YOUMost people only knew Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) through the scandals of its mostly young and male team, because they drove through the US government with a metaphorical ax.
The most famous staff member, except Musk, was a 19-year-old high school student who is lovingly known as ‘big balls’ with a mysterious afterand a 24-year-old software engineer who was fired and recycled to racist tweets from an old social media account discover.
But the richest man in the world on Thursday tried to give a new face of his government’s costs when he brought Doge’s senior leadership for their first television interview.
Surrounded by seven of the leaders of the advisory team, including bankers, engineers, managers and Titans of Industrial Was Musk typically immobile about his work to reduce federal government budget in an extensive softball interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.
“It’s a revolution, and I think it’s perhaps the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America will be in a much better form, “he boasted a comparison between his team’s firing of National Park Rangers and George Washington’s defeat of the British Empire.
The central theme of Musk’s pitch was that the US government, and with it the country, will fall if he and his team fail. In short, only Doge can save America.
“If we don’t, we’re sunk,” he said. “Unless we are successful, the ship of America will sink.”
Musk said that to achieve this achievement, he would have to cut the deficit by a trillion dollar (as Republicans strategize to reduce tax and revenue to the nations – by $ 4.5 trillion).
“The government is not effective, and there is a lot of wastage and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15 percent reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services,” Musk insisted.
It appears that the interview aimed at determining some of the damage of weeks of negative headings for Musk’s team, which moved quickly through numerous government departments, in some cases access to highly sensitive information in his efforts to reduce expenses based on President Donald Trump.
Baier did not lift in his interview a supremacy by a judge who “probably violated the USAID of Udod” probably violated the Constitution. ” Or that children are already dying Due to a stop in a program to provide AIDS medication. Or so much Hundreds of thousands More can die.
However, he asked Musk about the recent chaos in social security. The agency, relied on by 73 million Americans, was targeted by Doge after Musk without evidence claimed that a large number of people demanded fraudulent benefits – an allegation that experts say demonstrable false.
“We’ll make sure the site stays online,” replied Musk Curtly, eager to get on.
Baier gave each of Musk’s Akolites the opportunity to describe the great sacrifices they made to participate in his mission. They were sitting around Muskus like the bosses of McKinsey, and they insisted that they only do their patriotic duty.
Steve Davis, a long -standing lieutenant of Musk who worked at SpaceX, was portrayed by Baier as the ‘chief operating officer of Doge’. He described the mission to cut costs in government as “incredibly inspiring”.
“I think most taxpayers in the country would agree that letting the country bankrupt would be a very bad thing. And that’s why the country that is not bankrupt is a good thing that we are all willing to set up our lives to do, ‘he said.
It did not go unnoticed by Baier that many of the Altruistic business leaders who gathered before him were obscenely rich. It is unlikely that one of them ever had to rely on a check or service of the government.
“You are one of a few billionaires here,” Baier notes as he launched Joe Gebbia, the co -founder of Airbnb, who got the task of retiring in the government.
Gebbia decided to be voluntary when he heard that the retirement for government workers was managed by paper.
“We really believe that the government can have an Apple-shop-like experience, beautifully designed, wonderful user experience, modern systems,” he explained, perhaps unaware that an Apple store is the perfect idea of hell for most retirees.
Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley banker who now oversees the office of staff management, was worried that “there is a lot of money knocking out the door.”
Musk may have shown a more professional face to the so far Shadowy Doge team, but he has done little to address the damage he has done so quickly without even starting to understand that many of the services provided by federal workers have.
“They can characterize it as shooting of the hip, but it’s anything but it’s not. It’s not that we don’t make mistakes, ‘he said.
“If we were to approach it with the standard not to make mistakes at all, it would be like saying: Someone in baseball should bat 1,000 – it’s impossible. When we make mistakes, we fix it quickly. And we’re going on, ‘he insisted.
Musk also did nothing to calm fear that he and his team unelected bureaucrats, with little real supervision of their work, would not do more collateral damage if the work on social security really began.
“I think most people, common sense, would say that the fraud should end. They are concerned about the 94-year-old grandmother who skips a check or somehow does not get what she is supposed to get, ‘Baier introduces Musk.
“And what we’re trying to say is actually that the 94-year-old grandmother is, because of Doge’s work, will let her check go. She will not be robbed by fraudsters as she is robbed today, and the federal government solvency will ensure that she continues to receive the social security examinations, ‘replies Musk.
But budget experts, the people who have done it before, say Musk cannot reach its target without touching legal programs such as Social Security.
This means that either musk or grandmother will have to give.
