Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: The government of two weeks ago no longer exists. We
Speaker 2: are now in a fundamentally different country. Under the authority
Speaker 2: President Trump. Elon Musk is leading a de facto cyber
Speaker 2: coup of the United States. Using the intentionally vague and
Speaker 2: unaccountable department of a government efficiency, Musk is seizing control
Speaker 2: of the United states critical digital infrastructure, literally rewriting the
Speaker 2: code that runs our country, and culling the federal workforce.
Speaker 2: Using the justification of removing government bureaucracy, Musk and the
Speaker 2: Trump administration have installed their own batch of bureaucratic tech oligarchs,
Speaker 2: made up of former Tesla and SpaceX interns and engineers,
Speaker 2: teal fellowship researchers, pallenteer employees, eugenics enthusiasts, and literal nick fuentes,
Speaker 2: pilled groypers. Career employees have been locked out of their
Speaker 2: respective agencies, both digitally and physically, as the DOGE team
Speaker 2: ransacks various departments and accesses wide swaths of sensitive government data.
Speaker 2: Agency officials who have tried to resist Musk's seizure of
Speaker 2: classified materials have been fired, and more federal employees have
Speaker 2: been put on leave, including the entirety of USAIDE. This
Speaker 2: effectively amounts to Musk abolishing the whole department, all without
Speaker 2: congressional authorization or oversight, not even in executive order from
Speaker 2: Trump that extends presidential authority on a whim. The unelected
Speaker 2: Elon Musk decided to carry out to the closure of
Speaker 2: an entire government agency, and he is far from finished.
Speaker 2: Doge has hijacked the Treasury to withhold authorized payments to
Speaker 2: multiple agencies, resulting in an ongoing battle of lawsuits and
Speaker 2: court orders. This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis,
Speaker 2: and this episode is an audio companion to an article
Speaker 2: I published on the shatter Zone substack linked below in
Speaker 2: the description. You can follow along online at shatterzone dot
Speaker 2: substack dot com and click the hyperlinks for more information
Speaker 2: and sources. Elon Musk has personally directed the General Services
Speaker 2: Administration to terminate leases on quote unquote mostly empty federal buildings.
Speaker 2: The GSA, essentially the landlord of the federal government, was
Speaker 2: one of the first agencies to receive Musks quote unquote
Speaker 2: fork in the road deferred resignation letter offering to buy
Speaker 2: out the entire workforce. The legality of the letter is
Speaker 2: still uncertain as it promises to pay out currently unappropriated
Speaker 2: funds IRS. Workers who accepted the resignation offer have already
Speaker 2: been asked to return to work until May. The newly
Speaker 2: appointed GSA Commissioner, Michael Peters, a private equity executive that
Speaker 2: specializes in downsizing corporate real estate, has decided that quote
Speaker 2: non DoD federal building space should be reduced fifty percent,
Speaker 2: according to a GSA employee who requested to remain anonymous,
Speaker 2: on top of planning to cut the entire federal portfolio
Speaker 2: by half, DOGE is seeking to cut GSA's own budget
Speaker 2: by as much as fifty percent, with talk of consolidating
Speaker 2: GSA offices into a few major cities using a quote
Speaker 2: unquote hub model. Wired reports that DOGE staff may be
Speaker 2: trying to use White House IT credentials to access GSA
Speaker 2: computers remotely. An anonymous GSA employee claims that few people
Speaker 2: at the agency have elected to take up the voluntary
Speaker 2: paid resignation offer, with those who have mostly being of
Speaker 2: retirement age. High level Trump appointees used quote unquote scare
Speaker 2: tactics in agency emails pressuring career employees to accept the
Speaker 2: deferred resignation offer, warning that cost cutting measures will eventually
Speaker 2: lead to a further reduction in force. Employees are concerned
Speaker 2: that a reduced federal workforce would result in federal buildings
Speaker 2: losing their operations and maintenance contracts, with disastrous consequences for
Speaker 2: the functionality of government buildings. Quote the brain drain is
Speaker 2: going to cripple our ability to maintain the buildings even
Speaker 2: more than it already was. We aren't overstaffed unquote for
Speaker 2: a GSA employee, they continued, quote, I think this process
Speaker 2: is already too far along to stop. I'm hoping we
Speaker 2: just need to get to the mid terms unquote. What
Speaker 2: is happening across the federal government right now is unprecedented.
Speaker 2: But this is not Germany in the nineteen thirties. It's
Speaker 2: not the fall of the Soviet Union. We grasp at
Speaker 2: analogies to help contextualize current events that escape understanding. There
Speaker 2: are similarities, but what's happening is new, very American, very
Speaker 2: twenty first century. Think of the growth of the Internet,
Speaker 2: social media tech startups in fifty years. What's happening right
Speaker 2: now could be talked about in the vein of what
Speaker 2: happened to the United States in the mid twenty twenties. Now,
Speaker 2: rhetoric of cutting red tape and breaking federal bureaucracy has
Speaker 2: been common political clap trap for decades, and previous efforts
Speaker 2: have been largely all bark and no bite. But now
Speaker 2: there's been a huge chomp. So why now? What happened?
Speaker 2: Trump has blamed entrenched federal bureaucracy or the quote unquote
Speaker 2: deep state, for preventing him from enacting sweeping change during
Speaker 2: his first term. The obstacles Trump encountered didn't just come
Speaker 2: from Congress and the courts, but rank and file government
Speaker 2: workers who run day to day operations. Last month, the
Speaker 2: far right America First Policy Institute published a report titled
Speaker 2: Tales from the Swamp, How federal bureaucrats resisted President Trump.
Speaker 2: The author, James Shrek, a former Heritage fellow, credits quote
Speaker 2: unquote hostile career employees for quote unquote refusing to implement policies.
Speaker 2: Shrek says, quote many career employees refused or defied directives
Speaker 2: withheld information, slow walked projects that they opposed, performed unacceptably,
Speaker 2: and used strategic leaking to undermine the President's agenda unquote.
Speaker 2: Trump himself realized this late into his first term and
Speaker 2: sought to remedy the situation by revoking civil protections for
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of federal career employees, reclassifying them as
Speaker 2: at will employees under an executive order called Schedule F.
Speaker 2: This allowed Trump to treat large swaths of government employees
Speaker 2: as political appointments. In his article for the America First
Speaker 2: Policy Institute, Shrek refers to career removal protections as a
Speaker 2: quote modern invention that protects entrenched bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: Though Biden repealed Schedule F, Trump effectively reinstated the order
Speaker 2: on the first day of his second term. Trump promised
Speaker 2: to restore his authority to quote remove rogue bureaucrats back
Speaker 2: in early twenty twenty three under his Agenda forty seven plan,
Speaker 2: vowing to quote wield that power very aggressively unquote. When
Speaker 2: Trump first ran on Drain the Swamp in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: he was referring to corporate lobbyists special interests in Washington corruption,
Speaker 2: but now the term is used to deride the so
Speaker 2: called administrative state, federal agencies, regulatory boards, and bureaucratic career
Speaker 2: employees that maintain the basic functionality of our government. Both
Speaker 2: Schedule F and DOGE are part of a too pronged
Speaker 2: assault on the administrative state, all in service of consolidating
Speaker 2: then amplifying executive power. Trump has fully embraced the unitary
Speaker 2: executive theory proposed by the likes of Russell Vaught, Project
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five co author and the newly confirmed director
Speaker 2: of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Although
Speaker 2: it's understood that Congress has quote unquote power of the purse,
Speaker 2: under unitary executive theory, Trump now believes that funding appropriated
Speaker 2: by Congress does not need to be spent. Rather, the
Speaker 2: executive branch controls the flow of federal spending, and Congress
Speaker 2: merely sets a ceiling on spending that the executive must
Speaker 2: not exceed. Under this interpretation of the Constitution, the president
Speaker 2: has sole and complete control of the executive Branch, including
Speaker 2: all of its agencies and departments. But people in Trump's
Speaker 2: circle like JD. Vance and Elon Musk could be pushing
Speaker 2: Trump to go even further to where the president considers
Speaker 2: both the judicial and legislative branches as purely ceremonial and advisory.
Speaker 2: In the words of New Right philosopher Curtis Jarvin, and
Speaker 2: arguably we are already well on our way to that point.
Speaker 2: This centralized executive power allows the executive branch to achieve
Speaker 2: goals I would have previous considered to be quite lofty.
Speaker 2: And I'll outlined two of those examples, pulling from the
Speaker 2: aspirations of the modern conservative movement. After this ad break,
Speaker 2: welcome back to it could happen here, and get ready
Speaker 2: to say bye bye to the FBI. Though the right
Speaker 2: has typically been thought to be firmly in the back
Speaker 2: the blue camp, this isn't always the case, especially on
Speaker 2: the more extreme end. The far right militia movement has
Speaker 2: long clashed with federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI
Speaker 2: and ATF. In the aftermath of January sixth, many Mega
Speaker 2: supporters found themselves at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 2: Republican politicians began to feed into right wing uproar surrounding
Speaker 2: the FBI, as Trump himself became a target for investigations
Speaker 2: after the mar Lago raid. In August of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted defund the FBI. Arizona Representative Paul
Speaker 2: Gosar joined in attacks on the Bureau, hosting we must
Speaker 2: destroy the FBI, we must save America. That same month,
Speaker 2: right wing columnist and podcaster Liz Wheeler published in op
Speaker 2: ed titled Abolish the FBI, which called to quote farm
Speaker 2: out the vital functions of the FBI and raise the
Speaker 2: rest unquote. The new right publication Compact magazine featured a
Speaker 2: slightly better written article by the same title, Abolish the
Speaker 2: FBI at SAPAC. In March of twenty twenty three, Matt Gates,
Speaker 2: noted pedophile advocated to get rid of the FBI among
Speaker 2: other federal agencies.
Speaker 4: Either get this government back on our side, or we
Speaker 4: defund and get rid of Abolish the FBI, CDC, ATFDJ,
Speaker 4: every last one of them if they do not come
Speaker 4: to heal.
Speaker 2: In a April of twenty twenty three, Trump joined in
Speaker 2: in calls to defund the FBI after being charged with
Speaker 2: thirty four felon accounts of falsipying business records. Next month,
Speaker 2: two former FBI employees testified in a congressional hearing accusing
Speaker 2: the bureau of weaponization against conservatives in regards to the
Speaker 2: January sixth investigations. The same two former FBI employees who
Speaker 2: had their security clearance revoked after espousing J six conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Later called to quote abolish the FBI at a Heritage
Speaker 2: Foundation symposium on the quote weaponization of the US Government
Speaker 2: in April of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: You're given that magic wand that ability to be Jim Jordan,
Speaker 5: what would you do?
Speaker 6: I think you have to abolish the FBI. That's where
Speaker 6: I'm at at this point.
Speaker 5: What now, some people are going to say, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're gonna have to do you just abolish a What
Speaker 5: would do you Is there a replacement? I mean, you
Speaker 5: can't just not have federal law enforcement, right. I think
Speaker 5: in large part you could just not have federal enforces.
Speaker 2: During a live episode of Donald Trump Junior's podcast on
Speaker 2: July eighth, twenty twenty four, he called to abolish several
Speaker 2: federal agencies, starting with the FBI, as well as the
Speaker 2: CIA and the IRS.
Speaker 3: Ballish the DEA. You know, I imagine of all the
Speaker 3: places to abolish, and I don't know if that's the
Speaker 3: best one. I'd start with the FBI, I'd start with
Speaker 3: the CIA, I'd start with the IRS. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, the DA. Now maybe I know agent
Speaker 3: level guys. So if they're going after narcos and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, perhaps a little bit more forgiving. They don't
Speaker 3: seem to be setting up or in trapping people like
Speaker 3: the FBI.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration has already begun the process to dismantle
Speaker 2: large swaths of the FBI before Cash Mattel has even
Speaker 2: been confirmed by the Senate. Eight top FBI officials have
Speaker 2: been fired or forced resign by order of Acting Deputy
Speaker 2: Attorney General a meal, despite resistance from Acting FBI Director
Speaker 2: Brian driscoll, a questionnaire was distributed to FBI supervisors requesting
Speaker 2: agents provide information pertaining to their own involvement in the
Speaker 2: January sixth investigations. This was believed to be used for
Speaker 2: the targeted removal of agency personnel. Last week, the FBI
Speaker 2: handed over a list containing the information of five thousand
Speaker 2: employees and agents who worked on the January sixth investigations.
Speaker 2: FBI leadership initially chose to withhold employee names. In response,
Speaker 2: Bove accused the FBI leadership of insubordination. This was ultimately
Speaker 2: a fruitless effort, as data seized by Elon Musk's DOGE
Speaker 2: team could easily match employee IDs to names. Trump has
Speaker 2: since agreed to not publicly release the names of agents
Speaker 2: until at least late March as lawsuits continue, and is
Speaker 2: required to give two days notice if the administration chooses
Speaker 2: to publicly disclose names, but individual agents are still worried.
Speaker 2: An anonymous letter from an FBI agent to Warren's quote. Currently,
Speaker 2: there is an effort to cull a significant number of
Speaker 2: career special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation unquote.
Speaker 2: Around one third of FBI agents were told they would
Speaker 2: be placed on leave, according to a government source who
Speaker 2: spoke on the condition of anonymity, FBI employees have lost
Speaker 2: access to systems, only to later regain access, while others
Speaker 2: were told to wait to find out about their employee status.
Speaker 2: Agents are now trying to negotiate back into their jobs,
Speaker 2: with sources saying FBI employees may be able to stay
Speaker 2: on if they can prove their loyalty to Trump and
Speaker 2: disown the January sixth prosecutions. I write all of this
Speaker 2: not in defense of the FBI, but to demonstrate how
Speaker 2: far Trump is willing to go to expand his executive
Speaker 2: power and transfer law enforcement duties to agencies seen as
Speaker 2: more loyal to the president. Though I doubt the FBI
Speaker 2: will be completely abolished in the next few years, the
Speaker 2: agency could become unrecognizable, a shell of its former self,
Speaker 2: with hardline Trump loyalists replacing the existing and already largely
Speaker 2: conservative workforce. Alternative agencies perceived as being more loyal to Trump,
Speaker 2: like Homeland Security investigations, could start picking up the FBI slack.
Speaker 2: According to a senior government source, on day two of
Speaker 2: Trump's second term, HSI was instructed to reopen investigations into
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty George Floyd protests to quote identify protesters
Speaker 2: BLM rioters like they did to us after January sixth, unquote.
Speaker 2: For another once considered far fetched goal of the conservative
Speaker 2: movement that now seems oddly within grasp, let's talk about
Speaker 2: the Department of Education. Conservatives have advocated for dismantling the
Speaker 2: Department of Education ever since Jimmy Carter signed its modern
Speaker 2: incarnation into law in nineteen seventy nine. Most notably, Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan tried and failed to abolish the department in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one, but Reagan's Commission ironically strengthened support for the department.
Speaker 2: Once Reagan ran into roadblocks he instead sought to limit
Speaker 2: the Department's power and influence. Since then, calls to abolish
Speaker 2: the Department of Education have been a recurring Republican talking
Speaker 2: point among certain think tanks and politicians, but they have
Speaker 2: struggled to land sizeable blows against the department. Trump previously
Speaker 2: fiddled around with merging the Departments of Education and Labor
Speaker 2: during his first term, but that plan went nowhere. In
Speaker 2: Trump's own Agenda forty seven plan, released in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: he expressed his goal of quote closing up the Department
Speaker 2: of Education in Washington, d c. Later, at the National
Speaker 2: Religious Broadcasters twenty twenty four Christian Media Convention in February
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four, Donald Trump repeated this promise quote,
Speaker 2: I will close the Federal Department of Education, and we
Speaker 2: will move everything back to the states where it belongs,
Speaker 2: where they can individualize education unquote. Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: out lined how to achieve the effective dismantling of the
Speaker 2: department by transferring funding and duties to other departments such
Speaker 2: as Health and Human Services and the DOJ. Opposition to
Speaker 2: the Department of Education was a frequent topic at the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Robert,
Speaker 2: Sophie and I attended multiple panels and events taking aim
Speaker 2: at the Department, hosted by groups like Moms for Liberty
Speaker 2: and the Heritage Foundation. On the first day of the convention,
Speaker 2: the party ratified their official twenty twenty four RNC platform,
Speaker 2: which called to quote close the Department of Education in Washington,
Speaker 2: DC and send it back to the States where it
Speaker 2: belongs and let the states run our educational system as
Speaker 2: it should be run unquote. And now the department seems
Speaker 2: to be next on the Trump doge chopping block. The
Speaker 2: administration is drafting a sweeping executive order. While Trump says
Speaker 2: he wants his education nominee Linda McMahon to quote unquote
Speaker 2: put herself out of a job. The planned executive order
Speaker 2: would not just direct the Secretary of Education to begin
Speaker 2: dismantling the department, but also ask Congress for assistance in
Speaker 2: formally abolishing the agency. It's unlikely that Trump would get
Speaker 2: the sixty Senate votes needed to pass the quote unquote
Speaker 2: necessary legislation, but even if they can't manage to technically
Speaker 2: abolish the department, he could still try to rip it
Speaker 2: scuts out, slash spending, and forcibly resign or fire employees,
Speaker 2: basically make the department simply non functioning, much like what
Speaker 2: Doge did to USAID. Upwards of sixteen DOGE staffers are
Speaker 2: currently listed in the Education Department directory. Federal education employees
Speaker 2: have already received the Fork in the Road resignation buyout offer,
Speaker 2: while others have been fired for alleged links to DEI.
Speaker 2: Without someone like Elon Musk and Trump's administration, there was
Speaker 2: no clear path towards implementing some of the more lofty
Speaker 2: plans proposed by conservative thought leaders, whether they be Trump's
Speaker 2: own Agenda forty seven, the Heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: or Curtis Yarvin's dream of a national CEO king. Only
Speaker 2: Elon Musk could do this. You need someone with his influence, connections, money, experience,
Speaker 2: and knowledge of fringe neo reactionary Silicon Valley political theory
Speaker 2: to propose and carry out something like Doge. So how
Speaker 2: did Musk get here? Though it's common knowledge that Musk
Speaker 2: has drifted pretty severely right word the past five years
Speaker 2: leading into the twenty twenty four presidential campaign, he was
Speaker 2: not an out and proud Trump supporter. As recently as
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, Musk deemed Trump too old to serve
Speaker 2: as president, again, tweeting that it was time for Trump
Speaker 2: to quote hang up his hat and sail into the
Speaker 2: sunset unquote. Initially, Musk threw his support behind the doomed
Speaker 2: presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron De Santis, but as
Speaker 2: it became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee, Musk
Speaker 2: fell in behind his new party line, but his implicit
Speaker 2: support of Trump was kept on the down low. The
Speaker 2: two met in Florida in March of twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: among other wealthy Republican donors, as Trump was lobbying for
Speaker 2: campaign funding. The New York Times reported that Musk did
Speaker 2: not want to publicly endorse Trump as of early twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, telling friends the most he would do was
Speaker 2: an anti Biden endorsement. Instead of public support, Musk would
Speaker 2: create his own super pack to secretly help get Trump elected,
Speaker 2: timing payments so his fiscal backing of Trump's campaign could
Speaker 2: only go public after the election. But all that changed
Speaker 2: on July thirteenth, after Trump's brush with death in Butler, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: Musk seemingly took Trump's call of fight Fight Fight to heart,
Speaker 2: tweeting less than an hour later, quote I fully endorse
Speaker 2: President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery unquote. This
Speaker 2: opened more frequent communication between Musk and Trump. Later that weekend,
Speaker 2: both Musk and Peter Teel called Trump to recommend J. D.
Speaker 2: Vance as vice president. Next week was the Republican National Convention,
Speaker 2: during which Elon Musk was frequently name dropped, both by
Speaker 2: official speakers and regular attendees talked about as almost some
Speaker 2: kind of mythic right wing superhero. On the final day
Speaker 2: of the convention, rumors circulated that Musk himself would make
Speaker 2: a surprise appearance on stage, Though said rumors did not
Speaker 2: come to fruition. Musk's specter haunted the entirety of the RNC.
Speaker 2: Come August, Musk just finished overhauling leadership at his America
Speaker 2: Super Pack and was rigorously pushing pro Trump messaging on
Speaker 2: X the Everything app. On August twelfth, Musk hosted Trump
Speaker 2: in a two hour live streamed phone call dubbed in
Speaker 2: x Space. This conversation marked the first time Trump casually
Speaker 2: spoke at length about the assassination attempt The pair also
Speaker 2: discussed quote unquote migrant crime and the need to eliminate
Speaker 2: federal bureaucracy. Trump gave a rare compliment to Musk, calling
Speaker 2: him the greatest cutter, followed up by saying, quote, I
Speaker 2: need an Elon Musk. I need someone that has a
Speaker 2: lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to
Speaker 2: close up the Department of Education, move education back to
Speaker 2: the States unquote. News outlets were more interested in reporting
Speaker 2: on the stream's technical glitches rather than Musk's idea for
Speaker 2: a government efficiency commission, to which Trump responded very positively.
Speaker 2: Next month, on September fourth, Trump announced that, at the
Speaker 2: suggestion of Elon Musk, if elected, he would quote create
Speaker 2: a government Efficiency Commission, tasked with conducting a complete financial
Speaker 2: and performance audit of the entire federal government and making
Speaker 2: recommendations for drastic reforms unquote. Musk himself agreed to be
Speaker 2: appointed head of the commission, aiming to cut trillions of dollars.
Speaker 2: This announcement was not taken very seriously. The New York
Speaker 2: Times called commissions such as this quote a favor at
Speaker 2: Washington's solution for delaying dealing with hard problems unquote, and
Speaker 2: The Times later reported that the Commission quote can issue
Speaker 2: recommendations around federal funding and regulations, but will be powerless
Speaker 2: to enact them without executive actions by mister Trump or
Speaker 2: funding approval by Congress unquote. Even I can admit that
Speaker 2: both myself and some of my coworkers underestimated Doge's ability
Speaker 2: to physically carry out Musk's suggestions with no Congressional oversight
Speaker 2: or authority. As the election ramped up, musk super Pac
Speaker 2: mobilized thousands of canvassers across key swing states and collected
Speaker 2: data to target both enthusiastic and unlikely voters. Throughout twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, Musk spent over two hundred and ninety million
Speaker 2: dollars in contributions in support of the mega campaign, mostly
Speaker 2: via his own super pack. On October fifth, Musk made
Speaker 2: his first appearance at an official campaign event, joining Trump
Speaker 2: for his return to Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk continued to appear
Speaker 2: at Trump rallies in the month leading up to the election.
Speaker 2: By election day, Musk was firmly in Trump's inner circle,
Speaker 2: spending Election night and most of the next week with
Speaker 2: President elect Trump at mar A Lago. After this adbreak,
Speaker 2: we will return to discuss how Elon Musk is now
Speaker 2: trying to become the CEO of the United States of America. Okay,
Speaker 2: we are back, and now a few months after the election,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is doing to the United States exactly what
Speaker 2: he did to Twitter. By the end, it still might
Speaker 2: technically function on some level, just worse in every way,
Speaker 2: prone to glitches and full of Nazis. The previous version
Speaker 2: was already bad and harmful, but the new one somehow
Speaker 2: sucks even more and no longer has the aspects that
Speaker 2: made it semi worth while. The fork in when the
Speaker 2: Road deferred resignation letters sent to government employees used the
Speaker 2: exact same title as a similar email sent to Twitter
Speaker 2: employees after Musk bought the company. The Doge team has
Speaker 2: installed sofa beds on the fifth floor of the headquarters
Speaker 2: of the Office of Personnel Management to enable working around
Speaker 2: the clock, mirroring Musk's previous actions. During his takeover of Twitter,
Speaker 2: Musk has brought on some of the same exact people
Speaker 2: who helped him take over Twitter, all of whom are
Speaker 2: now special government employees with odd job titles but immense power.
Speaker 2: It was reported and Wired that a Musk stooge told
Speaker 2: General Services Administration workers that the agency will now pursue
Speaker 2: quote an AI first strategy unquote, and that the GSA
Speaker 2: should operate like a quote unquote startup software company. Musk
Speaker 2: has ordered the General Services Administration to terminate leases for
Speaker 2: all roughly seven thousand and five hundred five offices, amidst
Speaker 2: a national call to return to in person work. This
Speaker 2: again is a classic Musk move, taken from his takeover
Speaker 2: of Twitter, in which to cut costs, he refused to
Speaker 2: pay rent for Twitter offices in London, New York City,
Speaker 2: and San Francisco while the buildings were still in use.
Speaker 2: A current GSA employee was quoted and wired as saying, quote,
Speaker 2: they are acting like this is a takeover of a
Speaker 2: tech company unquote. Musk's own personal success hasn't been from
Speaker 2: his skill as an inventor or a software engineer. What
Speaker 2: he's a proficient at is taking over corporations and molding
Speaker 2: them in his image. This is what happened to Tesla,
Speaker 2: SpaceX and Twitter. In twenty twenty. Musk called the federal
Speaker 2: government quote the ultimate corporation unquote, and now he seeks
Speaker 2: to become CEO. In doing this, Musk is following the
Speaker 2: tech industry motto of move fast and break things. So
Speaker 2: far all his actions bypass Congress, the slow controller of
Speaker 2: stable government, having everything be done via executive order and
Speaker 2: doge helps to speed run a full reboot of the
Speaker 2: administrative state. The motto of the old government may as
Speaker 2: well have been move slow and build things. Progress is slow,
Speaker 2: but detonation is fast. The breakage of government isn't a
Speaker 2: mere side effect or a bug of this expediated form
Speaker 2: of rule. It's a feature to reshape the government into
Speaker 2: their ideal technocracy. First, breaking things is a requirement. They
Speaker 2: might not get away with all of it, and they
Speaker 2: don't need to. They're doing so much so fast, knowing
Speaker 2: that they will only get away with some of it.
Speaker 2: But with new Supreme Court approved presidential immunity and unlimited
Speaker 2: pardon power, they can try as much as they want
Speaker 2: with zero consequence. These are not the moves you would
Speaker 2: make if you wanted a stable government. It's the moves
Speaker 2: you would make as a new tech company, which is
Speaker 2: why Musk's operation is masked with the Silicon Valley language
Speaker 2: of efficiency. The inefficiencies of government are part of the point.
Speaker 2: That's what creates stability makes the country a trusted ally
Speaker 2: and gives the dollar value. Quote. Regulations can be bothersome
Speaker 2: sometimes and downright problematic, but that's kind of the point.
Speaker 2: They act as a control on imprecise and rushed decision making.
Speaker 2: If the cost of doing business is slowing down the process,
Speaker 2: that's the cost that has to be made to quote
Speaker 2: a government employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Speaker 2: But those inefficiencies and pesky regulations really irritate the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley tech bros who think they are the smartest people
Speaker 2: on the planet. It's their view that since they're so smart,
Speaker 2: shouldn't they run the country. Musk has a personal interest
Speaker 2: in slashing the regulatory state, as it interferes with his
Speaker 2: own businesses and dreams of space colonization. Last year, Musk
Speaker 2: claimed that Doge quote was the only path to extending
Speaker 2: life beyond Earth unquote. The White House Press Secretary has
Speaker 2: said that Musk himself will determine when there is a
Speaker 2: conflict of interest involving his businesses and Doge. SpaceX alone
Speaker 2: has received fifteen point four billion dollars in government contracts,
Speaker 2: according to The New York Times. The large reduction in
Speaker 2: the federal workforce through the combined efforts of DOGE and
Speaker 2: Schedule F. There is an irrefutable similarity to a plan
Speaker 2: outlined by New Right blogger Curtis Jarvin, Peter Teel's favorite philosopher.
Speaker 2: Last year, Robert Evans did a behind the Bastards on
Speaker 2: Curtis Yarvin, and you should absolutely check that out for
Speaker 2: more information. In twenty twenty two, Yarvin outlined how a
Speaker 2: second Trump term could quote unquote reboot the United States government.
Speaker 2: This plan amounts to a corporate takeover of government, which
Speaker 2: subsequently re shapes the structure of government, akin to a corporation.
Speaker 2: Though in Yarvin's mind, it is not President Trump who
Speaker 2: assumes the role of CEO. Instead, the President acts as
Speaker 2: chairman of the board, and before inauguration should select a
Speaker 2: CEO who is an experienced executive. This appointed CEO could
Speaker 2: then quote run the executive branch without any interference from
Speaker 2: Congress or the courts, to quote Jarvin, while President Trump
Speaker 2: reviews the CEO's performance in the background, Jarvin writes, quote,
Speaker 2: most existing important institutions, public and private, will be shut
Speaker 2: down and replaced with new and efficient systems. Trump will
Speaker 2: be monitoring this CEO's performance on TV and can fire
Speaker 2: him if need be. Unquote. Musk may believe that he
Speaker 2: has successfully maneuvered Trump into appointing him CEO, but Trump
Speaker 2: could be well aware of Musk's ambitions, but is keeping
Speaker 2: him around as an emergency patsy, ready to fire when needed.
Speaker 2: The Trump admin is currently testing the limits of presidential authority,
Speaker 2: and once those limits get surpassed by the standards of
Speaker 2: Senate Republicans, Musk is the easiest guy to blame and
Speaker 2: push out of the administration's inner circle. The first step
Speaker 2: in Yarvin's plan has the Trump campaign running on centralizing
Speaker 2: executive power to eliminate government inefficiency. This was both in
Speaker 2: line with Project twenty twenty five and Musk's suggestion of
Speaker 2: an efficiency commission once Trump gets into office. The plan
Speaker 2: is as follows. Purge bureaucracy what Yarvin calls rage retire
Speaker 2: all government employees. This is essentially being carried out by
Speaker 2: doge schedule left and by just pressuring career employees to
Speaker 2: accept deferred resignation offers. By threatening future mass layoffs, senior
Speaker 2: level officials have been replaced by a batch of loyal
Speaker 2: tech oligarchs with links to and Peter Teel. The stupidity
Speaker 2: of Doge was almost a secret weapon. The cryptocurrency meanness
Speaker 2: made everyone in respectable society not take the idea seriously.
Speaker 2: What's the worst an advisory commission could do with no
Speaker 2: power to enforce its suggestions. Oops. Another step in Yarvin's
Speaker 2: plan is to nullify elite institutions of power like the
Speaker 2: media and academia. Musk's takeover of Twitter has gone a
Speaker 2: long way in altering the country's information ecosystem. The Trump
Speaker 2: adman seems to be utilizing Steve Bannon's flood the Zone
Speaker 2: strategy to distract and exhaust the media, as well as
Speaker 2: more directed attacks. On January thirty, first, the Department of
Speaker 2: Defense kicked out NBC News, The New York Times, NPR,
Speaker 2: and Politico from their in house press offices and replace
Speaker 2: them with one American News, The New York Post, Brightbart
Speaker 2: and huff Post. Under from Doge, the White House has
Speaker 2: ordered government agencies to cancel subscriptions to policy news services
Speaker 2: from multiple news outlets. A White House advisor told Axios, quote,
Speaker 2: the eye of sourn is on more than just Politico.
Speaker 2: It's all the media unquote. In terms of attacks on academia,
Speaker 2: the federal grant freeze has had devastating effects on university research.
Speaker 2: Another step in Yarvin's plan is to co opt Congress
Speaker 2: and ignore the courts. This is where we are at
Speaker 2: right now. The goal is to reduce both the judicial
Speaker 2: and legislative branches to being purely ceremonial and advisory, as
Speaker 2: advocated by Yarvin. So far, the Trump administration has effectively
Speaker 2: sidestepped the legislative bodies via Elon Musk and Doge. It's
Speaker 2: highly unlikely Trump would ever be impeached or removed by
Speaker 2: this Congress. Furthermore, this Congress seems to have willfully given
Speaker 2: up on their power over the federal budget. To quote
Speaker 2: senior government official quote, the real challenge is that Congress
Speaker 2: is on board for now in losing their own budgetary authority.
Speaker 2: So far, a loan security guard standing outside you, sayed
Speaker 2: and the Department of Education has been enough to deter
Speaker 2: resistance from the Democratic Party. Last week, I interviewed to
Speaker 2: Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of
Speaker 2: South Carolina. The full interview will air tomorrow, but here's
Speaker 2: his short take on the current situation.
Speaker 1: When Congress is willing to hand the keys over to
Speaker 1: the president, then we really no longer really have a democracy,
Speaker 1: or at least the constitutional democracy that was created, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple centuries ago. So the bigger danger, I think
Speaker 1: is that through law itself, Congress sedes more and more
Speaker 1: power to the president with a new legislation. So if
Speaker 1: Congress were to pass new legislation giving the president more
Speaker 1: centralized power, well that would be a concerning thing to
Speaker 1: me right now.
Speaker 2: The real road block is the courts. The Trump administration
Speaker 2: has already displayed a willingness to ignore the courts, based
Speaker 2: on the continued halting of federal spending and grants despite
Speaker 2: an order from a US district judge. The Justice Department
Speaker 2: has argued that the order to resume funding quote contains
Speaker 2: several ambiguous terms and provisions that could be read to
Speaker 2: constitute significant intrusions on the executive branch's lawful authorities and
Speaker 2: the separation of powers unquote. This past weekend, Musk raged
Speaker 2: against a federal judge who ordered to temporarily restrict doja's
Speaker 2: access to Treasury Department data. Both Musk and the White
Speaker 2: House have labeled the judge an activist with White House
Speaker 2: spokesperson Harrison Fields calling the order quote absurd and judicial
Speaker 2: overreach unquote. On x the Everything app, Musk boosted claims
Speaker 2: calling this a judicial coup and shared an announcement from
Speaker 2: California Representative darryl Isa to introduce legislation to quote unquote
Speaker 2: stop these rogue judges. But even without added legislation, Musk
Speaker 2: and the Trump administration are gearing up to directly defy
Speaker 2: judicial authority. On Saturday, Musk shared a tweet reading, I
Speaker 2: don't like the president it sets when you defy a
Speaker 2: judicial ruling, But I'm just wondering what other options are
Speaker 2: these judges leaving us if they're going to blatantly disregard
Speaker 2: the Constitution for their own partisan political goals unquote. And
Speaker 2: on Sunday, Vice President J. D Vance posted a statement
Speaker 2: undermining judicial power. Quote. If a judge tried to tell
Speaker 2: a general how to conduct a military operation, that would
Speaker 2: be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney
Speaker 2: general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control executive's legitimate
Speaker 2: power unquote. So now it all comes down to force
Speaker 2: if the executive branch not just ignores judicial authority but
Speaker 2: blatantly defies it, who would be left to enforce the
Speaker 2: power of the court. That leads us to another step
Speaker 2: in Yarvin's plan, centralize the police, nationalize local law enforcement
Speaker 2: to place them under federal control. Trump has flirted with
Speaker 2: his tactic in the past, when he deputized Washington police
Speaker 2: as US marshals to kill Michael Rhinol In twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: DOGE staff threatened to call us marshals when you say
Speaker 2: to security officials who have since been fired, denied them
Speaker 2: access to classified systems. Jarvin believes this step is paramount quote.
Speaker 2: Support of the democratic public is a cipher. I think
Speaker 2: that actually all you need is command of the police unquote,
Speaker 2: if you have all of the guys with guns who
Speaker 2: can physically stop you. Support from the public doesn't hurt, though,
Speaker 2: and if things get tricky, Trump could employ the next
Speaker 2: step in Yarvin's plan. Mobilize populist support. But crucially, don't
Speaker 2: wait until you're at your weakest at the end of
Speaker 2: your term after losing an election under popular mandate. Deploy
Speaker 2: your empowered supporters at the height of your powers to
Speaker 2: oppose any obstruction from government agencies or the courts, Trump
Speaker 2: may weaponize a Supreme Court ordained presidential immunity and his
Speaker 2: unrestricted pardon power to make any willing actor carry out
Speaker 2: his bidding with zero risk of legal consequence. Now, even
Speaker 2: if Trump himself isn't aware of Yarvin's plan, his vice
Speaker 2: president certainly is. On a far right podcast in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, JD. Vance laid out a very similar vision
Speaker 2: for a second Trump term, using what the Peter Teel
Speaker 2: protege described as a dewocification program to purge bureaucracy.
Speaker 7: I think Trump is going to run again in twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four. I think he'll probably win again in twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four. I think that what Trump should do, like
Speaker 7: if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire
Speaker 7: every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil sermon in the
Speaker 7: administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts,
Speaker 7: because you will get taken to court. And then when
Speaker 7: the courts stop, you stand before the country like Andrew
Speaker 7: Jackson did, and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling,
Speaker 7: now let him enforce it.
Speaker 2: Jarvin writes that the initial goal of this new administration
Speaker 2: should not be simply to govern, but to quote figure
Speaker 2: out what the Trump administration can actually do when it
Speaker 2: assumes the full constitutional power is given to the chief
Speaker 2: executive of the executive branch unquote. What the administration can
Speaker 2: do once they fully seize this power is so incredibly vast.
Speaker 2: Without checks and balances, all those crazy things Trump tried
Speaker 2: to do during his first term would be a lot
Speaker 2: easier to enact, let alone, whatever Musk and the tech
Speaker 2: oligarchs want out of the United States incorporated. But that's
Speaker 2: a whole separate topic. The current fight determines the degree
Speaker 2: to which this power is seized, and Jarvin notes the
Speaker 2: importance of going all the way.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: When Trump in twenty seventeen took office, he took about
Speaker 2: zero point zero one percent of power. If Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one wants to have more than zero point
Speaker 2: zero zero one percent of power, the only way he
Speaker 2: can do it is to take one hundred percent, take
Speaker 2: it all at once, completely legally. The real Donald J.
Speaker 2: Trump would never have the guts to even think of
Speaker 2: doing this, and he's just too old unquote funny pessimism
Speaker 2: from Jarvin. There, all of this doesn't even need to
Speaker 2: benefit average Trump supporters because Trump's main campaign promise wasn't
Speaker 2: mass deportations, fixing the economy, or abolishing the Department of Education.
Speaker 2: It was retribution as extremism. Analyst Jared Holt notes, quote,
Speaker 2: the right got its base so hooked on the idea
Speaker 2: of revenge. He doesn't even need to pretend that any
Speaker 2: of this benefits their base in any tangible way. They
Speaker 2: just have to say it hurts the wrong people, and
Speaker 2: that satisfies them. Unquote. If Trump and Musk continue to
Speaker 2: get their way, it could take years to fix. But
Speaker 2: the past ten years have shown us you can't really
Speaker 2: return to normal. There probably is no going back. The
Speaker 2: options are to hunker down and play it slow and
Speaker 2: try to survive whatever happens in the next two to
Speaker 2: four years while offering passive resistance, or we accelerate to
Speaker 2: whatever comes next, put cards on the table, trigger a
Speaker 2: kinetic confrontation, and fully manifest the results of this constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: We are dealing with managing crumbles versus a full system's collapse.
Speaker 2: Sad face emoji.
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