Take a look back at the decade the last month has felt like, with coverage of unelected billionaire bureaucrat Elon Musk, and his quest to remake the U.S. government. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Why is Elon Musk featured in this episode?
What do you think of when you think of the future? Is it space travel? Robots? Trucks with the word cyber in front of them? Whatever your vision, there is one man working to make it a reality. He's part Thomas Edison, part Iron Man, part annoying dude in the group chat... and is anything but your standard CEO.
I changed my title to Techno King. And by the way, this is a formal SEC filing. I'm legally a formal whatever, Techno King. I just did that as kind of like a joke.
Yes, he's the Techno King, but as a joke. And soon we'll all be his servants, but in a funny way. Because while he may be an eccentric, satellite-launching, terminally online billionaire who wants to plug people into computers and build a vast network of underground tunnels, it's not like he's some kind of supervillain.
Eventually you can transform Mars into an Earth-like planet, drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.
Chapter 2: What are Elon Musk's key achievements?
Well, maybe a little. So strap in, turn on the autopilot, but keep your hands on the steering wheel in case of pedestrians. Because this is the Daily Showography of Elon Musk, Visionary Future Man. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in Earth Year 1971. His father made a fortune in construction and emerald mining because Africa's resources are like free money for white people.
Badly bullied in school, Elon overcame many hardships. Although unlike other South African celebrities, he didn't make his childhood into a whole thing. By age 10, he was learning to program computers. At 12, he built a video game he called Blastar, which started his lifelong love of inventing things that already exist.
Soon after, he left South Africa and made his way to a booming Silicon Valley, where he launched his first company, Zip2, which he eventually sold to Compaq Computer for $305 million. Like so many tech entrepreneurs, he earned his unimaginable wealth by doing something invaluable for society, selling a startup you've never heard of to a company that doesn't exist anymore.
Musk celebrated by buying himself a million-dollar supercar. There are 62 McLarens in the world, and I will own one of them. Yes, Musk was so rich, he could afford to have a midlife crisis while he was still in his 20s. Sadly, his new toy wouldn't last long.
I didn't really know how to drive the McLaren because it's like a difficult car to drive, and I floored it. and did a lane change, and the bracket wheels broke loose, and the car spun around. And then we hit the embankment and knocked the car into the air, which continued spinning like a discus, like three feet in the air. That's right.
Musk's McLaren crashed worse than Dodge coin after Saturday Night Live. For his next act, Musk created X.com, which would later become PayPal, the app your uncle had to use because Venmo and Cash App won't work on his Nokia. Musk took the money he made from that business and built an empire of cool-ass shit.
Rocket ships, electric cars, solar farms, artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and underground highways, all while dating celebrities and starting a record label to release his own EDM track. a banger all the more impressive considering Musk had clearly never heard music before. Yes, Elon Musk refuses to stay in his lane, much like a Tesla on autopilot. Tesla's groundbreaking cars.
brought unprecedented power range and sexiness to electric vehicles, a market previously reserved for nerds who cared about the environment. And Musk even promised the dream of full self-driving technology.
No hands, no feet, nothing. Like promised repeatedly. I'm confident that in less than a year, you'll be able to go from highway on ramp to highway exit without touching any control.
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Chapter 3: How has Elon Musk influenced technology and industry?
I don't want to give the impression that I thought Tesla would be successful from the beginning. I actually thought we would fail. We were only a few days from bankruptcy. It was literally two days. It pushed him to the brink.
Musk could have gone from being a multi-billionaire all the way down to the very lowest rung of society. Millionaire. But through the years, Musk kept his many ventures going with little more than his can-do attitude.
Oh, Jesus, sorry.
And billions of dollars in government subsidies. Today, Musk isn't merely the richest man in the world. His net worth is higher than the GDP of most countries. Should Musk be a country? Well, he does have a national anthem.
But don't worry, it's not like he's got an army or anything. I went to Russia to look at buying a refurbished ICBM, which is a very trippy experience. Okay, maybe worry a little.
And he's not just great at making money, he's also an expert at saving it by paying almost nothing in taxes for three years and then actually nothing in 2018. Of course, there's always haters who like to nitpick Musk's business methods.
There are charges of unreported injuries, excessive hours, abusive conditions, injuries on the job, breathing toxic fumes, over 100 ambulance calls.
Uh, I don't think that's correct. I mean, I was literally living in the factory. If there's, like, toxic fumes, I'm breathing them. Okay.
Exactly. Does Musk seem like a man who is inhaling toxic fumes? But Elon Musk also understands that all work and no play make X-Ash A-12 a dull boy. And like any well-adjusted person, his favorite pastime is spending 12 to 14 hours a day on Twitter. So it made sense when Musk announced that he would buy the social media platform.
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Chapter 4: What controversies surround Elon Musk's business practices?
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We all know Donald Trump isn't a details kind of guy. We elected him to come up with big brilliant ideas like renaming the Gulf of Mexico. No one else could have thought of that or should have thought of that. But it's okay that he's not big on details because during the campaign he promised us that he knew a guy.
I'm going to appoint Elon Musk, who's a fantastic guy, to lead a government efficiency commission tasked with saving trillions of dollars in fraud, waste, and abuse. We have tremendous fat. Tremendous fat.
Don't take the bait, Desi. Don't take the bait. Be the bigger person. Be the bigger person. That's right, Elon Musk, the world's richest man and guy who cheers in the wrong parts of Saving Private Ryan. Trump promised us that he'd give Elon full access to the federal government. Pull it to the side and get all up in it. And unlike his wedding vows, this is a promise he kept.
Elon Musk's sweeping push to make over the federal government, sparking democratic panic and warnings of a constitutional crisis.
Now we have learned that his team has gained access to something extraordinarily sensitive, the system that the Treasury Department uses to disperse almost every check and expenditure of any kind made by the U.S. government.
That is a vast database with millions of Americans' personal information on it.
Yeah. Yeah, Elon Musk has access to your social security number, and that is not cool. If you want our personal data, Elon, you go buy it off the dark web like everyone else, okay? Now, you might be thinking, I don't want white nationalist Tony Stark to have sole control of the inner workings of the federal government. But relax. It's not just Elon. He has a fully equipped team.
Longtime government employees this week were shocked to find that their new supervisors from Elon Musk's Doge department include recent college and high school graduates between 19 and 24 years old. One of the young men is apparently a former intern at Musk's Neuralink company, who goes by the online handle Big Balls.
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Chapter 5: How is Elon Musk involved in U.S. government operations?
I mean, I really like omelets. I could eat an omelet at every meal. I like omelets better than sex. Not really, but you get the point. I'm like, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Did we really have to learn all about this guy's sex life just so he could get to a common expression? I can only climax when someone steps on my balls. Anyway, there's no use crying over spilt milk. Look, I don't know if I understand Senator Kennedy's metaphor, but I definitely understand why he's been banned from Denny's.
Anyway, if you're looking for Senator Kennedy's wife, she's the woman in the grocery store yelling at the eggs, you stay away from my husband, you cage-free slut! Well, I'm never... I'm just kidding. I'm sure she prefers eggs to having sex with him, too. But Elon Musk isn't the only one having people finger-banging their eggs Florentine with excitement.
Donald Trump is also reducing the government workforce, although his interests seem to be less about cost-cutting and more about sweet, sweet revenge.
Tremendous unrest inside the FBI as prosecutors and agents who worked on the January 6th investigation are being targeted.
It looks like a wholesale purge of the FBI. As you know already, the eight top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have either been fired or forced to resign. Now the FBI is being asked to produce a list of Every employee who worked on any case related to January 6th, I am told this is some 6,000 FBI employees all told.
What the f***? These agents were doing their job enforcing the law, and now they're getting fired? That is not how it works. I cannot believe I have to explain firing to the star of The Apprentice. That was your whole fake job. And this is obviously just the beginning because Trump is going to be targeting everyone that's ever come after him. And I just want to say, I'm not scared.
So, Mr. Trump, bring it on, okay? Bring it on. That's coming from me, Jordan Klepper. K-L-E-P-P-E-R. Now, obviously, of course, the big question over Trump firing the FBI agents is, is that legal? Troy? What? I'm still doing the other stuff. Don't worry about that stuff, but also finish that stuff and add on this new stuff.
Find out if the president's executive powers include the termination of officials ordered by the former attorney general to investigate the criminal actions of his accomplices.
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Chapter 6: Is Musk's access to government data legal?
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For weeks, people have been raising alarms about how Trump seems to be handing way too much power over to Elon Musk. And yesterday, Trump replied, I hear you. You want me to give more power to Elon Musk.
President Trump setting new guidelines for hiring in the federal workforce while giving more power to Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. A new executive order directs government agencies to pursue large-scale cuts, saying they now need hiring approval from DOGE.
Yes. Elon Musk is now in charge of all government hilings. Hirings. Hirings. I didn't... Sorry. I didn't say that right. Right. I didn't say it right.
Yeah, okay. Okay. Sorry. Okay.
I don't know why I keep Hitler. Misspeaking.
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Chapter 7: What actions has Musk taken against USAID?
I...
I don't know why I keep misspeaking. So this was already a pretty unusual thing for a president to do. But Trump being Trump, he had to make it even more ridiculous by introducing it with a full-on circus act in the Oval Office. Now look at this scene. Musk is holding court with his hands tented like a Bond villain, probably to stop him from doing a Nazi salute. With his...
With his four-year-old child in tow. I mean, that poor kid. His dad literally runs SpaceX, and Elon took him to a meeting on federal spending. Dad, are we gonna get to see the rockets? No, son, we're gonna discuss budgets because I'm a shitty dad. I mean, everything about this event was so bizarre.
Trump was sitting quietly for half an hour, retreating to his happy place, thinking about Arnold Palmer's giant doge. And who thought cloning Stephen Miller was a good idea? I mean, is it for spare parts? I mean, they look like a before and even more before picture. Okay? I mean... Okay, but all right.
Leaving aside this renaissance painting done by the dogs playing poker guy, it's good that we have Elon Musk here, because we've been watching him slashing programs and shuttering agencies for a month now, and we can finally ask Elon, why are you doing this?
If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that the president, the House, and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
Wow. Wow. I mean, you see why this guy's a genius. You don't want an unelected bureaucrat running the country. It makes a lot of sense. No questions here. I do have one question, though. Isn't that you? I mean... I mean, am I... Am I going crazy? Because it feels like I'm watching Drake sing Not Like Us at karaoke. Like, does he not know?
Is having this one unaccountable bureaucrat in charge better than having those other unaccountable bureaucrats in charge? Because... because at least the others have to follow transparency laws. The only thing transparent about Doge is Elon's skin. I mean...
His financial disclosure is being kept secret, Doge is exempt from open records laws, and when someone on Twitter merely identified some of the people who work for Doge, Elon suspended their account and said, you have committed a crime, which we tried to fact check with career officials at the FBI, but they're all working at a Panera now.
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