of people that are
Speaker 2: dying every day in trenches for no movement in the lines.
Speaker 2: So the borders remained the same for the past two years.
Speaker 2: Thousands of people have died every week for nothing, for what?
Speaker 2: And I take great offense at those who those who
Speaker 2: put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it,
Speaker 2: those who virtue signal and say, oh, we can't give
Speaker 2: into Russia, but have no solution to stopping thou of
Speaker 2: kids dying every day. They just want that to continue forever.
Speaker 2: I have contempt for such people. I don't want to
Speaker 2: make that clear. Yeah, so you're statific because they're bot
Speaker 2: you signaling and their lack of a solution means that
Speaker 2: kids don't have a father. It means that parents lost
Speaker 2: a son for what. Nothing.
Speaker 3: To your optimistic that the President's plan my work.
Speaker 2: The president plan is the only thing that will work.