Interviewer (00:00):
Thanks for having us and doing this. I know there's a lot of interest in this. First, let me start with you, Elon. What are the budgetary savings goals and how much do you think you've achieved so far?
Elon Musk (00:14):
Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. From a nominal deficit of two trillion to try cut the deficit in half to one trillion, or looked at it in total federal spending, to drop the federal spending from seven trillion to six trillion. We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud, reduce the spending by 15%, which seems really quite achievable. The government is not efficient and there's a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.
Interviewer (00:52):
I'm going to talk to all the guys-
Elon Musk (00:54):
If not making it better.
Interviewer (00:55):
… and talk to all the guys here about the specifics. But for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process?
Elon Musk (01:01):
The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind-blowing. We routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. For example, the simple survey that was literally a 10 question survey that you could do with SurveyMonkey, cost you about $10,000. The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that.
Interviewer (01:29):
For just a survey?
Elon Musk (01:30):
A billion dollars for a simple online survey. "Do you like the national park?" And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. The survey would just go into nothing. It was insane.
Interviewer (01:39):
You technically are a special government employee and you're supposed to be 130 days. Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's what you're going to do?
Elon Musk (01:51):
I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe.
Interviewer (01:58):
In that timeframe, 130 days?
Elon Musk (02:01):
Yes.
Interviewer (02:01):
And the process is a report at some point? At 100 days?
Elon Musk (02:05):
Not really a report. We are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. Every day like that passes, our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day every day, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding.
Interviewer (02:18):
And we're going to talk of the specifics, but there obviously are DOGE critics who are reading all kinds of stuff. Obviously, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are attacking you and they characterize the approach as this, "Fire, ready and then aim." And how do you approach that? How do you respond to that?
Elon Musk (02:40):
I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts. We want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. And actually that is our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that, which is not to say that we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball has got to bat 1000. That's impossible. When we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on.
Interviewer (03:14):
Some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist.
Steve Davis (03:21):
Used to be.
Interviewer (03:23):
Yeah. And now, essentially, you're the chief operating officer of DOGE. Day-to-day operations. Fair to say?
Steve Davis (03:30):
Yeah. Part of the DOGE team.
Interviewer (03:32):
How did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge you see?
Steve Davis (03:37):
The reason I'm here, which is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country would agree that, the country going bankrupt would be a very bad thing and, therefore, the country going not bankrupt is a good thing that all of us are willing to put our lives on hold in order to do. I think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that's supportive and a great cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome. And I think that's, given the inspiring mission and given the non-zero chance of success, it was worth doing.
Interviewer (04:15):
Go ahead.
Elon Musk (04:15):
I'd just like to sort of re-emphasize that point. The success of DOGE is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding cabinet that he's selected. It would be impossible without the support of the President and the cabinet.
Interviewer (04:29):
But you're finding the money. It's big numbers, right?
Steve Davis (04:32):
Yeah. Like Elon said, the minimum impulse bid is often a billion dollars. For example, the $830 million, which was the online survey, that's an enormous amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the DOGE team wasn't working with, in that case, the Department of Interior. But then, taking it one step further, DOGE then publishes these things on our website for maximum transparency. It would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. Now, anyone can just log into DOGE.gov anytime and see these payments as… They're not yet in real time. They're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.
Interviewer (05:04):
But the process still involves Congress, right? At some level?
Elon Musk (05:08):
We try to keep Congress as informed as possible, but the law does say that money needs to be spent correctly. It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully. It's not contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress. And we've seen, actually, great support, at least from the Republican side of the House, and occasionally some Democrats too.
(05:34)
It's nice to see people cross the aisle once in a while, but usually when they attack DOGE, they never attack any of the specifics. They'll say what we're doing is somehow unconstitutional or illegal or whatever. We're like, which line of the cost savings do you disagree with? And they can't point to any. And we list them all on DOGE.gov and the DOGE handle on X. And you'll see just outrageous things. One outrageous thing after another.
Interviewer (06:04):
Joe Gebbia, besides Elon, you're one of several billionaires here, co-founder of Airbnb, and you wanted to help out.
Joe Gebbia (06:15):
I bumped into Anthony and Elon, probably back in February, and they told me something about a mine that dealt with retirement and they said that they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. I love the challenge, so I jumped on board and, it turns out, there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. Now picture this, this giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets, stacked 10 high, to house 400 million pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years. And so, as he dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. The process takes many months and we're going to make it just many days.
Interviewer (07:05):
Will it be digitized?
Joe Gebbia (07:07):
Absolutely. This will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most. And I really think it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. We really believe that the government can have an Apple Store-like experience. Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.
Interviewer (07:32):
Because right now it's by hand.
Elon Musk (07:34):
Yes. The retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper in manila envelopes into this gigantic mine.
Interviewer (07:42):
They can't retire more than a certain number every month.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
About 8,000 a month.
Elon Musk (07:48):
The reason we discovered it was we were saying let's encourage voluntary retirement. They said, the most they could do is 8,000 a month. And even under normal circumstances, it can take six to nine months just to have your retirement paperwork processed. And they often get the calculations wrong. We're like, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, because of the mine. They're like, what do you mean a mine? What's a mine got to do with retiring? And that's where we discovered that all the retirement stuff is still done by paper in a process that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s. If you took a snapshot of the mine when it first started in the '50s, to today, it looks the same.
Interviewer (08:27):
It's amazing. How long do you think it'll take to turn over?
Joe Gebbia (08:30):
We're working as fast as we can. Probably next couple of months we'll have this overhauled. And I really think, again, why are we subjecting our federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training just to retire from the government. There's a whole training program that people have to go through in order to retire. I think we can do better for them.
Interviewer (08:49):
Aram Moghaddassi, DOGE engineer. You go into these places, one of the more than a dozen engineers, first people to go into the agencies and view the computer data sets. Tell me what you're finding and, for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it for them.
Aram Moghaddassi (09:07):
Yeah, I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about DOGE was learning basically the state of government computers. By some estimates, government IT it costs about $100 billion and it's funding systems that are over 50 years old, in the case of something like Social Security or the IRS. Really critical systems are old. They cost a lot of money to maintain, and the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. I thought, I'm a software engineer that maybe can make a difference here and that's really what inspired me at a high level. I'll give you an example-
Interviewer (09:50):
There's a lot of mystery about social security and a lot of words about it from… Here's what Democrats have been saying about it.
Greg Casar (09:55):
It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Speaker 2 (10:00):
… Elon Musk and President Trump have set their sights on cutting Social Security.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Their goal is clear: destroy Social Security from within.
Interviewer (10:10):
You're in the building. I mean, you're in the computers. What's happening there? What are you doing?
Aram Moghaddassi (10:15):
Yeah. It doesn't line up with my experience on the ground. And I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also make the experience better.
(10:35)
And I'll give you one example is at Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters.
Interviewer (10:54):
40%.
Aram Moghaddassi (10:54):
That's right. Almost half.
Elon Musk (10:57):
Yes. And they steal people's Social Security is what happens, is they call in, they say… They claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money's flowing. It actually goes to some fraudster. This is happening all day every day, and then somebody doesn't receive their Social Security. It's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system.
Interviewer (11:24):
How do you reassure people that what you all are doing is not going to affect their benefits?
Elon Musk (11:30):
No. In fact, what we're doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people as a result of the work of DOGE will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that. As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.
Interviewer (11:48):
All right.
Elon Musk (11:49):
I want to emphasize that point and let the record show that I said this and it'll be proven out to be true. Let's check back on this in the future.
Interviewer (11:58):
So Washington Post, the Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts. Freaked people out. Is that going to change?
Elon Musk (12:16):
Yes, we're going to make sure that the website stays online.
Interviewer (12:19):
Yeah. But is it a result of going in there?
Elon Musk (12:21):
No.
Interviewer (12:22):
Or something you're doing? It's-
Steve Davis (12:23):
No. The amount of issues that were they occur… Social Security system are enormous. As an example, there are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system.
Interviewer (12:37):
And that's an accurate figure?
Elon Musk (12:39):
Yes.
Steve Davis (12:39):
Correct.
Interviewer (12:39):
15 million.
Steve Davis (12:40):
Correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem. Again, pre-existing problems since 2008, at least from an IG report. So there were some great people working at the Social Security Administration that found this, 2008, and nothing was done.
(12:56)
And so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were floating around that can be used only for bad intentions. There'd be no way to use those for good intentions. And so one of the things the DOGE team is doing is carefully and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
Interviewer (13:14):
Brad Smith, working at HHS. And obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid, NIH, what are you finding?
Brad Smith (13:26):
Yeah. Well, I'd say there's a couple of things we're really committed to in our work at HHS. Number one, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world. And number two, making sure which President Trump has said over and over again that we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of opportunity.
(13:42)
So if I take NIH as an example, today, if you're a NIH researcher and you get a hundred-dollars grant at your university today, you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that.
(13:52)
The policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures.
(14:02)
Another example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state or body systems. There's 700 different IT systems today at NIH.
Interviewer (14:13):
700 different IT systems.
Elon Musk (14:19):
Yes.
Brad Smith (14:19):
IT software systems.
Elon Musk (14:19):
And they don't communicate.
Brad Smith (14:19):
They can't speak to each other.
Interviewer (14:19):
So they don't talk to one another?
Elon Musk (14:19):
Yeah.
Brad Smith (14:20):
They have 27 different CIOs. And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.
Interviewer (14:25):
Time out.
Elon Musk (14:25):
Yeah.
Interviewer (14:25):
Time out. You see 27 different chief information officers?
Brad Smith (14:29):
Correct. Correct.
Elon Musk (14:30):
And most of them are non-technical.
Interviewer (14:32):
So there's a lot there, is what you're saying?
Brad Smith (14:33):
There's a lot of opportunity. It'll make science better, not worse.
Elon Musk (14:36):
And when I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it. We have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the computers can't stay online, people won't receive their Social Security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud. And we're fixing it.
Interviewer (15:06):
And does that include AI? Does that include changing the system overall? That's, I guess what people are afraid of is they don't know what this is all looking like. And is it going to affect me in the long term?
Elon Musk (15:19):
It's going to affect people very positively. So the changes that we're doing here will ensure the solvency of the American government, of the United States of America. This is what we're trying to do, is ensure that people do receive their benefits in the future. And you can only receive your benefits if the country is operating in a healthy and competent way.
Interviewer (15:43):
Up next, how the DOGE team plans to streamline some federal jobs and agencies and later Elon Musk answers some of your questions that you asked via X. Anthony Armstrong, DOGE, office of Personnel Management, Morgan Stanley banker, M&A guy.
Anthony Armstrong (16:03):
Yeah.
Interviewer (16:03):
You know money. And this is a lot of money sloshing around.
Anthony Armstrong (16:07):
There's a lot of money sloshing around. It's a lot of money sloshing out the door. And if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce works, it's really a one-way ratchet over decades.
Interviewer (16:17):
It's only going up.
Anthony Armstrong (16:18):
It's only going up. You never take it away. So that leaves you with duplicative functions, it leaves you with overstaffing, and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So a couple of examples, duplicative functions. Brad mentioned 27 CIOs. If you had kept going with Brad, he would talk about the communications office. I think you've got 40 distinct communications offices in HHS, right?
Interviewer (16:40):
40?
Elon Musk (16:41):
Yeah.
Anthony Armstrong (16:41):
Yeah. And that's not unusual, by the way. Multiple offices like that.
Elon Musk (16:45):
It's also not make anyone healthy.
Anthony Armstrong (16:46):
This is not about the employees. There's many, many, hard-working, well-meaning people who took these jobs. These jobs were out there, they applied for them, they took them, they're doing what's there. It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that.
(16:59)
You've got over-staffing. A good example of over-staffing would be the IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So 12 times a year, we-
Elon Musk (17:26):
It doesn't make any sense. Would you have 1400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop on a phone?
Anthony Armstrong (17:29):
Right. The whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't make any sense. And President Trump's been very clear: it's scalpel not hatchet. And that's the way it's getting done.
(17:39)
And then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And if you look at how people have started to leave the government, it is largely through voluntary means. There's voluntary early retirement, there's voluntary separation payments. We put in place deferred resignation, the eight-month severance program.
(18:08)
So there's a very heavy bias towards programs that are long-dated, that are generous, that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector. And you've heard a lot of news about rifts, about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than .15, not 1. 5, less than .15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a rift notice.
Interviewer (18:36):
So they've selected if they're a leader?
Anthony Armstrong (18:38):
It is-
Elon Musk (18:39):
Basically almost no one's gotten fired, is what we're saying.
Interviewer (18:42):
Tom Krause working at Treasury. You are having access to the payment system overseas, all the outgoing payments. Essentially those payments were going places we didn't know where they were going. Right?
Tom Krause (18:56):
Yeah. Unfortunately that's the case, Bret. As an ex- CFO of a big public tech company, really what we're doing is we're applying public company standards to the federal government.
(19:08)
And it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today. There is actually really only one bank account that's used to disperse all monies that go out of the federal government.
Interviewer (19:22):
Talking about one bank account?
Elon Musk (19:24):
It's a big one. It's a big one.
Interviewer (19:25):
I mean, it's a big one.
Tom Krause (19:26):
It's a big one. A couple of weeks ago it had 800 billion in it, but it's the Treasury general account. So when you hear some of my colleagues here, what they're talking about in terms of the fraud, you have to ask, "Well, why is this allowed to happen at a financial level?"
(19:42)
Well, it's actually quite simple, but alarming. The Treasury, up until now… And thanks to President Trump, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order that he just signed the other day, which is protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayers' money. One, we're changing the culture. The culture has been
Tom Krause (20:01):
Not a lot of caring and not a lot of commitment to doing what's right relative to financial operations. There's $500 billion of fraud every year. There's hundreds of billions of dollars of improper payments. And we can't pass it on. The consolidated financial report is produced by Treasury, and we cannot pass it on. We have material weaknesses.
(20:20)
What that means is that if I was a public company CFO, I would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements. I couldn't issue securities-
Elon Musk (20:28):
[inaudible 00:20:29].
Tom Krause (20:30):
Can't pass it on.
Elon Musk (20:31):
The federal government cannot pass it. It's impossible. In fact in order to pass an order, you need the information that's needed to pass an order. You need to have the payment codes. You need to have the payment explanation, and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment was made. None of those things were mandatory until just recently, just a few weeks ago. In fact, maybe last week.
Tom Krause (20:54):
Yeah, we're serving 580-plus agencies, and up until very recently, effectively they could say, "Make the payment," and Treasury just sent it out as fast as possible. No verification. And so what we're doing is what any household would do. But imagine you're a household, you have a bank account, everyone has an ATM card connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook connected to that account. It's not just your children. It's not just your parents. It's your in-laws. It's your extended family. And they all can go to the account and disperse funds no questions asked. No justification. No verification.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Up next, the DOGE team targets government contracts and we'll show you what they're finding.
Interviewer (21:36):
Tyler Hassen, Interior Department, you're a former oil company CEO. You're reviewing contracts before they're approved for funding. What are you finding?
Tyler Hassen (21:48):
Well, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service survey contract. I actually have an example of one right here. I could have done this in high school.
Interviewer (22:00):
Is that right?
Elon Musk (22:01):
It's that bad.
Tyler Hassen (22:03):
I found it on the weekends because under the Biden administration, there was no departmental oversight within the Department of Interior whatsoever. None. We have now reviewing every single contract, every single grant, and when things come to my attention that don't make sense, I'm bringing them to Secretary Burgum, and he's been fantastic. He's a businessman. He's very supportive of DOGE. It's been wonderful to work with him.
Interviewer (22:27):
Is the battle between government of decades and decades of buildup and business, which you guys are, is that a train hitting each other? It seems like it's pretty disruptive.
Elon Musk (22:40):
Well, this is a revolution, and I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America's going to be in much better shape. America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work. And it's going to be a fantastic future. But are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way? Absolutely.
(23:05)
One of the things I learned at PayPal was you know who complains the loudest and with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters. It's a tell. [inaudible 00:23:17] crazy, like the $2 billion to Stacy Abrams's NGO that basically didn't exist and suddenly gets $2 billion awarded from the federal government. Why? And there are many such cases like that.
Interviewer (23:30):
I think that most people, common sense-wise, would say, "The fraud's got to end." They're concerned about the 94-year-old mother who skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get.
Elon Musk (23:43):
Right. And what we're trying to say is actually that the 94-year-old grandmother is actually, as a result of DOGE's work, going to get her check. She is not going to be robbed by fraudsters like she's getting robbed today. And the solvency of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those social security checks, that Medicare continues to work, without which we're all doomed. The reason we're doing this is because if we don't do it, America's going to go insolvent. We're going to go bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything.
Interviewer (24:18):
Why are you guys all doing it? You can pipe up, but you don't have to be here, right? You don't have to be doing this.
Tom Krause (24:26):
I'm blessed with four beautiful children, my wife and I, but we have a real fiscal crisis. And this is not sustainable. And what's worse, back to my children and everyone else's children, is we are burdening them with that debt. And it's only going to grow.
Interviewer (24:43):
Steve, there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are kind of all approaching it in different silos, but with the same kind of goal, right? This is really Silicon Valley private sector colliding with government.
Steve Davis (24:58):
Yeah, exactly, and we're headed in a bad path, but the chance of success exists. And just the one that is just in my head right now, which is a fairly mundane one but I think is very illustrative, is credit cards.
Elon Musk (25:10):
Oh yeah.
Steve Davis (25:10):
There are, in the federal government, around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn't make sense. And so one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we've worked with the agencies and said, "Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?"
Interviewer (25:33):
I hope they're getting frequent flyer miles.
Steve Davis (25:35):
Actually, on a different note, the rewards program the federal government has is actually not very good. That's a whole other story.
Interviewer (25:41):
It's a negotiation.
Steve Davis (25:42):
Yeah, exactly. But so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.
Elon Musk (25:51):
We're taking it easy, but clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people.
Interviewer (25:58):
Joe, middle level employees, are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out bureaucracy?
Joe Gebbia (26:07):
Absolutely. I think what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley and the business world and bringing it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and the best methodologies. And people are inspired, especially on the retirement processors I could speak to. They've been trying to modernize and get off of paper since early 2000s very unsuccessfully. Every attempt has gone over budget and been canceled because it hasn't been successful.
(26:35)
And so I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and good engineering and really create a better experience for everybody.
Elon Musk (26:46):
We're talking about elementary financial controls that are necessary for any company to function. So, if a commercial company operated the way the federal government is, then it would immediately go bankrupt. It would be delisted. The officers would be arrested. And the changes we're putting in place will enable the federal government to pass an audit. It will enable the taxpayers to know where the money is going and know that their hard earned tax dollars being spent well.
(27:17)
The ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. So, if the computer systems don't talk to each other, then you can exploit that gap and fraudsters exploit that gap, take advantage. If, for example, there were over $300 million of a Small Business Administration loans that has been given out to people under the age of 11.
Steve Davis (27:40):
[inaudible 00:27:40] add to is 300 million under the age of 11 and over 300 million to over the age of 120.
Interviewer (27:46):
Definitely small business loans?
Steve Davis (27:48):
Correct.
Elon Musk (27:48):
Yes. The oldest American is 114. So, safe to say if their age is 115 or above, they're fake or they should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. And we should not be giving out loans to babies. The youngest recipient of a Small Business Administration loan is a 9-month-year-old, which is a very, very precocious baby we're talking about here. So, obviously which is fraudulent.
(28:16)
And they do terrible things. We'll see that a kid's been born, they will steal that kid's social security number and then take out a loan and leave that kid with a bad credit rating. There was literally a baby. Terrible things are being done is what we're saying. We're stopping these terrible things.
Interviewer (28:32):
And you can stop it?
Elon Musk (28:34):
We are stopping it.
Anthony Armstrong (28:35):
The reason this is happening is because the two systems are not talking to each other. And so you don't know at the Small Business Administration that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which happened in one case, because you're not cross-referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates. So, that very, very simple fix eliminates tremendous fraud. And there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking with one another, and if you just solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.
Elon Musk (29:08):
One of the key tricks that the fraudsters pull is that they will use the fact that someone is marked as alive, just that social security number is marked as live in Social Security, and then get disability and unemployment insurance for a dead person because the databases don't talk to each other, all they got from Social Security is, " Is this person alive?" Yes. They're not alive. The person is falsely marked as alive in Social Security, but a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability from a dead person. This is happening all the time at scale.
Interviewer (29:47):
Are you surprised at some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 now of these cases that are least temporary holds. They're being challenged by the DOJ.
Interviewer (30:01):
Are you surprised by that pushback?
Elon Musk (30:04):
Well, the D.C. circuit is notorious for having a very far left bias. And when you look at the people close to some of these judges, where are they working? Oh, they're working at these NGOs. Oh, they're the ones getting this money. Does that seem like a system that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption to me.
Interviewer (30:25):
Last thing, do you guys all see this as a patriotic duty? Is that really what this is about?
Elon Musk (30:31):
It's essential.
Tyler Hassen (30:33):
I do, 100%. I was running five businesses in Houston and I left that, I left great people to do this. And my wonderful wife said, "Go for it." And here I am. But I feel like this is me giving back to the country.
Elon Musk (30:48):
If we don't do this, we're sunk. Unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it.
Interviewer (30:58):
Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time today and hopefully it took some of the myth and mystery out of DOGE and what's happening behind the scenes.
Elon Musk (31:08):
Thank you.
Interviewer (31:09):
We asked on X, your platform, for some questions-
Elon Musk (31:12):
[inaudible 00:31:13].
Interviewer (31:13):
And here is cspurling.
Elon Musk (31:16):
Yeah.
Interviewer (31:16):
He writes, "Are they happy with the speed at which they're making changes? Are there any changes they would like to make but haven't yet?"
Elon Musk (31:24):
Well, I think in the context of the government, we're moving like lightning. In the context of what I'm used to moving, it's slower than I'd like. So what seems like incredibly fast action by government standards, it's slower than I'd like to be totally frank, but we are making solid progress. A very sort of thorny problem, a tough problem. Really, it's kind of like painful homework, frankly, it is reconciling all of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud. These databases don't talk to each other, and that's really the source of… That's the biggest vulnerability for fraud, is the fact that these databases don't talk to each other. So we need to reconcile the databases. It's frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.
Interviewer (32:18):
We didn't talk about any plans to approach cuts at the Pentagon. You're in there.
Elon Musk (32:23):
The Pentagon has not passed an audit in a very long time. I mean, it's crazy as it sounds. They will lose $ 20, $30 billion a year and they literally don't know where it went. I mean, Senator Collins was telling me about how she gave the Navy $12 billion for extra submarines, got zero extra submarines, and then when she held a hearing, said, "Where'd the $12 billion go?" They didn't know.
Interviewer (32:50):
Talking to those guys, and you have a great team from all over the country, they don't have to be here. You don't have to be here. There's now been these many cases of violence and vandalism at Tesla dealerships. How does that affect your employees, your customers? What does it mean to you? How have you taken that in?
Elon Musk (33:10):
Well, I think a great wrong is being done to the people of Tesla and to our customers. Tesla is a peaceful company that has made great cars, great products, that's all it's done, hasn't harmed anyone. And yet, people are committing violence. They're firebombing Tesla dealerships. They're shooting guns into stores. They're threatening people. They're issuing death threats against me and other Tesla personnel. What are they doing this for? Why? And what's happening, it seems to me is they're being fed propaganda by the far left and they believe it. It's really unfortunate. But the real problem is not the people… It's not like the crazy guy that firebombs a Tesla dealership. It's the people pushing the propaganda that caused that guy to do it. Those are the real villains here and we're going to go after them. And the President's made it clear, we're going to go after them. The ones providing the money, the ones pushing the lies and propaganda, we're going after them.
Interviewer (34:26):
And it's been this evolution. I mean, the last administration was going to mandate electric vehicles and now you see on the far left, some efforts to go after electric vehicles. It's quite something.
Elon Musk (34:37):
It is ironic. I mean, it seems like the most ironic outcome is the most likely, but yeah, I mean-
Interviewer (34:46):
Personally, it's got to take a toll.
Elon Musk (34:48):
It does. Yeah, it does. I think there's some real evil out there and we have to overcome it.
Interviewer (35:00):
I mean, you have been called a Nazi, a white supremacist, a fascist.
Elon Musk (35:05):
I mean, they've got the normal play book.
Interviewer (35:07):
Just to name you. Yeah.
Elon Musk (35:09):
I mean, they've still got it. I guess they still need to call me Stalin, Mussolini, whatever, Genghis Khan, or whatever. I mean, they've called the President all these things. I think at one point, there was a magazine cover which said the President was worse than… That President Trump was worse than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. And the President hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't started any wars. In fact, he's good at stopping wars. So this is obviously… They're pushing these lies, and why do they push these lies? And I think we need to hold people responsible for pushing these lies because those lies almost got the President killed.
Interviewer (35:54):
What's something that people wouldn't know about the President? You're pretty close to him now. You spent a lot of time with him. What's something that people wouldn't know?
Elon Musk (36:01):
I think the President is a good man. I think he is an honest man, and I have yet to see him do anything mean or anything that is wrong, that I would say morally wrong. Not even once.
Interviewer (36:19):
A lot is coming your way, but sometimes you say stuff or post stuff that gets attention, you give it out, in other words. Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly posted on X about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send US weapons and support there. And you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?
Elon Musk (36:40):
Well, I think somebody should care about the interests of the United States above the interests of another country. And if they don't, they're a traitor.
Interviewer (36:49):
Yeah, but he's a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting US senator.
Elon Musk (36:56):
That doesn't mean it's okay for him to put the interest of another country above America.
Interviewer (37:01):
Obviously, there are some Republicans who think supporting Ukraine is the right thing still, but there is a battle back and forth about how… How do you think it comes to an end?
Elon Musk (37:14):
Well, I think there will be a negotiated peace. And the thing that we should be concerned about is we should have empathy for the thousands of people that are dying every day in trenches for no movement in the lines. So the borders remain the same. For the past two years, thousands of people have died every week for nothing. For what? And I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say, "Oh, we can't give in to Russia," but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day. They just want that to continue forever. Have contempt for such people, I want to make that clear.
Interviewer (38:08):
Yeah. So you're optimistic-
Elon Musk (38:09):
Because they're virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don't have a father. It means that parents lost a son. For what? Nothing.
Interviewer (38:26):
So you're optimistic that the President's plan might work?
Elon Musk (38:30):
The President's plan is the only thing that will work.
Sean Hannity (38:34):
Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News YouTube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.
