Rachel Abrams
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The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
From The New York Times, this is The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. Today, Elon Musk and his team have taken a hacksaw to the federal bureaucracy one agency at a time. And the question has become whether he's on a crusade that will leave the government paralyzed or deliver exactly the kind of shakeup it's needed for years.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
In other words, demon mode, as we described earlier.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
But how much of this is actually about the budget of USAID? Like, it doesn't strike me as sort of the biggest agency if you were looking for, you know, big cuts. Is this a huge amount of money? Is it about something that's beyond the money?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Where do you think Musk and Doge go from here? Because we're only two weeks into the new administration, so I'm wondering if you expect that he's going to continue to operate without much resistance. Yeah.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Okay, so Jonathan, is there an argument to be made that this kind of slash-and-burn tactic is actually the only way to carry out the promise that Musk and Trump have made about shrinking the government?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And that also, given Musk's track record in the private sector and his unique standing with Trump, Musk is uniquely positioned—some might even say he's really qualified—to make these kind of cuts in a way that nobody has before?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So basically what you're saying is that you're encouraging possibly the most talented, maybe some of the most important civil servants across the government who do a range of things to leave. And that does raise a really interesting question of who is left.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, let's talk about his private interests, actually, because there's a whole other dimension to this that we haven't even talked about, which is how much business Elon Musk does with the federal government.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Even if you think he's the right person to cut it down, and even if you think his experience at Twitter is relevant here, and just to remind people, when he took over Twitter and gutted it and got rid of a lot of employees, people said Twitter will never survive this. And obviously, Twitter X is very much still operational.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Even if you think all of that experience is relevant, he still has all kinds of potential conflicts of interest. So tell us a little bit about that.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Jonathan, you have covered Trump and those around him for years, obviously, and their biggest complaint, and you hear this almost every day from people like Stephen Miller, one of the president's top advisors, you profiled on the show last week, is that the federal government has become overrun by by unelected bureaucrats who are accountable to nobody. They don't face elections.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And in fact, even a few days ago, Elon Musk himself said it was time to, quote, restore power to the people from the vast unelected bureaucracy. But given everything you've laid out here for us, it feels like Musk and Doge have become arguably the most powerful unelected bureaucracy possibly in the history of the country.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
On Tuesday, Elon Musk and his team took aim at their latest federal agency, the Department of Education. Officials told employees that Doge was scrutinizing their operations, and they warned that it could lead to staff reductions. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
In a joint news conference on Tuesday night at the White House, President Trump said the United States would take over Gaza, permanently relocate two million of its Palestinian residents, and turn the enclave into, quote, the Riviera of the Middle East.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Trump said that developing Gaza would supply jobs and housing for, quote, the people of the area, a vague reference that aligns with the far-right coalition within Netanyahu's government, which wants to repopulate Gaza with Israelis. The statement was also striking because it contradicted decades of U.S. policy that has favored a two-state solution.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
But just like statements the president has made about taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump did not cite any legal authority that would allow him to take Gaza over, nor did he address the fact that forcible removal of an entire population violates international law.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And on Tuesday, China responded to the 10 percent tariff imposed by Trump with a flurry of retaliatory measures, including tariffs of its own on liquefied natural gas, coal and farm machinery imported from the U.S. The back and forth demonstrated how quickly Trump's tariffs can escalate into a series of painful tit for tat economic reprisals.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Muj Zaydi, and Caitlin O'Keefe, with help from Shannon Lin. It was edited by Liz O'Balin, with help from Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Will Reed, Pat McCusker, Marion Lozano, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Okay, so what does that demon mode risk-taking ethos actually look like that he's applying to the government? What has he been up to this past week?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
My colleague, Jonathan Swan, takes us inside this hostile takeover of Washington. It's Wednesday, February 5th. So, Jonathan, we always understood that Elon Musk was going to be important in this administration in the second Trump presidency.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And the message is really clear. They have arrived.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Right. They're really trying to send the message that we've arrived. This conversation goes one way. We ask the questions. What's the next big thing that happens last week?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So he's basically encouraging people to leave the government entirely and do something, quote unquote, more productive in the private sector, which I can imagine if you're a civil servant, that feels like you're being treated with contempt.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
OK, so let me see if I understand this. Musk sends his guys in there. They demand access to this very sensitive system. It runs all the payments for the federal government. Somebody tries to resist and that guy basically, quote unquote, retires, meaning maybe gets fired. And then they get in the pipes anyway.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Why do we think Musk wants access to the actual system? Like, why does he even want his people in there reading?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Trump had given the group that Musk was put in charge of, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE as it's commonly known, the job of shrinking the entire federal government. But the question was always just how much power Musk would actually have as a private citizen operating outside the president's cabinet.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
It seems, Jonathan, that the fundamental sort of animus and feeling underneath all of these actions that you've described, the email, getting inside the pipes of Treasury, is this basic distrust or even disdain of government operations.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And over the past few days, we've actually started to get an answer, which is a whole lot of power.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
We'll be right back. So Jonathan you mentioned earlier that Elon Musk set his sights on entire agencies. What did you mean by that? What did he do?
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Is Musk just allowed to come in and shut down an entire agency just like that? I mean, is Trump fully supportive of this?