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- [00:07]
Ryan Knudsen
Molly Ball, senior political correspondent. How are you?
- [00:11]
Molly Ball
I'm good, Ryan. How are you doing?
- [00:13]
Ryan Knudsen
I'm good. So today I wanted 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. 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.
- [00:39]
Molly Ball
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.
- [01:11]
Ryan Knudsen
A mystery that we will try to solve. From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudsen.
- [01:23]
Molly Ball
And I'm Molly Ball.
- [01:25]
Ryan Knudsen
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.
- [01:53]
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- [02:32]
Ryan Knudsen
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 4 year old son X.
- [02:41]
Elon Musk
This is X and he's a great guy, high iq. He's a high IQ individual and he's.
- [02:48]
Tim Higgins
Got this cool chain. He's gone.
- [02:51]
Elon Musk
So thank you very much. We had a busy day.
- [02:53]
Ryan Knudsen
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?
- [03:01]
Elon Musk
We'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.
- [03:04]
Tim Higgins
Sure. So the. At a high level, if you say, what is the goal of Doge, and I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy, this may seem like.
- [03:20]
Ryan Knudsen
And his overall message seemed to be that he was finding all these instances of corruption and government waste and that Doge was getting rid of the bureaucracy and restoring democracy.
- [03:31]
Molly Ball
It was such an incredible visual, wasn't it? I mean, to have Elon Musk sort of towering over the President and answering questions almost on his behalf. It really sort of visually summarized the way in which he does seem to have become in a lot of people's minds, a sort sort of co president, someone with the power befitting a world leader. And to have his cute little son sort of rampaging around the room as if he owned the place. It's sort of as if both of them owned the place.
- [04:04]
Tim Higgins
Well, if you don't have a feedback loop, we'd have to. If you. Sorry. Tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
- [04:15]
Ryan Knudsen
So I want to bring in our colleague Tim Higgins, who arguably knows Elon Musk better than anyone at the Wall Street Journal. Tim, you've covered Elon for how many years now? 10?
- [04:24]
Tim Higgins
I don't even know at this point. It's been many years, several years, multiple years.
- [04:30]
Ryan Knudsen
But you've written a book about the early days of Tesla and you write a column right now for the Wall Street Journal that's mostly about Elon Musk. So thank you for joining us.
- [04:38]
Tim Higgins
Thank you.
- [04:39]
Ryan Knudsen
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?
- [04:52]
Tim Higgins
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 in the background. He wants to run things.
- [05:24]
Ryan Knudsen
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.
- [05:37]
Tim Higgins
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 when he takes over and Twitter is the best in late 2022, shock and awe, immediately taking over, getting rid of the top executives than 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.
- [06:13]
Molly Ball
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.
- [06:21]
Ryan Knudsen
But.
- [06:22]
Molly Ball
But was it successful? I mean, isn't Twitter now a smaller, less profitable company than it was when he bought it?
- [06:27]
Tim Higgins
Well, it's a different company. It is a totally different company. Even by name, it is now X.
- [06:32]
Molly Ball
Right? It's not Twitter.
- [06:33]
Ryan Knudsen
Is that gonna be the new name for the United States of America, like Uxa or something?
- [06:39]
Tim Higgins
It's the Everything app, the Everything country. Look, Twitter, when he took it over, was a trouble coming. This isn't 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.
- [07:12]
Ryan Knudsen
This is not a company. I mean, the US 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?
- [07:22]
Tim Higgins
Special government employee, I think, is the.
- [07:24]
Ryan Knudsen
Term special government employee. But, like, how will this. The Silicon Valley strategy of just sort of moving fast and breaking things, is that gonna translate to government in the same way that it does when he's the sole owner of a company that he, you know, is taken private?
- [07:39]
Tim Higgins
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 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.
- [08:08]
Molly Ball
What do you think Elon Musk wants out of this? Like, what do you view as his motivation here?
- [08:14]
Tim Higgins
I think we have to take him at his word. He is kind of a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve and his opinions on his feed. And he has been very vocal in the last few years that the government has just become run amok, if you will, with too many regulations. 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 in power 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.
- [09:14]
Ryan Knudsen
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?
- [09:37]
Tim Higgins
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. And it's been time and time again out there pushing the narrative of where things could be. What I see him doing with Doge seems to be 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.
- [10:31]
Ryan Knudsen
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?
- [10:40]
Molly Ball
I think in Washington there's a bit of cynicism and skepticism about it. 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, yeah, you can find a thing here or there that maybe you wouldn't have authorized. But these government efficiency blue ribbon panels and congressional committees and so on have been looking to root out waste, fraud and abuse for decades now. 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. We've seen already some Republicans quietly trying to refund some of the programs that they've seen getting destroyed because their constituents interests are at stake. For example, there's a food program that buys American farm products and uses them for food aid overseas. Some Republicans in the Senate are trying to resurrect that because it was killed in the elimination of usaid. 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.
- [12:05]
Ryan Knudsen
It is kind of the Elon Musk strategy that was deployed especially at SpaceX is. And a Tesla's like, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Get rid of everything, 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.
- [12:22]
Tim Higgins
He would like to get it down to like 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 like 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 gonna make a lot of heads hurt.
- [12:47]
Molly Ball
Yeah, I think everybody sort of understands the idea of 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. We 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.
- [13:30]
Ryan Knudsen
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.
- [13:43]
Elon Musk
Much, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it, and the only way we're going 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.
- [13:58]
Molly Ball
You know, there's been a lot of talk and commentary about the potential for a constitutional crisis if the administration does not respect judicial decisions, if they decide to simply IGN something that a court has told them to do. Vance has tweeted this. He has previously made comments to this effect. And you have Musk saying, questioning the legitimacy of these courts to rule. So what I found the most striking was that when Trump was asked this question, he repeatedly said, we will respect the judge's decisions, we'll appeal, and we think we'll win eventually.
- [14:32]
Elon Musk
Yeah. The answer is, I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and we'll appeal.
- [14:38]
Molly Ball
And I think a lot of sort of constitutional scholars breathe a sigh of relief at that just because the potential consequences are quite serious for our democracy.
- [14:47]
Ryan Knudsen
I want to talk about the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The other day, Elon Musk posted on X, I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man.
- [14:58]
Tim Higgins
I mean, happy Valentine's Day right there.
- [15:02]
Ryan Knudsen
Yeah, I wonder if they exchanged cards. But, Tim, what do you make of the relationship between. I mean, Musk has not had to deal with someone as powerful as the president in any of his companies before.
- [15:14]
Tim Higgins
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.
- [15:39]
Ryan Knudsen
Who needs who more?
- [15:41]
Molly Ball
I think a lot of people come to Trump and they're completely dependent on him 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, 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 clean out the government. 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 an amicable divorce just because their interests are so bound up together at this point.
- [16:23]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, cool. Well, thanks so much, Tim. We really appreciate your time.
- [16:26]
Tim Higgins
Yeah, thank you.
- [16:28]
Ryan Knudsen
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. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do.
- [17:01]
Molly Ball
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- [17:24]
Ryan Knudsen
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?
- [17:41]
Molly Ball
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.
- [18:34]
Ryan Knudsen
How have people in Washington reacted to this change?
- [18:39]
Molly Ball
Well, I think, you know, most of the reaction to Trump breaks down on partisan lines. And, and so Democrats and critics of the administration say this proves that he's a liar and a hypocrite. He's corrupt. He just wants the corruption that favors him. But Trump's fans and supporters and most Republicans say, look, this is about the deregulatory agenda. This is about making it easier for companies to do business and getting rid of regulations that are not actually useful, but just get in the way of business and progress and prosperity.
- [19:20]
Ryan Knudsen
Trump also issued a pardon for former Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, who'd been convicted of corruption charges about 15 years ago. And then Trump's Justice Department also pushed to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who'd been fighting those charges. How do you see these two actions fitting into Trump's vision for the justice system?
- [19:41]
Molly Ball
It was very interesting, particularly the Eric Adams case. Now, Rod Blagojevich has been a Trump ally for a while now. His sentence was actually commuted during Trump's first term. Eric Adams has also been indicted on corruption charges in New York City and since then has been making sort of Trump friendly noises about things like immigration enforcement. And in fact, in instructing these charges to be dropped, there was nothing about the charges being unfair or ill conceived. It was all about needing the mayor of New York City to help deliver on Trump's agenda, particularly when it came to immigration.
- [20:19]
Ryan Knudsen
I should point out that the Justice Department said that it's, quote, not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams assistance on immigration enforcement. At the same time, we have seen the Trump administration redeploy resources to focus on immigration immigration enforcement first and foremost across the country.
- [20:39]
Molly Ball
That's right. And we also had this week the newly confirmed Attorney General, Pam Bondi, announcing that the Justice Department is actually suing multiple states, accusing them of not having properly enforced immigration law.
- [20:54]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, so finally we've got a question from a listener from Noah in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. He wants to know what you, Molly, think about Trump's comments about taking over new territories, like making Canada the 51st state, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, buying Greenland and taking over Gaza.
- [21:14]
Molly Ball
Hey, Noah, thank you so much for your question. I think this is something that has a lot of people in Washington puzzled because it has been a consistent theme of Trump's remarks starting after the election, but it was not something that he talked about at all during the campaign. So it sort of came out of left field in terms of delivering on campaign promises. Right here. He campaigned on primarily immigration and inflation. But as soon as he wins the election, he's talking about, well, I want to get Greenland, I want to turn Canada into a state.
- [21:48]
Ryan Knudsen
It's very ambitious.
- [21:49]
Molly Ball
And so I think conceptually, that is where it is coming from, is this idea of American ambition. At some of Trump's rallies, particularly towards the end of the campaign, he had these signs that said, dream big again. And he does have this idea that America has become too sort of cramped and pessimistic, that we don't think about possibilities in a big way. We don't think about a country that could reach for the moon and stars, plant the flag on Mars, as he said in his inaugural speech. In some ways, he is very serious about all of these things. Right. Not only has the former Gulf of Mexico been officially renamed on all the.
- [22:31]
Ryan Knudsen
Government maps and Google Maps, if you live in the US it now says.
- [22:35]
Molly Ball
Gulf of America, Google Maps and Apple Maps. But. And this week, reporters for the Associated Press were repeatedly kicked out of events at the White House because that news service has not gone along with this change and has not started using Gulf of America in its news reports.
- [22:54]
Ryan Knudsen
Also because to say Mexico has not gone along with this change, they're still calling it. So it's not sort of an internationally recognized name at this point.
- [23:01]
Molly Ball
Yeah. And we've all been learning a lot about how these changes get made and who's in charge of them and who gets to say what the name is. On the other hand, with something like saying that we're going to take over Gaza and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle east, no one is quite sure what Trump means by this and how serious he is. And there was a quite uncomfortable moment in the Oval Office with the King of Jordan this week, Trump saying these things and saying that Jordan is going to accept large numbers of Palestinians, it puts him in a very uncomfortable spot. Jordan has already accepted huge amounts of Palestinian refugees, and Trump proposing something like this has the potential to destabilize the entire Middle East. But we now see Arab governments coming to the table, proposing different solutions. And so some of the intent of seemingly crazy ideas like this may be simply to shake things up and get people talking in a way they haven't been talking in the past about ways to solve an intractable problem that has been, as Trump said, leaving a lot of people in dire misery for generations now. And no one seems to be proposing any solutions that could actually sort of break that stalemate and solve the problem on behalf of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
- [24:29]
Ryan Knudsen
All right, Molly, well, thank you so much for your time.
- [24:31]
Molly Ball
Thanks, Ryan.
- [24:32]
Ryan Knudsen
I'll see you next week.
- [24:34]
Molly Ball
See ya.
- [24:36]
Ryan Knudsen
Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournalsj.com that's thejournalwsj.com Trump 2.0 is part of the Journal, which is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Katherine Whelan with help from Tatiana Zamis. Molly Ball is the Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudsen. This episode was engineered by Nathan Singapak. Our theme music is by so Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music in this episode by Peter Leonard, Nathan Singapak and so Wiley. Fact checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton. Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning. See you then.