Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. Musk, for all the
Speaker 1: kind of excitement he's caused among Republicans, could actually be
Speaker 1: setting them up for a real problem that's going to
Speaker 1: hit when funding runs out on March fourteenth.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: and this is Trumpnomics, the podcast that looks at the
Speaker 2: economic world of Donald Trump, how he's already shaped the
Speaker 2: global economy, and what on earth is going to happen
Speaker 2: next This week, our question is will Elon musk campaign
Speaker 2: to make the US government more efficient actually lead to
Speaker 2: its shutting down altogether in a few weeks time. On
Speaker 2: March fourteenth, the Continuing Resolution that funds the US federal
Speaker 2: government will run out and its work will shut down
Speaker 2: unless the Republican Congress and Donald Trump reach an agreement. Now,
Speaker 2: that was always going to be tough, but Elon Musk
Speaker 2: scorched earth overhaul of the US government via the so
Speaker 2: called Department of Government Efficiency DOGE appears to have made
Speaker 2: it a whole lot harder. So that's left me wanting
Speaker 2: to know what exactly are the chances the federal government
Speaker 2: shuts down in a few weeks. And if it does,
Speaker 2: will DOGE shut down as well? Or will that be
Speaker 2: an opportunity for Elon Musk and his team to really
Speaker 2: go to town. Now, of course, nobody knows the answer
Speaker 2: to those questions, but I have two people here who
Speaker 2: can speculate much more wisely than most. Josh Green, National
Speaker 2: correspondent at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, author of the New York Times
Speaker 2: bestseller Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the National Uprising. Josh,
Speaker 2: great to have you back.
Speaker 1: Could to be with you and Laura.
Speaker 2: Davison, our White House editor specializing in DOGE taxes and
Speaker 2: fiscal policy. I think of you as the DOGE czar,
Speaker 2: but it just doesn't sound like a very nice name, Laura,
Speaker 2: so I won't call you that, but very good to
Speaker 2: have you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: I think in a more normal year, we'd have talked
Speaker 2: about the prospect of a government shut down long before now,
Speaker 2: since we're so close to that formal deadline. But frankly,
Speaker 2: there's just been too much going on.
Speaker 3: Josh.
Speaker 2: I mean, you did draw attention to this a few
Speaker 2: days ago in your excellent Business Week newsletter, but you
Speaker 2: describe their Elon Musk rampaging across Washington like Godzilla leveling Tokyo,
Speaker 2: packing away at federal agencies and firing workers on mass
Speaker 2: through Doge, I think, very good visual image. You had
Speaker 2: fun there. Doge appears to be having quite a lot
Speaker 2: of blowback out in people's constituencies. Is certainly causing a
Speaker 2: lot of headlines, a lot of stories. But there's a
Speaker 2: very specific problem for the Republican leadership in Congress when
Speaker 2: it comes to these upcoming votes to keep the government running.
Speaker 2: So can you just take us through what they needed
Speaker 2: to happen and how Musk has made it harder.
Speaker 1: The vibe in Washington right now among republic pilkins is
Speaker 1: very positive and very excited, and a lot of Trump
Speaker 1: fans have really enjoyed watching Musk shutter agencies, fireworkers, create
Speaker 1: all this chaos that has Democrats so upset, and of
Speaker 1: course that's where all the news focus has been. But
Speaker 1: if you look right now, the conference is divided between
Speaker 1: a small group of hardline deficit hawks and the broader group,
Speaker 1: which includes moderate Republicans from districts that Joe Biden won
Speaker 1: who are concerned about deep spending cuts and so Republicans
Speaker 1: haven't been able to agree on a spending bill. This
Speaker 1: is not something that's new. In the past, Republicans have
Speaker 1: run into the same problem In twenty twenty three, Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 1: the House Speaker, had to rely on Democratic votes. Last December,
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, his successor, again had to rely on Democratic
Speaker 1: votes to averta shutdown. So before Elon Musk, there had
Speaker 1: always been this kind of off ramp when I think
Speaker 1: of as an off ramp, where a Republican House Speaker
Speaker 1: who was in trouble could at the last minute cobble
Speaker 1: together some kind of a deal with Democrats to keep
Speaker 1: the government funded. This time, however, the Democrats I've spoken
Speaker 1: to have been very angry about what Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: doing and what Donald Trump is doing. And a couple
Speaker 1: of them it said to me in the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, why would we help out Speaker Johnson and
Speaker 1: Republicans and agree to any kind of a deal. How
Speaker 1: could we possibly trust it if Elon Musk and Trump
Speaker 1: could just go ahead and summarily tear apart anything that
Speaker 1: we'd agreed to. And to me, that raises an interesting
Speaker 1: tension that a lot of people aren't focused on yet.
Speaker 1: That Musk, for all the kind of excitement he's caused
Speaker 1: among Republicans, could actually be setting them up for a
Speaker 1: real problem that's going to hit when funding runs out
Speaker 1: on March fourteenth.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that they've needed Democratic votes in the past.
Speaker 2: Just to be specific about it, there are quite a
Speaker 2: few Republican congressmen who and people who have never voted
Speaker 2: for one of these continuing resolutions, even with larger majorities
Speaker 2: than they have now, they've always had to go to Democrats.
Speaker 2: Given that direct linkage that you're making with Elon Musk's
Speaker 2: unpopularity with Democrats and the need to get some Democrat votes,
Speaker 2: do you get the sense that they're going to link
Speaker 2: the two in any way, that they're trying to put
Speaker 2: some restraint on Doze or on President Trump more generally
Speaker 2: in return for that support, or would that be too
Speaker 2: explicit for them.
Speaker 1: No, that's exactly the question that I've been asking, and
Speaker 1: the feedback I've gotten has been twofold. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: there's the obvious worry, which you've mentioned, that how can
Speaker 1: we have assurance that any deal we strike won't immediately
Speaker 1: be torn apart or ignored by Musk? The question I've
Speaker 1: been asking is would you actually write legislative language into
Speaker 1: an agreement saying Elon Musk cannot cut this agency? Or
Speaker 1: perhaps Trump could do what's called a presidential signing statement.
Speaker 1: George W. Bush used to do these a lot, that
Speaker 1: would specify his intentions for what a bill means and
Speaker 1: how it should be interpreted. To guard it against Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: There's got to be some kind of an assurance from
Speaker 1: Democrats that the deal they agree to is going to
Speaker 1: withstand Doge's attacks. But then the other factor in all
Speaker 1: of this is that the Democratic Party is very unpopular.
Speaker 1: It's favorability rating is something like in the mid thirties,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of pressure on Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 1: from Democratic voters not to simply roll over and enable
Speaker 1: Trump and Republicans to continue what they view as an
Speaker 1: assault on government. So there are a lot of forces,
Speaker 1: I think, behind the scenes that are pushing the two
Speaker 1: sides toward what looks to me to be a pretty
Speaker 1: high chance of a government shutdown.
Speaker 2: I guess, just to be clear, everyone in Congress is
Speaker 2: pretty unpopular, right. The Republicans in Congress are not super popular,
Speaker 2: or you would say, you think specifically as the Democrats.
Speaker 1: I think the Democrats right now are more unpopular. I
Speaker 1: saw Paul the other day that had Democrats running about
Speaker 1: twenty points behind, I think, in popularity behind Republicans. When
Speaker 1: Donald Trump even got a bit of a honeymoon, he
Speaker 1: had higher favorability ratings and unfavorability he rings for the
Speaker 1: first month or so of his presidency. But it's the
Speaker 1: view of Democrats among their own voters that is so
Speaker 1: worrisome to Democratic elected officials because they need this support
Speaker 1: in order to stay in their jobs, and they're very
Speaker 1: alert and attuned to the dissatisfaction in the Democratic base.
Speaker 1: And that too is a factor that's going to play
Speaker 1: into what Democrats are and aren't willing to agree on
Speaker 1: when it comes to cutting it spending deal with the Republicans.
Speaker 2: Okay, Joss, I might make you do a lot of work.
Speaker 2: I have one more question. Go on to something else,
Speaker 2: but I am interested. Do you think that doge has
Speaker 2: changed the politics of a shutdown because we don't normally
Speaker 2: talk about federal workers very much except if there's a shutdown,
Speaker 2: But I feel like we spent the last two or
Speaker 2: three weeks reading loads of stories about federal workers debating
Speaker 2: whether they're all useless, or whether any of them are
Speaker 2: really important. Do you think that maybe President Trump will
Speaker 2: be less frightened of a shutdown in this context? Will
Speaker 2: it just sort of muddy the waters around Doge.
Speaker 1: They're eager to test the proposition that the government really
Speaker 1: doesn't need all these employees to function on it, so
Speaker 1: I think there would be some appetite for a shutdown.
Speaker 1: The danger with that is that in the past, Republicans
Speaker 1: have gone into shutdowns saying, Oh, this isn't going to
Speaker 1: be a big deal, it will be fine, the government
Speaker 1: can cont you to run. In my view, we had
Speaker 1: a test to that back during the first Trump administration
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, when Republicans allowed a
Speaker 1: shutdown to occur because Trump wanted to secure immediate funding
Speaker 1: for a border wall, and the shutdown lasted thirty five days. Eventually,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of blowback from ordinary Americans, and
Speaker 1: Trump ended up agreeing to reopen the government without having
Speaker 1: secured that funding. Republicans and Trump lost that shutdown because
Speaker 1: the political pressure became too much for them to bear.
Speaker 1: I think the longer a shutdown goes on, regardless of
Speaker 1: how excited Republicans might be in the front end of that.
Speaker 1: The political pressure on them to get the government running
Speaker 1: again is only going to increase. Elon Musk may not care,
Speaker 1: a lot of Republicans eager to fire government workers may
Speaker 1: not care. But at the end of the day, Republican
Speaker 1: elected officials want to keep their jobs and Trump wants
Speaker 1: to maintain his popularity, and it's very hard for me
Speaker 1: to see how they would be able to do that
Speaker 1: over an extended government shutdown.
Speaker 2: I can be come back to a bit later, because
Speaker 2: I do want to think about the implications for doge
Speaker 2: itself and their activities if the government shuts down. But first,
Speaker 2: I mean, we've had a lot of politics, which is
Speaker 2: only occasionally allowed on Trumponomics, But I wanted to also
Speaker 2: think about some of the numbers involved here, and specifically
Speaker 2: have a quick think about whether all these firings and
Speaker 2: scary emails and all the fire smoke coming out of
Speaker 2: federal government thanks to DOGE, has actually produced a lot
Speaker 2: of savings for the US taxpayer. So Laura, you and
Speaker 2: your team keep a close eye on all this. And
Speaker 2: I see that DOGE itself has claimed recently that it's
Speaker 2: already found fifty five billion dollars worth of savings. Now,
Speaker 2: our chief economy is pointed out, and a woe pointed
Speaker 2: out on this show not long ago that you'd need
Speaker 2: around eight times that you'd need more like four hundred
Speaker 2: billion to really make a dent on the US borrowing trajectory.
Speaker 2: But still in just a few weeks, fifty five billion
Speaker 2: would be pretty impressive. Is it true so far?
Speaker 3: No, And they actually recently updated that number just sixty
Speaker 3: five billion, But we still have seen their accounting of
Speaker 3: how they got there.
Speaker 2: So in the last few days it's gone up from
Speaker 2: fifty five to sixty five.
Speaker 3: Yes, but the underlying sort of accounting doesn't bear that out.
Speaker 3: Doge has really made this claim that they are the
Speaker 3: most transparent agency out there, that they are doing this
Speaker 3: all in public view. For the first couple weeks, what
Speaker 3: this really was was just an x account just posting, hey,
Speaker 3: we canceled this contract. We canceled that contract. In the
Speaker 3: past week or so, they have put this all on
Speaker 3: a Doze website and basically listed here are all the
Speaker 3: contracts that we have canceled. If you go through there's
Speaker 3: an At this point, I had a couple thousand there
Speaker 3: when we did the math last week on this There
Speaker 3: were about sixteen billion dollars worth of contracts listed there. However,
Speaker 3: there was one that doesn't add up to the fifty
Speaker 3: five billion that they were claiming at the top line.
Speaker 3: And then once you dug down into these contracts, we
Speaker 3: found one pretty major error that showed an eight billion
Speaker 3: dollar contract that was actually an eight million dollar contract.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of a state you make when you're
Speaker 2: the richest man in the world and you're just constantly
Speaker 2: getting your millions and billions mixed up.
Speaker 3: But truly, as you mentioned, that doesn't really move the dial,
Speaker 3: but it showed and caused a lot of called into
Speaker 3: a question Doge and how transparent they are being. Actually,
Speaker 3: they've accounted for about eight billion dollars worth of savings.
Speaker 3: That's not that much here at Bloomberg when we're talking
Speaker 3: about tax policies, we sometimes don't even really start talking
Speaker 3: about them ntill they're about one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Get out of bed for less than a few billions.
Speaker 3: Other other colleagues have noted for various tax savings that
Speaker 3: in this bill that Republicans are looking to pass later
Speaker 3: this year. Elon Musk personally could benefit by hundreds of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars. So the fact that his group is
Speaker 3: only saving eight billion dollars really just goes to show
Speaker 3: just how they're barely denting the surface.
Speaker 2: And it's weird. I mean that particular example, the million
Speaker 2: billion one. I mean, we joke around it, but actually
Speaker 2: it's also one of those ones where it's just on
Speaker 2: its face it's mad. You sort of wonder, how if
Speaker 2: you just tell us a bit more about the detail
Speaker 2: of what the claim is in terms of how this
Speaker 2: contract would be bigger than anything that this company has
Speaker 2: had anything to do with ever.
Speaker 3: Yes, so this was a contractor that's out in a
Speaker 3: Washington suburb. Their average contract going back was about a
Speaker 3: million dollars, so this having an eight billion dollar contract
Speaker 3: would just be wildly out of proportion.
Speaker 2: And it is a DEI contract, right of course you
Speaker 2: want to claim that you were wasting lots and lots
Speaker 2: of money on DEI.
Speaker 3: Yes, And even for the agency this contract was going through,
Speaker 3: their entire budget was only about nine billion dollars. So
Speaker 3: the fact that they would have one single contract being
Speaker 3: eight billion on DEI just doesn't stand up.
Speaker 2: And it was eight million.
Speaker 3: It was for eight million. The other thing that was
Speaker 3: really called into question even of Okay, say you make
Speaker 3: that accounting change, you have eight billion dollars in which
Speaker 3: in what they say they've saved, all of these contracts
Speaker 3: that are listed basically have a maximum value, and that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that top line number is actually what's spent,
Speaker 3: So that eight billion dollars is probably actually much less
Speaker 3: after you go through a discount all of these contracts
Speaker 3: across the board. Doe just quick to point out that, look,
Speaker 3: this doesn't account for all of the the leases that
Speaker 3: we've canceled, all the personnel that we have pulled from
Speaker 3: the federal government roles. But even still, even if you
Speaker 3: give a very generous estimate to all of those, were
Speaker 3: still just talking a couple more billion dollars here and there.
Speaker 3: This claim that Musk started with a two trillion dollar
Speaker 3: goal of cutting two trillion dollars from the federal deficit.
Speaker 3: He's now decreased that to one trillion. So the goalposts
Speaker 3: really keep moving here, just week by week.
Speaker 2: I guess you could say he's providing the open goal
Speaker 2: by making all this transparent on the website, Given that
Speaker 2: a lot of people seem to be quite happy to
Speaker 2: take at face value that claims he's been making on x.
Speaker 2: I guess they deserve some credit for the transparency of
Speaker 2: the website, especially if it means we find all these
Speaker 2: errors and we can constantly criticize them.
Speaker 3: The other criticism, though, is that there's really not a
Speaker 3: lot of transparency requirements for DOGE. It is not a
Speaker 3: department as all the other Department of Homeland Security. It's
Speaker 3: really just an office within the White House. Musk himself
Speaker 3: doesn't have to disclose his finances publicly. They also don't
Speaker 3: have the same sort of scrutiny from a watchdog or
Speaker 3: an inspector general that would have the same sort of oversight.
Speaker 3: They don't have to report who the people are. There's
Speaker 3: questions of are these doze kids, as they've been called,
Speaker 3: going to these different agencies, a lot of them very young.
Speaker 3: Have they completed their ethics training, the t training. There's
Speaker 3: been some cases we've reported on lapses there that have
Speaker 3: cropped up. So they really aren't subject to the same
Speaker 3: hiring practices and scrutiny as any other of the federal
Speaker 3: workers that they're going in and auditing.
Speaker 2: And to your point about the website, they don't seem
Speaker 2: to have done a lot of basic arithmesy. This actually
Speaker 2: takes us that the status of DOGE and the fact
Speaker 2: that it's not subject to a lot of these things,
Speaker 2: actually raises this much intriguing question of what happens to
Speaker 2: DOGE efforts themselves in the case of a government shutdown,
Speaker 2: And mean, I go back to you, Josh, what's your
Speaker 2: sense would we consider the DOGE effort to now be
Speaker 2: enough part of the federal government that all of its
Speaker 2: people have to go home? Or would it the counter's
Speaker 2: essential workers it's essential to be cutting the government even
Speaker 2: as you shut it down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. That's one that Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans have started to ask themselves. I spent yesterday talking
Speaker 1: to a couple of House and Senate staffers just asking
Speaker 1: the basic question, would DOGE be allowed to continue operating
Speaker 1: in a government shutdown? There isn't a clear answer, but
Speaker 1: the general sense that I got was that staffers both
Speaker 1: in the House and Senate think that it probably would
Speaker 1: be because the president does have a lot of leeway
Speaker 1: to declare certain workers essential to the government. And so,
Speaker 1: as one Democratic House staffer put it to me, I
Speaker 1: don't think DOGE would even pause, I did get an
Speaker 1: interesting illustration of the way that presidents used this power
Speaker 1: to manipulate public opinion. And I think it might come
Speaker 1: into play with Trump and Doze if there is a
Speaker 1: government shutdown. Back in twenty thirteen, when Barack Obama was president,
Speaker 1: there was a shutdown and Obama shut the National Parks down,
Speaker 1: and Republicans got very angry about that because they said,
Speaker 1: Obama has the power to keep this open. He's doing
Speaker 1: this for political purposes to get people mad at Republicans.
Speaker 2: And he was compliance right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But then during the twenty eighteen government shutdown when Trump
Speaker 1: was president, Trump made a point of keeping a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff open, including the National Parks, in order to
Speaker 1: underscore the argument that shutdowns aren't that bad and it
Speaker 1: wasn't his fault when things got messed up during a shutdown.
Speaker 1: Think if you flip that around and put it in
Speaker 1: a Doze context, Trump, I don't see why Trump couldn't
Speaker 1: argue that Doze are essential workers. They're actually helping to
Speaker 1: balance the budget by continuing to kind of fire people
Speaker 1: and do these things at Trump and Musk think is
Speaker 1: so important. And I don't know what power Democrats would
Speaker 1: have to stop them. So while we don't have a
Speaker 1: clear and definitive answer yet, the assumption among people I
Speaker 1: talked to on the Hill is that DOGE probably would
Speaker 1: be able to continue operating in a shutdown.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of thought also with the DOGE that
Speaker 3: a shutdown would actually be very beneficial because they wouldn't
Speaker 3: be encumbered by all of the career staff that would
Speaker 3: be in the office. They've run into lots of issues
Speaker 3: where they want to access a data set, they want
Speaker 3: access to certain files, and the staff that's there says no. Suddenly,
Speaker 3: if you remove all those people from the building for
Speaker 3: an extended period of time, DOGE has a lot more
Speaker 3: leeway to just run roughshot and grab what they want.
Speaker 2: So you've raised the other sort of big question out
Speaker 2: of all this. I started off asking where Republicans now
Speaker 2: be less scared of a shutdown? Well, Democrats actually wonder
Speaker 2: about really concerned about the federal government. Should they be
Speaker 2: pretty concerned about shutdown?
Speaker 1: If you guys are right, it's a good question. I
Speaker 1: think everybody's trying to figure this out. The impression I
Speaker 1: have in talking to Democrats is that they're just very
Speaker 1: frustrated with the way all this is going, and so
Speaker 1: I don't imagine that a lot of them are going
Speaker 1: to be eager to just keep things rolling along. There's
Speaker 1: certainly an appetite among at least some Democratic staffers that
Speaker 1: I've talked to, that Trump just needs to get a
Speaker 1: taste of his own medicine, and he wants to shut
Speaker 1: the government down. Let's go ahead and do it, and
Speaker 1: let him deal with all the political blowback that happens
Speaker 1: as a result of that. But one other thing I
Speaker 1: think is worth mentioning is, and this is a concern
Speaker 1: among Democrats I spoke to, is that there is a
Speaker 1: lot of fear of what could doje in musk do
Speaker 1: during a shutdown if they were allowed to continue operating.
Speaker 1: And one particular area of concern is the treasury payment system.
Speaker 1: There's been talk in the past among Republicans that a
Speaker 1: shutdown wouldn't be so bad because they could sort of
Speaker 1: decide which bills to pay and which bills not to
Speaker 1: pay and keep things rolling for a long time. So
Speaker 1: you't government wouldn't default on treasury bonds, but it might
Speaker 1: shut down other payments. That is something that a lot
Speaker 1: of people view is very dangerous. To the market, to
Speaker 1: global markets if there were a shutdown. We now know
Speaker 1: that the dose folks do have access to a lot
Speaker 1: of these payment systems. Nobody really knows what could happen,
Speaker 1: what kind of mishift they could get up to, if
Speaker 1: this kind of scenario were to unfold.
Speaker 2: I guess we should say at this point it's got best.
Speaker 2: We've interviewed a couple of times in Bloomberg in the
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks. He comes from Wall Street. He's
Speaker 2: been very clear that this is we're all getting ahead
Speaker 2: of ourselves in worrying about specifically those functions and the
Speaker 2: running of the treasury market. He thinks all of that
Speaker 2: is hysterical. I think what you stated in terms of
Speaker 2: the possible leavers they would have and the lack of
Speaker 2: clarity we would have in the vent of a shutdown,
Speaker 2: I think is all true. But we should say there
Speaker 2: is supposedly someone who cares about these things sitting inside
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue that the Treasury Department. I guess
Speaker 2: one last question is just goes back to this broader environment,
Speaker 2: the rather febrile environment we have. If we have a shutdown,
Speaker 2: rightly or wrongly, is it seem to be the sort
Speaker 2: of defining battle between Congress and the executive This sort
Speaker 2: of ongoing tussle we've had with President Trump over who
Speaker 2: actually controls the power of the purse, who can control
Speaker 2: whether to actually spend money or not. You were hinting
Speaker 2: at it just now, Josh. Is this how it's going
Speaker 2: to come to a head, perhaps even more than all
Speaker 2: the court orders and all the cases that have gone out.
Speaker 1: I really don't know. I mean, right now, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of contention between Trump Doge and House Republicans,
Speaker 1: Trump's own cabinet secretaries. Republicans in Congress have basically been
Speaker 1: willing to let Trump and Musk operate as they wish.
Speaker 1: At some point, maybe that battle comes to a head
Speaker 1: and it becomes more visible, more publicly contentious. I just
Speaker 1: don't know the answer of the question yet.
Speaker 3: I'd say we've just seen a glimmer of the sort
Speaker 3: of fissures starting to form between Trump allies and Musk.
Speaker 3: This really came to a head in this email that
Speaker 3: went out over the weekend where Musk said, every federal worker,
Speaker 3: send in five bullet points of what you've been doing
Speaker 3: over the past week. This caused a lot of alarm,
Speaker 3: ruined a lot of Cabinet secretary's weekends as they were
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how to respond to this, and
Speaker 3: a lot of agencies said ignore it, do not reply,
Speaker 3: will handle this. Musk late last night got upset over
Speaker 3: this and said, Okay, if you didn't reply this time, fine,
Speaker 3: but we're going to send another email, and this time
Speaker 3: you have to reply or else you'll be fired. This
Speaker 3: runs in contrast of all of the guidance that both
Speaker 3: agency heads have given, and these are Trump hand picked
Speaker 3: people to run these places, as well as OPM with
Speaker 3: the Office of Personnel Management or the HR for the
Speaker 3: federal government. So we're starting to see this power struggle forming.
Speaker 3: We'll see where we are. The shutdown is, if it happens,
Speaker 3: is about fifteen days away. A lot can happen between
Speaker 3: now and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talk about the battle between different arms of government,
Speaker 2: Congress and the White House, but if it's between Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and everyone else, that's what seems to be coming
Speaker 2: down to Laura occurs to me, you're not even I
Speaker 2: think when you're on shutdown, you're not even allowed to
Speaker 2: check your emails. So I guess he is if he
Speaker 2: does get if we do get shut down, Elon Musk
Speaker 2: is not going to be able to send a lot
Speaker 2: more emails to federal workers that they're supposed to reply
Speaker 2: to within a day or whatever.
Speaker 3: That would be a key point that would harm his
Speaker 3: strategy here of they would say, look, couldn't respond because
Speaker 3: you didn't let me.
Speaker 2: All right, well, Josh Green and Laura Davison, thank you
Speaker 2: very much. That was a great Thank you, Thanks so much,
Speaker 2: thanks for listening to this episode of trump Andomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: It was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders, and I was
Speaker 2: joined by Laura Davison and Josh Green. Trump Andomics is
Speaker 2: produced by Samasadi and Moses and Dam with sound design
Speaker 2: by Blake Maples. Brendan Francis Newnan is our executive producer
Speaker 2: and please do rate and review us wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts, so a lot more people can listening. Turning