← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and I'm joined by Andrew Eggert, the author of Morning Shots. It's Thursday midday, March 6th. Subscribe to the feed. We're about to talk about Elon, an L for Elon, who this afternoon it was reported that during a Trump cabinet meeting, which Musk attended, the President told cabinet secretaries that they actually have the authority, mostly the final say, to make staffing decisions around their own agencies. Now, in normal times, this would be treated as an of course, because of course, like why did we need to clarify this? We need to clarify this because Elon's been going completely batshit crazy on these agencies, taking an absolute ax to them, cutting staffers, cutting functions, that then he has to go back and an ad because he fucked it up so badly and people were getting pissed off about this. So before I get to Andrew, the smartest guy that we have on staff, let me just read what Donald Trump put out in a. What do they call these things again? A bleat. We're calling them obliques. Okay, here's the bleat. Donald Trump. The golden age of America has just begun, exclamation point. Over the last past six weeks, our administration has delivered on promises like no administration before it, always putting America first. Doge has been an incredible success. And now that we have my cabinet in place, I've instructed the secretaries and leadership to work with Doge on cost cutting measures and staffing. As the secretaries learn about and understand the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain and who will go. We say the scalpel rather than the hatchet combination of them. Elon, Doge and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level. We just had a meeting with most secretary, with most of the secretaries, Elon and others, and it was a very positive one. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're going to have to these meetings every two weeks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. Politico is reporting this a little bit more directly, saying Elon got rebuked. But Andrew, what do you make of it?
- [02:12]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, all this stuff is really funny because the, the line from the White House is always like, we don't know what anybody's talking about. Everybody's rowing in the same direction here. We're all on the same page under the august leadership of Donald J. Trump. But this is a huge shift, right? I mean, this is extremely striking on a, on a few different levels. One is that There have been these kind of headbutting clashes between Elon Musk and the actual Cabinet secretaries who in theory, constitutionally have the authority over these agencies for, for a couple weeks now, right? I mean, we saw this bubbling up in a bunch of different ways. I mean, Marco Rubio at the State Department would say that certain programs will be protected, and then Elon Musk's Doge Bros actually down there with their hands on the levers would cut these programs anyway. Or Elon Musk would send an email to, to everybody in the federal government and say, if you don't respond to this, you're fired. And, and their agency heads would say, actually don't respond to that email. We're dealing with that. But, but all through that, I mean, as, as recently as, I think it was last week, right? When that, when that Cabinet, when, when it was last week of the Cabinet. I mean, Trump used that meeting with, with all of his Cabinet secretaries on hand and the press in the room. He used it to very publicly throw his weight further behind Elon. Right? I mean, Elon was the one who talked the most, even though he is not in the Cabinet. And basically the job of the Cabinet secretaries there was for Trump to throw to them and say, hey, does anybody have a problem with what Elon's doing? And for them to kind of say, no, we love it, and kind of clap for him and stuff. And so that was all happening. But meanwhile, already then, you had started to see these stories of Musk going way too far and cutting insane things that were insane.
- [03:54]
Sam Stein
Let me just read one of these stories which happened today, okay? This is just today. And we'll get to the fact that this happens like several times a day, because that's what your morning shots is about. But the story today in the Post, which really, if you just read it, it's just absolutely remarkable to think that this happening. But they basically get notes from an inside. An internal Social Security Administration meeting in which the newly installed head of the ssa, Leland dude, basically admits that things have gotten out of control. Out of his control, frankly, because of Doge. The quote that he says to a group of advocates is, quote, things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before. I'm laughing because it's like petrifying. He referred to the Doge team as, quote, outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs. He goes on, doge people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at ssa. I am Relying on longtime career people to inform my work. But I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions. If you step back and you think about that, the guy who's running the retirement program for our country, the social insurance, Social insurance retirement program for our country is saying he can't control a group of 20 something people, outsiders, who are cutting programs indiscriminately that they don't know anything about. Like, that's totally insane. I know we say about everything, but that's totally insane.
- [05:31]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah. And Musk's personal philosophy on all this stuff has been, I mean, it's been like the kind of move fast and break things. We say that phrase like 20 times a day now. That's the ethos he's brought to all of this. And his basic problem is like, well, what's the, his basic argument has always been, well, what's the downside? Because if we cut anything that turns out to have been load bearing, people will just tell us that's what you're there for, is to tell us what went wrong and we'll just put it right back. So what's the problem? And obviously, you know, we've, we've talked until we're blue in the face already about all of the ways in which that breaks down. All of the ways in which you, it is much easier to break these things kind of thoughtlessly than it is to try to piece them back together, which is true of most things. Most things in life, most things in the world can't just like smash a vase and then be like, well, just unsmash. It's, you gotta buy a new vase. Right. That's what happens. And then meanwhile, you know, it's been kind of a lagging indicator. But like, every one of these stories that has come out has kind of built up this drag on these guys where people are mad. They're waylaying their Republican representatives at their town hall meetings. I mean, you see it just in the public opinion polling of Trump overall and certainly of Musk and Doge, which has lagged behind the popularity of Trump overall. But, but Doge has been like the main thing that's been in the news for Trump for weeks and weeks.
- [06:44]
Sam Stein
I know, and that's the thing. It's like all these lawmakers are, I mean, it's very evident to me that. And we get to the story yesterday in the Post, it's the lawmakers who are complaining about this. And the political story on this cabinet meeting is it does reference the Fact that it was John Thune, the Senate Majority leader, who went on CNN and said they got to dial it back.
- [07:03]
C
A little bit, and Doge is going about this and doing the big scrub. But now that you've got, this is why we work so hard to get Cabinet people in place is handed off to these leaders, these managers who are going to be making decisions, and they're going to be, I think, probably better attuned.
- [07:18]
Sam Stein
That was what prompted this. But like today, for instance, Bill Huizenga, Republican in Michigan, it's reported that he's asking people to stop calling his office because there's so much backlash. Republicans have said, oh, these are all Democratic plants.
- [07:33]
C
If you just go to an open forum right now.
- [07:35]
Sam Stein
Why?
- [07:35]
C
Because we've seen this movie before. George Soros funded groups and others literally pay protesters.
- [07:41]
Sam Stein
At the same time, they're advising their own lawmakers to stop holding town hall meetings. Like, clearly, people are agitated about this. Today, Lisa Murkowski said she heard from officials in Alaska who work with USAID and were like, what's happening there is a travesty. And so all this stuff is building up. And Trump doesn't respond to a lot of things, but he does respond to the sense that something unpopular is happening underneath him.
- [08:09]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, yeah. Lines on graphs mean a lot to Donald Trump. Right. Like a line pointing up is a cause for celebration and a lion pointing down is a cause for monkey.
- [08:16]
Sam Stein
I don't know if you're being facetious, but I think that I do believe that popularity goes this way. He's like, fuck. Right? Like, that's not what he wants.
- [08:24]
Andrew Eggert
Did you see? I don't. We could do a whole different video on this. Did you see the graph that the president of Mexico showed him today that, like, made him super happy and got him to yank the tariffs off? We can talk about that later. It's exactly that. It's a line pointing down graph. Big, big, big in the, in the brain of Donald Trump. But, but seriously, I mean, like, like, this is the kind of thing. And so, so he. So Trump is getting all this input from all these different people. He is seeing these kind of signals that matter to him. And I think there is a degree of like. And to what with all this, it's not like there's an enormous amount of upside for him personally, especially because he's.
- [08:55]
Sam Stein
The guy who's could give a, like, cutting government programs. Like, he's not, you know, intellectually or philosophically stimulated by this stuff. He doesn't care. If anything, he wants to make sure. That Social Security is functioning right. Like, he believes firmly that he needs to keep the social safety and intact. So if a story pops up that the SSA is, you know, doing automated call centers and wait times are now two hours and that, you know, the guy who's administering the program doesn't have any clue what's going on, you know, Trump, to a degree, is gonna be like, that's not good for me. Like, my people depend on that. He's the one who said he didn't want Medicaid cut.
- [09:33]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:34]
Sam Stein
Don't touch it. Like, he did. That's what he. That's where his head's at.
- [09:37]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, yeah. And the really interesting thing to me in all of this, and this is something that Jamie brought up before we even started the call, is like, ordinarily, Donald Trump has a playbook for something like this. Like, things start to go wrong, the guy who he thinks is responsible is gonna kind of fall out of his favor. Eventually. He'll put all this. He can't follow you, send him out in the wilderness. But that's. That's the problem. Elon is his own thing. Right. He's kind of too big to fire. Yeah, yeah. And there's never really been anybody like that in Trump's orbit before, so it's weird in that way. Well, he certainly cannot put Elon out to pasture. I don't think he's, like, fully lost confidence in him or anything like that.
- [10:11]
Sam Stein
There's one person in his orbit.
- [10:13]
Andrew Eggert
Who's that?
- [10:14]
Sam Stein
Ivanka. Can fire his daughter.
- [10:16]
Andrew Eggert
Yeah, that's true. Did he ever want to fire her.
- [10:19]
Sam Stein
Or Jared, I guess that would have been awkward.
- [10:21]
Andrew Eggert
Right? Right. What's Jared up to these days? We don't hear a whole lot from Jared in this.
- [10:25]
Sam Stein
Shaking down the Saudis, getting some money. All right. On Elon. So then what happen next? I mean, like, he's gonna do his thing, right? Like, that's the thing. I'm not totally sold yet that this is, like, a breaker demotion, I think. I don't know if I'm ready to go that far, because I feel like, one, Elon's not the type of guy who's gonna be like, okay, I'm gonna move on back to Tesla. But two, I think Trump kind of wants to project this idea that he's bringing Elon back a little bit, reining him in, but I actually don't think he cares all that much about this stuff. And because he doesn't care about that stuff, I don't think he's going to take practical steps to make Elon stop doing these things?
- [11:06]
Andrew Eggert
No, I think that's exactly right. And I think that's why what comes next is really interesting and could go a few different ways, right? Because in theory, you could imagine a world where Elon kind of like, takes the slap on the wrist, is willing to step back into this sort of advisory role. There's all kinds of reasons why they would. They could, like, strategically want that anyway, because Russell Vogt is coming in at OMB and is going. And it's trying to, like, systematize a lot of this stuff. House Republicans and Senate Republicans are talking about, you know, a rescission package to make some of these cuts, like, permanent as a matter of law. So, like, you could have Elon doing his stuff now, and then all these other guys come in to backfill his work. But this is a guy who doesn't take direction is, is so used to being his own boss. I mean, like, that's the reason why this has gone the way it has so far, right? Because, like, he's just going to go in, he's going to monkey with what he wants to monkey with. He's going to turn everything into, like, a pure power play in his favor, the same way Donald Trump always does. There's another two of these guys who are, like, not quite parallel anymore, right? The lines sort of intersect in a weird way, and it's. And it's not clear how all that's going to kind of bounce out if.
- [12:10]
Sam Stein
Donald Trump's want, if Trump wants an offer.