It’s been a busy month in D.C. for Elon Musk. WSJ’s Tim Higgins joins Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball to discuss what Musk’s strategies as a CEO can tell us about his plans for DOGE and the federal government. Plus, we get into Trump’s relationship with the judiciary and take a question from a listener about American expansionism. Further Reading: -Musk Brings His Business Playbook to Washington: Move Fast and Claim Victory -DOGE, Musk and Trump—Our Reporters Answered Your Questions Further Listening: -R.I.P. CFPB? -Trump 2.0: Less Foreign Aid, More Tariffs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Doge significant in the Trump administration?
I'm good. So today I want to talk about Doge. Last year when Elon Musk started talking about the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge, I wasn't sure how big of a deal it would actually be because it almost seemed like it was a joke at first. I mean, you know, it's named after a dog meme.
But less than a month into Trump's presidency, Doge and Elon Musk have actually been one of the most significant forces in the Trump administration.
Yeah, I mean, he seems to be everywhere. And Washington is still sort of stunned by how ubiquitous he is and how much wide-ranging personal latitude he seems to have been given to just roam around the White House doing stuff. On the other hand, we don't really know what power he has because his role is so poorly defined and may be reined in by some of these court decisions. So...
It's a bit of a mystery.
A mystery that we will try to solve. From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knutson.
And I'm Molly Ball.
It's Friday, February 14th. Coming up, Doge. It used to be just a meme, and now it's taking apart the federal government. We'll also talk about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the mayor of New York, Canada, Greenland, Gaza. Stay tuned.
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Chapter 2: How does Elon Musk influence the federal government?
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All right, I want to start with this appearance Elon Musk made in the Oval Office alongside President Trump on Tuesday. Or I should say Elon Musk and his four-year-old son, X. This is X, and he's a great guy, high IQ.
He's a high IQ individual.
And he's got this cool train he's got. So thank you very much.
We had a busy day today.
Musk did most of the talking, and this was really the first time he had taken any questions from reporters about the work he's doing with Doge.
We'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.
Sure.
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Chapter 3: What are Elon Musk's strategies for government efficiency?
It's been many years. Several years. Multiple years. You've written a book about the early days of Tesla, and you're at a column right now for The Wall Street Journal that's mostly about Elon Musk. So thank you for joining us. Thank you. So Tim, I said earlier how surprised I was about how big of a deal Doge has become, but...
Does what's happening right now and the way Elon Musk is going about it surprise you, given what you know about him?
I mean, let's talk about the Oval Office press conference. Except for the location and the visuals and having the president next to him, listening to it, it felt like it could have been one of the quarterly calls he does as the Tesla CEO. This is the Elon Musk that investors have known for a very long time, where he sells his vision for his companies and for his business ideas.
The difference here is he was selling that vision for the government. This is the way he operates. He's not a bit player in the background. He wants to run things.
And the way he's known to run things, as he would put it, is pretty hardcore. He's known for thinking big, but also making drastic cuts and being disruptive and also being pretty tough on his employees.
One of the things about Musk is that most of his companies are startups. He's green shooting it. He's creating it the way he wants to go. But there are some examples of when he takes over and Twitter is the best in late 2022, shock and awe immediately taking over, getting rid of the top executives, then cleaning house, getting rid of eventually 80% of the employees, slashing expenses.
And when you look at Doge, I see some similarities. Going through agency by agency, trying to figure out where the money is going specifically and looking for people that can get on board with the vision for government 2.0.
Can I ask you something about the Twitter example, though? Because, yes, he did a lot of the same things that we now see him doing with the government. But was it successful? I mean, isn't Twitter now a smaller, less profitable company than it was when he bought it?
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Chapter 4: Is Elon Musk's approach to Doge comparable to his business strategies?
Well, it's a different company. It is a totally different company. Even by name, it is now X. Right, it's not Twitter.
Is that going to be the new name for the United States of America? Like UXA or something?
It's the everything app.
The everything country. Look, Twitter, when he took it over, was a trouble coming. This is a company that hadn't been really financially successful in the previous 10 years. It needed a change, and he brought a change. Now, is it the right change, or is it a better business? That's to be determined. It's a work in progress.
But even the most recent financial data that our colleagues at the Journal have uncovered would suggest it's doing better now than it was in those early days when he took it over.
This is not a company. I mean, the U.S. government, of course, is not a company that he owns. I mean, he's a, what is this technical status, a quasi-government employee at this point? Special government employee, I think is the term. Special government employee.
But like, how will this, the Silicon Valley strategy of just sort of moving fast and breaking things, is that going to translate to government in the same way that it does when he's the sole owner of a company that he, you know, has taken private? Yeah.
Well, you hit it on the head there. I mean, the biggest difference between Twitter and the government is he owned Twitter or he controlled Twitter. He doesn't control the government. You know, there are lots of stakeholders that have a say in everything, whether it's Congress, there's the judiciary that he gets to weigh in on some of this. His word is not the law like it might be at his companies.
And that's one of the big differences, to say the least. It's also, as you kind of alluded to at the beginning of the show, it's unclear exactly how much power he has.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges Musk faces in applying Silicon Valley tactics to government?
I've heard him time and time again over the years talk about regulations being an impediment for business, in particular his experience at SpaceX and at Tesla. These are highly regulated industries he's playing in, and he has huge ambitions, whether it's Tesla, where he wants to bring out driverless cars, where this is a kind of a gray area of regulation.
that it would be very helpful to have somebody in the White House and empower, kind of usher this technology in. He has pointed to things like the EPA that he feels like have been slowing him down. And these are huge issues in his mind, apparently so big of issues that he is willing to kind of get into government, personally roll up his sleeves and start weeding that garden, if you will.
Musk has been making a lot of claims about the kind of wasteful spending that Doge is finding. And they've been posting these screenshots on X of line items that they say look suspicious. But there doesn't actually seem to be that much detail about what the money is actually being used for. So what do you make of that and the way Musk is communicating what Doge is doing?
I mean, Elon Musk is a master marketer. One of the superpowers that he's had as an entrepreneur is selling his vision for the future of aerospace, the future of cars to customers, but more importantly, investors who have funded the development of those companies until they could get off the ground. It's been time and time again out there pushing the narrative of where things could be.
And what I see him doing with Doge seems to be like straight from the playbook. He's creating the appearance of momentum. Even though it's not clear that these are actual victories, it is showing the world that he's doing stuff, right? He can point to whatever tweet or whatever day's victory and say, look what we're doing. There's corruption. There's fraud. Look at this misspending.
This is why we're here. Hang on for the ride because we're going to get rid of all this stuff in the long run.
Musk is certainly creating the appearance of momentum, but how successful do you think his effort will ultimately be in shrinking the size of the federal government?
I think, you know, in Washington, there's a bit of cynicism and skepticism about it. You know, every few years we get people come here saying, I have this dramatically better idea for how the whole thing can be run, and then they take a look at the actual system and realize... Like, yeah, you can find a thing here or there that maybe you wouldn't have authorized.
But these government efficiency, you know, blue ribbon panels and congressional committees and so on have been looking to root out waste, fraud and abuse for decades now. And they generally do not find that you can dramatically reduce the size of the federal government if you want it to keep doing the same things.
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Chapter 6: Why is Elon Musk critical of government regulations?
So I think the idea that Musk is going to have a radical and lasting effect on the structure or the competence of the federal government, I would say people in D.C. are a bit skeptical about that just because many have tried. And it doesn't tend to be quite as easy as they think it's going to be.
It is kind of the Elon Musk strategy that was deployed, especially at SpaceX and at Tesla. It's like, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, get rid of everything that you possibly can. And then if the rocket ship blows up, okay, add that one thing back. And it seems like he's applying that same kind of strategy at the federal government.
He would like to get it down to the very core, and it gets to the first principles approach. This idea of just because we've done something the way we have in the past, this cliche thinking doesn't mean we should be doing it in the future. And you kind of get to the government, and there's not just generations, but centuries of why things have developed the way they are.
And you go in and just blow it up, that's going to make a lot of heads hurt.
Yeah, you know, I think everybody sort of understands the idea of, you know, taking a whack at some of these entrenched bureaucracies. I think where you get a lot of concern is in the parts of the government that see themselves as sort of zero fail, so to speak, right? I mean, where you can't afford a mistake.
In something like national security, you can't just take down all of our defenses, wait for a terrorist attack to happen, and then say, oops, that's where we should have put a patch. So I think there is a lot of concern in various... Areas of the federal government that feel like they can't afford to have a mistake that puts people's lives and livelihoods at risk.
And that's how you find out that actually we did need that function of the government to be operating and fully staffed.
One of the things that I found interesting during this press event with Musk and Trump in the Oval Office was that almost every time Trump chimed in, it was to criticize the judges that were issuing rulings that are slowing things down.
Much, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it. And the only way to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty sad for our country. I don't understand how it could even work.
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Chapter 7: How effective is Musk in creating momentum for Doge?
You know, you kind of watch this relationship develop over the past months, and it seems to be that Musk is putting a lot of effort and a lot of attention into trying to nurture it in a way that it's almost like a company or a business of his or an idea.
He clearly has ambitions for things that he wants to accomplish with the government and sees in the president a vessel, if you will, to get those things accomplished. Who needs who more?
I think a lot of people come to Trump and they're completely dependent on him, you know, for power or the appearance of power and so on. And so Trump can just fire those people and then they're left with nothing. Elon, you know, as Tim has been saying, not only did Elon provide hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump get elected, but he's bringing his own staff to this effort to, you
he has his own platform in X and his ability to control the narrative in a way that I think Trump finds familiar and impressive as well. So it is hard to imagine, you know, an amicable divorce just because their interests are so bound up together at this point.
All right, cool. Thanks so much, Tim. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about stopping corruption laws, the ones that prevent American companies from bribing foreign officials.
This week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that put a pause on enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is a law that prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials to gain or retain business. What's the Trump administration's rationale for doing this?
So the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act essentially says if you are an American company and you're doing business overseas, you're not allowed to pay bribes to, you know, corrupt governments or officials in other countries. Of course, this is a very common way of doing business in all sorts of countries all over the world. But the idea is that it is not legal for American businesses.
to be engaging in this. And so Trump, in taking this action, said that basically it cast this as a regulation that was inhibiting American business practices, which of course it does. It's much harder to do business in a lot of places if you're not allowed to pay bribes.
But it is a significant tension or irony in the whole sort of drain the swamp mantra that Trump has taken up that he is undoing a lot of the mechanisms that are aimed at precisely that, preventing corruption.
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