The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Sat, 15 Feb 2025
Rachel Maddow looks at a series of unforced errors by Elon Musk and the DOGE team that calls into question the accuracy of their "tech genius" image and whether they have the competence to tinker with the systems that run the federal government.
Chapter 1: Why is Nixon's second term significant in this discussion?
Thanks, Juneholm, for joining us this hour. Appreciate it. So Richard Nixon was sworn in for his second term as president in January 1973. First elected in the 1968 election, then reelected in the 1972 election. So Inauguration Day, he was sworn in for what would, of course, famously become his disastrous second term in office in January. Saturday, January 20th, 1973.
Two days after that, LBJ died. The Nixon inauguration was on Saturday, and then on Monday, two days later, former Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson passed away, had a heart attack. And then two days after that, Nixon proclaimed that in the immediate aftermath of LBJ's death, he, Richard Nixon, was going to kill one of LBJ's most beloved projects. two days after LBJ's death. Very classy.
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools and better health and better homes and better training and better job opportunities. to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery.
For his War on Poverty that he announced in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to create a new thing. He asked them to create something called the Office of Economic Opportunity.
And I'm oversimplifying, but essentially all the things that Johnson wanted to do for Americans who were poor for his War on Poverty, the health care you do with Medicaid and Medicare, but everything else you would do through this new Office of Economic Opportunity. And it did a lot. That is, for example, where we got Head Start, the big preschool program. That's where we got AmeriCorps.
We got lots of programs serving Native Americans, for example. So Lyndon Johnson made that, the Office of Economic Opportunity. It was really his baby from his war on poverty. And Nixon declared he wanted it dead. Now, in Nixon's first term in office, he had tried to kill that agency.
He had installed a young zealot, a 36-year-old named Donald Rumsfeld, to go run that office with express instructions from the president to run it into the ground. And young Donald Rumsfeld, I think, did wreck as much as he could. He cut off parts of the agency and put them in other parts of the government. But it wasn't enough.
By the time Nixon was coming back for his second term, that agency that he hated so much, it still existed. And so this time, coming back for his second term, he just flat out said he was going to kill it off. He did have the decency to wait until two days after LBJ died, but then he told Congress he wanted them to zero it out of the budget. Kill it. It's interesting, though.
Even that wasn't enough for Nixon. Because when he came back for his second term, again, like kind of famously, he was way more radical than he had been before. He was certainly less constrained and perhaps more thrilled and perhaps more drunk on his own power.
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Chapter 2: What led to the controversy surrounding the Office of Economic Opportunity?
Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joining us tonight live from Munich, where it is 3.30 in the morning. Ambassador McFaul, I now owe you at some point. You can wake me up at 3.30 in the morning for something. I owe you at least a beer when you get back. Thank you very much for being up at this time for us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Stay with us.
We have new developments tonight in the fast-moving, dramatic story of mass resignations at the U.S. Justice Department over a matter of principle. Last night, we reported that it was a sixth resignation day at DOJ. Trump-installed leaders at Maine Justice told SDNY, they told the acting U.S.
attorney in the Southern District of New York, that she needed to dismiss corruption charges against New York's mayor, Eric Adams. It appeared to be some sort of frankly, repellent deal to get the mayor's support and assistance with Trump's mass deportation efforts in exchange for these charges against him going away. The SDNY U.S. attorney refused to do it, and she quit.
Because SDNY wouldn't do it, Trump's appointees at Maine Justice then ordered prosecutors at Maine Justice in Washington that they should do it instead. But that didn't work out as planned either. two, then three, then four, then five more prosecutors at Maine Justice quit, rather than put their names on the effort to drop these charges against Eric Adams.
So that's six high-profile resignations from the Justice Department since yesterday. And now a seventh. The lead prosecutor in that corruption case against Eric Adams also quit today, sending a resignation letter that feels like it would burn your fingers if you touch it.
It included this line, which you may now cross-stitch on all the pillows in the world and pass them down to your kids and grandkids. Quote, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me. So as of this morning, seven principled resignations and the Eric Adams charges still weren't dropped.
At which point, Trump's acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bovee, and this is true, confirmed by NBC News legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, Emil Bovee convened all the prosecutors in the Justice Department's public integrity section, like two dozen or so prosecutors, convened them all together in the same place and told them they had one hour to decide which one of them was going to sign the motion calling for the charges to be dismissed.
Emil Bove apparently made clear that promotions were in the offing for anybody who'd be willing to sign this motion. And if you weren't willing to sign, well, they could all be fired. Ultimately, one veteran career prosecutor, who is apparently nearing retirement, said he would volunteer to sign the motion, basically under duress.
Not because he necessarily supported it, but because he was hoping to save all of his colleagues' jobs. And so tonight, Trump's Justice Department has filed this motion in federal court in New York tonight.
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