The unchecked power of Musk and DOGE
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency – a team of 20 or so engineers – now has influence in a number of departments, working to deplete the civil service. But is this legal?
Read more:
Elon Musk and other unelected officials are working to remake the U.S. government.
Faiz Siddiqui has been covering the world’s richest man for years, and he says Musk’s playbook at DOGE is similar to what he did at X, formerly known as Twitter: Cut first, ask questions later.
There are still questions about whether that worked for X and whether it’s legal for the U.S. government.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Sam Bair.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Since the election, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been leading this small team, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge. |
| 0:12.7 | Their mission is to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget. |
| 0:18.8 | When I first heard about the Department of Government Efficiency, it seemed like it was going to be a kind of review board, a committee outside the government that could advise on cuts to spending. |
| 0:31.3 | But President Trump changed that. He used an executive order to embed the Doge in the U.S. Digital Service. |
| 0:39.3 | The U.S.DS is a little-known group within the executive branch. |
| 0:42.5 | It was established to fix health care.gov after the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. |
| 0:47.8 | But now, it stands for U.S. Doge Service. |
| 0:51.9 | And that means that Elon Musk is now officially a member of the government, |
| 0:56.5 | which is why I wanted to talk to my colleague, Fez. |
| 0:59.8 | I'm Fez City He. I'm a business reporter at The Washington Post. I write largely about Elon Musk |
| 1:06.1 | and currently about the federal government. I don't know. I haven't thought about my job title. |
| 1:10.8 | Fez has been covering Musk for years. at Tesla and then at Twitter, now called X. |
| 1:16.3 | So he saw up close how over the last two plus years, Musk single-handedly turned Twitter upside down. |
| 1:24.4 | So Musk applies this slash and burn approach, which involves pausing payments to outside vendors, |
| 1:30.6 | cutting staff, and cutting deep into staff. Ultimately, Twitter staff was trimmed by 80%. |
| 1:36.6 | And as you look at what Musk is trying to do to the federal workforce now, this might seem familiar. |
| 1:42.9 | We're seeing that playbook play out once again here on a much bigger and broader and more |
| 1:47.8 | consequential scale. |
| 1:52.4 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. |
| 1:56.4 | I'm Martine Powers. |
| 1:58.0 | It's Tuesday, February 4th. |
| 2:00.2 | Today, we talk about how the Doge is operating, |
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