Elon's Doge & Mars X Space LIVE on sastian.live @rumblevideo

5:05AM Feb 3, 2025

Speakers:

Christian Sass

Elon Musk

Joni Ernst

Mike Lee

Vivek Ramaswamy

Keywords:

government efficiency

President Trump

Mars exploration

government waste

bureaucratic tyranny

USAID corruption

transparency issues

COVID funding

federal spending

regulatory reform

economic growth

inflation control

deficit reduction

fraud rings

public support

Other things that people are interested

talking to people on the internet.

be working on Doge and for this to be something that President Trump recognizes as important enough to include in in his signal inauguration speech. That's worth noting, Doge and Mars were in the President's inauguration speech, which is very notable because, you know, there's a very limited amount of things you can talk about in that speech. And and both the government efficiency and Mars were making the prominent elements of the of the inauguration speech and and in the early executive orders as well, so meaning that President Trump takes improving government efficiency very seriously, obviously, although it is a humorous name, ironically, I think those will be will have a very seriously, a very serious and significant impact on government waste and foreign abuse, which is really astonishing in a scale and scope and

and Senator Ernst actually has been working on this for, I think, past more than more than decade, I think, a long time, and has uncovered many, many crazy things. So that's why I invited her to speak as well as Vivek has been thinking about this for a long time, and maybe there'll be some others that come along, but there's already been really tremendous progress. You know, rough estimate is, is that there's at least a few billion dollars a day of savings. Now, that may sound like a lot, but when you're talking about a federal spending that's 7 trillion. It's actually we still need to do quite a bit better than than we have thus far. So, yeah, well, let's see with that. Perhaps senators would be great for people to hear from you. I think not, not that many people have heard from you and and you've been spending more time on this than than, you know, than we have, and it'd be great to hear your thoughts on, you know, government, government wasted efficiency and things that that could be better, maybe some anecdotes about some of the crazy things you've seen. But first breaking

tonight, President Elect Trump's picks to run several cabinet level before senators today during confirmation hearings on the hill. Wow,

might have lost her unfortunately. Let's see, Vive, can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you, man, you hear me,

yeah,

yeah.

Well, welcome. You'd like to say a few things,

Yeah. I mean, it was, it was cool to lay the foundation for the first couple of months. You've been kicking ass in the last couple of weeks. And it's been funny to watch the public processing of this, which is basically on the side of eliminating waste, fraud, abuse from the government. And, you know, the basic idea of a democracy is that the people we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually make the laws in Congress, exactly and and the bureaucrats have no place in doing it. And so, you know, I guess my question for you is, two weeks in Now, the thing we're taught is that we have three branches of government, not four,

right,

What's your experience now two weeks in are there, is there actually a fourth branch of government?

There most definitely is. This is actually really what Vivek saying is really goes to the heart of the problem. The in order for us to be a true democracy, a functioning democracy, the government must be responsive to the people. That's literally what democracy means. However, when you have a vast unelected bureaucracy that is not answerable to the public and where the and if the, if the elected officials, if the if the president, the you know, the people in Congress and the Senate actually don't have, if they don't have the power to affect the bureaucracy, and is actually extremely difficult to affect the bureaucracy, then you do not have rule of the people. You do not have democracy. You have rule of the Bureau bureaucracy. And this is obviously wrong. It is unconstitutional, and it is imperative, therefore that we return power to the people of the country and and not have tyranny of the bureaucracy which we we must definitely have had to fall out to a degree that is, that is absurd as this. This is not just that there's an unconstitutional fourth branch to government, but it is arguably the most powerful branch of the government. Um, joining us. You're back. Would you

yes? Can? Can you hear me now?

I can. Yes,

yep, I

Oh, I apologize, gentlemen, to my laptop. So, you know, I've been working on this for, as Elon said, over a decade now, with my squeal awards and and there are many in Congress that actually really do care about this

absolutely

problem. The problem, I think, is there, there are not enough of us, yes, that have paid attention to this, and so while i i highlight a lot of the abuses, and you wanted some anecdotes, Elon and I've shared a number of those with you,

it's hard to resonate it's hard to resonate. It's hard for the public to resonate with statistics, because it's sort of like, but people can really resonate with, you know, powerful anecdotes. Yeah. So do we lose you again? Hopefully not.

I mean, Jody, had a bunch of them, yeah? Do you had a bunch of them? Jody,

yeah, I did. So, you know, sending kitties to spas to find out whether they produce less fur balls. So, yeah, we've spent taxpayer money on that. We've put shrimp on a treadmill to see how fast they run. I'm sorry, but you know, all of these things while they may be fun, why are we spending taxpayer dollars on them? And it goes to the point of, we've sent millions of dollars to China to study what? COVID. We saw how that ended.

Well, in fact, it's pretty outrageous that the the COVID, the virus, was developed, and you know what is slab Wuhan and and yet was funded by US tax dollars, which was simply routed through this sort of state nonprofit eco health, because the government, us, government can't give directly to China, so they just gave to eco health, knowing that it would go to China. So our US tax dollars were used effectively to, in the end, kill Americans, which is insane,

absolutely insane. And I know Elon, you have been on U S A I D,

for sure, this was another one of my efforts. And this began years ago when we were trying to figure out what they were doing with our American taxpayer dollars that were going to support humanitarian efforts in in Ukraine. So I wanted to know exactly how those dollars were being spent and not reasonable requests. Yes, oh my gosh, and I shared this with you earlier, Ilan just privately, but we got all kinds of threats from USA ID because I was trying to exercise my oversight capacity in Congress. So that's just shocking. I mean, how? I mean, honestly, it's outrageous that a taxpayer funded organization would threaten a US senator who is simply trying to figure out if American taxpayer money is being spent correctly and and unfortunately, yes, and so what my staff and I had estimated was that 30 to 40% of of the USA IDs awards would go to indirect costs. So their their overhead, you know, their rents, employees.

Okay? After months and months and months of obstruction where USA ID wouldn't let us in, they told us the the nicra that negotiated indirect cost rate agreements. It's a lot of, you know, government jargon, but anyway, the the indirect costs, they said that the database, oh, it doesn't exist. That was a lie. That was a lie. It was false because we found it, and then we were told we weren't allowed to access the database. And then that's when Congressman McCaul and I came together, and we launched an official Congressional investigation so that we could gain access to the rate. Wow. And then, after about six more months of negotiations, then my staff was finally allowed to access very limited data. They were allowed to go into a room and they couldn't take notes. They were on camera the whole time. They couldn't remove any of the information. But what my staff found is you were laughing at that 30 to 40% because that is outrageous. That was understated. What, in some of the cases, the night for rates were upwards towards anywhere from 50 to 6% and that doesn't include the cost for subcontractors, what the subcontractors were adding on. So this is a problem with USA ID, and that's why Elon, I'm just I'm with you on this, because so much of that taxpayer money is not even going to, you know, we love to feel good about helping starving children and name your country, but it's not going there. It's going to pay rents in Paris. Yes, it's going to support somebody's fancy dinner to entertain whoever. Yeah,

exactly so to be clear, in shutting down, which we process during shutting down, USA ID, the reason for that, as opposed to simply, you know, trying to do, do some minor house cleaning, is, is that, as we dug into USA, USA ID, it became apparent that what we have here is is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. And so at the point at which you don't really like if you've got an apple, it's got a worm, it may even take the worm out, but if you've got actually just a ball of worms, it's hopeless. And USAID is a ball of worms, there is no apple. And when there is no Apple this, this, you've just got to basically get rid of the whole thing. That is why it's got to go, you know, it's beyond it's beyond repair. So,

yeah, there's a solution to this, which is that, let's say something's cut, that the people of this country just demand needs to exist again. It can always be voted by Senator Ernst and her colleagues. Totally the fact that that isn't going to happen. Exactly why many of these agencies really deletion is the only answer that's left. Well,

yes. Well, exactly right, if it turns out we really that's an organization. Who should we just created bronze sold by the people? Yes, by the people, answerable and answerable to the people and to the people's elected representatives. That is the way that government is supposed to work,

I agree and more transparency. You know, Sunshine is the best disinfectant out there.

Sunshine that tells you something, yeah.

So, you know, we really we need to be able to exercise our oversight, and this is where we have been blocked so long, in Congress. I mean, you can go onto my, onto my official website, on the internet. You can look through my priorities. Go to my, my squeal area. You can go back I've got the last several years on there of efforts, whether it's USAID, you know, NIH, the National Institutes of Health, those taxpayer dollars that were going to China's Institute of virology snap over payments through USDA and the state. I mean, you name it the Gosh, just even my back to work. My back to work report, you know, the out of the office that we've talked so much about. And on day one, you know, the President came in and said, Hey, everybody, back to work. Yeah, you know, I don't, I don't think most Americans understand that only 6% of our federal workforce shows up to work in the office every single day, only 6% yes, it's

truly insane fact. And the one of, one of the most insane things I've seen was that I was speaking with the with the hopefully, I seem to be attorney general Bondi, and she was telling me that the the US engraving is rushed, I guess, was used to the US Mint, which is actually the building that is an historic building, actually a beautiful building is here in DC, and the windows are all broken and has turned into a homeless encampment. That means like this. Nobody like this. No one comes to work to such a degree that this beautiful building has all the windows broken and it's been turned into a homeless encampment in downtown DC. That's how absurd it is. It's beyond belief,

yeah, and that's why so so many of these buildings? If, if we could repopulate them, that would be great. And that way we have oversight and make sure employees are are doing what they're supposed to do. You know, I'm going to hammer on USA ID one more time. Absolutely. You know? We, yeah, so we, we talk about the locality pay abuse and that what happens when people aren't working in the office, what they're doing in DC, and not everyone. I don't want to accuse every federal worker of being a bad actor, but, but I have seen so many examples of this, we had a USA ID employee that was falsely using an office supply retailers mailing address, you know, think like Staples and places like that, using that address in Virginia to do taxpayers by claiming higher Washington, Dc, dc locality pay that they were actually living in another state full time, and they had the full knowledge and assistance of their supervisor in pulling off this scam. And then the and then the IG, the USA ID IG, blew off my request for an investigation. What

did they give that seems I mean, these did. How can they do that?

This is the problem we have, is that there are checks and balances in place where we can write letters all day, and we can request IG oversight, but if that IG as I'm not going to investigate, I'm not interested. I, as a United States Senator, don't have the power to force them to do it, and this is why I'm so excited that we have Doge and that we have a president that's willing to back us up

Absolutely. So really, none of this could be done without the full support of the President, you know. And with regard to the USAID stuff, I went, went over it with him, you know, in detail, and he agreed with that we should, we should shut it down. I mean, that's, want to be clear. That's, you know, and I actually checked with him a few times, are you sure? Like, yes, so we're shutting it down. And yeah, it's, it's, it's also incredibly politically partisan, and has been supporting radical left causes throughout the world, including things that are anti American, which is insane,

right? And that's why, you know the there are probably some arguments to be made about what could be important work that falls under USAID, but the fact of the matter is that it's been, it has been overshadowed by these bad actors. Yeah, so if there are truly good pro American programs, then let's move them to the State Department, exactly. Let's make sure we have proper oversight. Let's make sure that when senators and congressmen are asking for documents, that they provide them in a timely manner. Yes, let's make sure the IGs are upfront and honest and wanting to be the watchdog over the agencies they are charged with. I mean, this is not rocket scientist, and you're a rocket scientist,

this is simply common sense and being responsive to the electorate. And you know, that's you just can't have these Institute, these sort of institutions which are taking less taxpayer money, but then are not answerable to elected representatives of the public. Then it's they're totally disconnected. So I sort of, I call it like, we must move away from rule of the Bureau to rule of the people demos.

You know, I think I'm hopeful that some of this creates momentum, joining us with the senators, with some of your colleagues as well, in passing the REINS Act, right? I mean, half of this is decades of Congress effectively just punting off the responsibility to avoid accountability, not you, but many of your colleagues over the years. And you know, hopefully, if this is a catalyst to say, Congress and the Senate say, we make take the law making power back to the elected representatives of the people. And, you know, get the kinds of things done that haven't gotten done for years, like the REINS Act and other mechanisms to say, law making, power comes back to Congress. I think that could be one of the best things to come out of all of this. I'm hoping that happens this time. I know you're supportive, yeah, fundamentally

this, there's got to be a feedback loop to the people. You can't have these organizations that are just disconnected from the people, like I said, that just you just fundamentally do not have a democracy in that situation. You have, you have tyranny of the bureaucracy, which is just inappropriate and needs to end.

But then, you know, who's pumped up about you bringing everybody back to work is actually Muriel Bowser, Mayor of DC, you're talking about the homeless encampments. I talked to her, maybe what, last month or month and a half ago? That's a Democrat. Doesn't matter. It's basically the base principle of a, self governance and B, saving money and making sure that our buildings aren't being infested by homeless invasion, but instead is actually creating a thriving capital. You know, I think is shockingly a bipartisan idea. If we give people the permission to come out as Democrats and say, those things make sense, which I think we're seeing some of, which I think

is cool. No, you're absolutely right. The lack of people showing up for work in DC has activated DC look like it goes down. In fact, I mean parts of D, it looks kind of postpocalyptic in parts of DC, because once you, once people start coming to work, then then the restaurants close down, then the stores close down, and then you just have boarded up stores and restaurants, and it destroys the small businesses in downtown DC. So, you know, yeah, and it's this reason why, when people come to work and are more effective and more collaborative in one place, they were sort of rediscovering, why do you have offices? Oh, it turns out there's a reason, you know, so, and the President has made it, made it clear, like, return to work, that's it, end of story, you know. So I

think the first two weeks has been pretty massive, yes, and if it continues at that rate, I mean, even if you think about one of the big economic questions right now is the 10 year treasury rates, right, they're going up. Bond markets don't like our national debt. If this is the pace of what cutting looks like presented in a coherent plan, I'm hopeful that bond investors and credit investors in the US government debt can at least say, Okay, this is positive progress, which actually will bring down not only the costs that you're cutting directly, but also our interest rate costs. Yes, and I think that's really when we hit a, you know, virtuous cycle here, which I think could happen soon.

No, I agree. Actually, the the bottom locks, the bottom locks do not currently reflect the savings that I'm confident we can achieve. And I'm actually, I'm giving a talk earlier this week with JP Morgan Chase and Jamie diamond, and this little bit, obviously a financial audience and and really, to just to say, look, if you're shorting bonds, I think you're on the wrong side of the bet. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's basically, seriously, yeah, it's, it's like, really, like, basically the bond. I mean, the there will, there will be less debt needed as we, as we stop wasting taxpayer money on crazy things like, you know, like whatever the $50 million for condoms to Gaza, which I suspect didn't actually end up being condoms in Gaza, that's a lot of condoms, guys, super dangerous condoms.

Oh my gosh, you guys, that's a real line item.

I don't doubt that we did have those items going to Gaza. I don't know if it was that many. Problem, yeah, well, it was. It was probably that line item, but God

knows, yeah, what was it really Right,

exactly, but that's the problem we have with the budget, and why? When moneys flow through all of these entities, we may have a line item that goes to say USA ID and or maybe goes through USA ID to the United Nations, and then from the United Nations it goes to a contractor, and from that subcontractor, it goes to someone else. It is a nightmare trying to follow that money and to understand what it's actually being used for. So again, going back to the transparency, you know, we just we need to make sure that we have our eyes on it and that it's easily accessible, and maybe not just by members of Congress, but also the public as well. I

agree it should be, if it's public money being spent, it should be in full view of the public, but, and want to hide the stuff. Frankly, it is. The reality is, is because there's massive fraud and abuse. That's the reality. Nobody needs to hide something if, unless they have something to hide. You know, once in a while you've got something that, say, an intelligence operation or, like, you know, that actually needs to be classified. But that's, that's, that's a rare situation that's a tiny fraction of expenditures, the vast majority of these things is, unfortunately, a tremendous amount of fraud and abuse. And what the reason that that is so extreme with the federal government is that the balance for the federal government. Okay, so the federal government can always make more money. The problem is that in doing so, that's what creates inflation. Something that I really want to reinforce for people is that it's government spending that creates inflation. So when you see prices go up at the grocery store, it's because government spent more money than brought in taxes, increased the money supply, diluted the value of money and and major, major paycheck go be less valuable. It meant like the prices are going up because of government induced spending, of government spending that results in inflation. So now it's just people. They sort of think like, well, maybe the supermarket is taking advantage of them, and they're not. You can look at the financials of supermarket. They like 2% margins, so it's going to price gouging the supermarket. It's just that the government spent too much that increased the money supply and diluted the value of somebody's paycheck, and that's why the prices go up at their grocery store. So the good news is, if we if we solve government overspending, and the money supply grows at the same rate as the output of goods and services, there will be no inflation, and the prices in the supermarket now will be the same as the prices in supermarket in a year. And that's a super big deal, and that really affects people's lives. That's what we're aiming for, and we're going to do everything possible to succeed in that goal.

And I think every dollar saved, I mean, the problem you just mentioned, Elon, is exactly why in your interest rates on us, Treasuries are persistently going up, even if the government's trying to make them go down. The market's bidding them right back up. Yes. But conversely, for every dollar, hard dollar actually saved, right? So how many ever billion it was in the first two weeks, there's actually it's almost like a two to one saving, because that means that the interest rate that lenders to the US government charge will go down, yes, at a time when the interest rate payment itself, national debt is one of the biggest items of our federal budget. Yeah, so that automatically comes down for every one of these other savings, exactly. And the only thing to be presented as a coherent plan, which, which, I think you're already beginning to do that alone, I think will have a two to one savings for every dollar that's actually hard dollar that's actually saved because you get the interest cost next year that comes down as a consequence as

well. Yeah, that's actually a very good point you just made for me. I just want to basically repeat that and reiterate that for the audience. When you you get, you actually get a double benefit when you bring down government spending. And it's this very important benefit, which is that you stop inflation and interest payments go down because the government is no longer borrowing money like so if the government is borrowing money, it's actually competing with everyone else to borrow money, and that drives up the interest rate. So, so if we sold COVID spending, in a nutshell, your grocery bill stays the same, your mortgage payment goes down, and your car payment goes down, and your credit card vote goes down exactly. So, I mean, I think that's what the people of America want, obviously,

yeah, gray, more gentlemen. I mean, it's, it's really important. I, you know, I'm sitting here tonight in Iowa, and, you know, I took my mom to church this morning. And, man, everybody at church, we all kind of stand up words and visit, and everybody's just really excited about the opportunity that the new administration is is bringing because costs are just through the roof for people in my neighborhood in southwest Iowa. I mean, it's it's hard. These are folks just getting up every single morning, trying to do their job and do the best, and yet we as a government have failed to listen to their needs and then to be able to to cut the spending at the federal level, to make sure that their taxes stay low and make sure that we are paying down our debt, no more deficit spending. Let's try and balance this budget as best we can. And we've heard plans from you know, Ron Johnson and others in the Congress, but we've really got to get serious about it, because, like every one of my constituents, owes $67,000 to our national debt. That's outrageous, and it's

getting worse over time. So really, if we don't do something about it, America is going to go bankrupt. That's the fact that. So we must do something about it. It's imperative. Senator Mike Lee, I see you join. Would you like to add something in this conversation? You've got some great stuff as well.

Yeah, I'd love to thanks so much for the invitation. Look, I see this as an inflection point. Every 75 to 90 years in Anglo American history, we've seen a major upheaval. We had one in 1776, 1861 another one in 1937, 2025, were due for one. And I think that's going to be the doge revolution. And I think it has to be about much more than just the individualized, wasteful spending projects. At the core of all this is a fundamental ailment, which is that we've mis construed the purpose of the United States government. It's supposed to be about just a small handful of things, weights and trademarks, copyrights and patents, regulating interest foreign commerce.

The founders of the country would blow their minds that the federal government has gotten so gigantic and is interfering with people's lives in so many ways.

That's exactly right. And then we've compounded the problem once we lost track of what the federal government's behind. This is we put the wrong branch in charge of the wrong responsibilities. We've been making most of our law 100,000 pages a year through the executive branch, which the Constitution says you can't do. It says you can't make a federal law unless you go through both houses of Congress and then give it to the President. So we destroyed federalism and separation of powers. I think for Doge to succeed, we have to restore both of those. In my view, the best way to start is by passing the REINS Act, which would require Congress to enact those laws. And I think to get that passed this year, we've got to attach it to the debt ceiling bill. My base. Mike Lee, I mean,

I obviously here with you, 100% where you stay absolutely true. There's this vast amount of regulation, which are de facto laws that are that are created, that it's an incomprehensible amount. It's literally no human could possibly even comprehend it. If you tried your hardest, your whole life, you can. You could be single, you could barely understand this whole fraction of the regulations that that and these regulations, if you look at them, there's millions of them, and it's not like any one regulation is, is the showstopper, but, but it's, I mean, the way I sort of visualize it, it's like, it's like Gulliver, like America's like Gulliver tied down by millions of little strings, and when you cut those strings and free the giant,

Exactly, that's exactly, right, those, those nails, which they are laws, those will put you in prison, those will shut down your business, those will ruin your life if you just exactly no different than yes,

it's totally crazy.

Well, it is exciting, isn't it true? President Trump has as an executive order that says, For every one new regulation that is put into place, 10 have to be rescinded. Yes, yes.

Now, of course, the the you know, bureaucracy is going to try to game that by, like, having the one regulation, sort of, you know when, like, somebody says, Well, I have everyone can ask one question, but then have a question in like 10, in like three, you know, 10 parts. So it's possible to get, it's possible, it's possible to gain the regulations. So I think, in addition to that, exhibitor, I certainly applaud, I think we need to go and do wholesale removal of regulations, like regulations basically should be default gone, default gone, not default there, default gone. And and if it turns out that we missed the mark on the regulation, always about add it back in. These regulations are added willy nilly all the time. So we're just going to do wholesale spring cleaning a regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done, and the government isn't it doesn't have a sort of boot on the neck of the average Americans. Because what are the core founding values of this country? What has made America great? What will lead to further greatness? Is a focus on merit that you get ahead as a function of your hard work, and, and that you have freedom. It's it's free. It was the land of freedom and opportunity and, and if the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well it's not freedom. We've got to restore

freedom. And by the way, that's copied multiplied at 50 fold higher, where each of the 50 states then do the same thing, and many of these federal regulations are duplicative, the states doing the exact same thing, where the bureaucracies in each of the states are behaving like the federal government. So think about the impact of people's lives. It just layers one on top of the other. And, you know, like you talk about zero based budgeting, I really like this concept of zero based regulations. The default is nothing, and build back exactly right? I mean, it used, and that's what our founders wanted, yeah,

absolutely it used to be like, not that long ago, if you wanted to start a business, you just start a business. You just go, you know, you know, you just no license. You can just do it. You know, the government's not like, prying into every part of like, get the license for this, do the license for that, get 17,000 permits. I mean, like, you look at LA and like, how it's like, I mean, when I lived in LA, it was hard to get a permit to remodel your kitchen. And now with this disaster that's happened in LA, this terrible tragedy, just the sheer number of permits required to build a house are staggering. Basically, they've made it illegal. So like there's but we got to start somewhere on the regulatory front and and suddenly, at least, if we address federal regulation, then, you know, people can choose to move from, move to, from one state to another, and still remain in America and and move to this the state has, you know, less regulation, where the government is less, you know, gives you more freedom. And you've got that competition between states. You've got that federal system that was meant to be the case. That was how the country was, was created, like let the states compete, and if your state is is is being oppressive, you can go to a neighboring state and live there. That's the whole idea.

Federalism is the answer. Yeah, no doubt you got two things going for us right now in the country that haven't happened in a long time. One is a willing president, Donald Trump, who actually believes everything that all four of us have just said, which is a beautiful thing. And without that, it wouldn't be possible.

Let me just yeah, the more I got no President Trump, the more I like him. Frankly, I love the guy. He's great,

yeah, and he's, he's, he's full, he's full bore more than any president we've had since the creation of the administrative state. So I think that's number one. And number two is, Thanks, Sam. Actually, in his first term, you got a Supreme Court that six to three vehemently agrees with everything we've just said yes, and so I think it's possible. Yeah, it's actually possible. Yes,

in fact, if it's not possible now, it'll never be possible. This is our shit. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we're ever going to have. And if we don't take advantage of this, this best hand, of course, is never going to happen. So we're going to do it.

I agree now, whenever, yeah, now or never. And you're right, Vivek, I mean, with the the first administration of President Trump, and kind of lessons learned through that administration, and now in the second administration, the stage is set, and he knows how to aggressively tackle a lot of issues that have plagued us for years. And folks ask me, oh, Trump's, you know, first 100 days, was it? What is that going to be like? And I'm like, forget the 100 days, folks. No, it's going to happen a lot faster than that. And he needs to continue to be aggressive So, and we all know there's going to be bumps along the way. Of course there are, because we're moving at the speed of relevance here, but we've got to get in there and make an impact so that our constituents can actually see the benefit, because we've got a tough mid, mid cycle or mid presidential year election coming up in 2026 and we cannot lose the house or the senate, because then the President will be dead in the water. Yeah, and we just need to move out.

Well, that's move out, yeah. I mean, I think that's really the people will judge the performance and whether actually, we got things done, and whether things were better off, you know, and in two years, and I think if people feel like, yeah, they're better off, the country's working better, they feel like, you know, there's, you know, the reward for for hard work is there that, that they're, you know, the paychecks going further than it used to, that their standard of living is better. You know, their mortgage is lower, the credit card bills are lower, the prices at the at the stores are the same, you know, they haven't risen dramatically, then I think there's no problem the, you know, when the next election, the people will reward that performance. So I think that's but, but, you know, it's, that's, that's what needs to happen. And if, but I think if it does happen, there will be a Republican win in the mid tones. And which is, which is usually, which is unusual. But I think if, if we, if we make, make these goals happen, I think we'll actually have an increased majority in the House, and be able to continue to you know, as the President would say, Make America Great and even greater. So

love it the case the blanket that I mean. Elon you and I have talked about this. Mike Lee, you and I have talked about this, but you know, might as well just say it here as well. Is when in doubt, push it to the states, right? If there's some doubt about, okay, well, we're not sure about this regulation. You got a whole nuclear energy framework at the federal level. You have an entire one in each of the 50 states. Same thing for spending or some other program. Are people going to really suffer if this is taken away? Federalism is the answer. Just push it to the states. And, you know, I think that that's a big part of, you know, obviously what I'm looking to do next, but it's governors across the state, whatever. Let them bear the load of what the federal government needed, because that's actually what the founders envisioned in the first place. I Mike, you've been a crusader for this since day one.

Yeah,

that is, that is right. That is the whole reason I ran for this job 15 years ago. The fact is, the people of our country are upset. They're upset about our government because it manages things poorly. And what a lot of people are starting to grasp is that it's not just a matter of changing from the red team to the blue team and back to the red team, and making sure you've got better personnel in there, because better personnel won't make those same mistakes and won't fund the stupid studies about the drunk gerbils on a treadmill. The point is it's poorly run, because when the US government is doing all kinds of things that it's not supposed to be doing. It should be left to the states or to the people. In the words of the 10th Amendment, it becomes very poor, very bad at doing you things that it is supposed to do. You can't be good at running the Pentagon and at making sure that traffic lanes, lines of commerce are open when you are doing all kinds of things that the federal government could do or using it as the wrong tool, there are very few things that federal government currently does that the federal government is itself uniquely equipped and constitutionally authorized to do. That's what we've got to get back to. And that's why this is going to be a painful, radical, transformational change in many circumstances, but it's going to be a huge relief to the American people once we get through the initial shock, and once we get through the stage where the media is telling us the sky is going to fall dogs and cats living together in the streets, apocalyptic stuff, once they realize that's not true, they're going to feel this huge burden lifted. That's what we want. We want a better future for America. We can't get to absolutely turning to our founding document

exactly. I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm actually pretty optimistic that, well, we're going to make it happen. You know, it's going to, it's going to, this is, this is, I think things can happen. So the progress is good so far, and if it keeps accelerating, then I think it's gonna, it's gonna be awesome. So, you know, like, the cost of excess, excess regulation, on on economic growth and prosperity is, like, really underestimated. Like, if you basically, you know, don't even permit allow people to do things like make it illegal. Well, you can't, you can't the builders can't build. Man, America is a nation of builders and but, but we need to give the builders permission to build. And that's, that's really what deregulation is all about, just letting people do things

deregulation and meritocracy go hand in hand. Actually, there are two sides of the same coin, and you want to actually measure Doge success is not just the deficit reduction. I don't think that that's the sole metric, although it's a really important one. And bringing down the national debt and the interest payment cost as a consequence. That's really important. But actually, a lot of these benefits of delivering economic growth won't be measured in this year's deficit reduction, but will be measured in long run GDP growth, long run economic growth, wrong, or prosperity the country, yeah, and I think that that's, that's equally important. I

actually, I'm optimistic that we'll see a material impact in FY 26 which starts in October. You know, a lot of the stuff I think, like, I think, we'll make significant gains in FY 25 get govern, it government. Financial year 25 which ends, ends in September, and but I think that like the sort of metric we're tracking, sort of kind of startup style or just and we're going to be posting more and more detail on the doge website, and Doge handle on x is just in so people can see in detail like this is where we're seeing the Delta in spending between current spending and government financial year 25 which are 26 in October. And that number is really, we think it's at this point, over a billion dollars. There may be 2 billion, maybe approaching three and and and, I think we can think we can take a trillion dollars out of the out of the deficit next year like, you know, obviously this is going to require, you know, strong support from the President. But thus far, we that we certainly have that, and also support of the Congress and support and also, hopefully support from the judiciary as well. But, but it's, it's, I mean, basically the goal, in a nutshell, is pretty straightforward. It's like, we have a $2 trillion deficit, which is far, which is a foreign excessive growth. If we can get that deficit in half from 2 trillion to 1 trillion, and we can get the economic growth to match that 1 trillion growth in the money supply, that means there will be no inflation and the end and also that interest rates will drop. Credit card interest down, mortgage interest down, car payment interest down, and and prices at the store stay the same. That is a great outcome for people. And I think, I think we can do it.

I think your pace is unrealistic. People say that unrealistic is. It's but, you know, the funniest part about this is just the hard number here. The four of us here know the answer. But for people who are listening, it might just be, might be eye opening, where, like, How much money did the federal government actually spend last year? Not the mumbo jumbo beyond discretionary this, and not like, just like, how much the federal government spent last year, it was about 7 trillion just under $7 trillion how much did we spend in this, like ancient time period known as 2019 like this year called 2019 not that long. Remember, 2019 four and a half is less, less than four and a half, 4.45 less than about four and a half trillion. That's two and a half trillion, right there. So if you just go back to 2019 that's two and a half trillion, which is insane, actually, that they think that that's impossible is 2019 was not that long ago, right?

And nobody thought that apocalyptic hellscape underway in 2019

was pretty cool. Actually, I like 2019 was

not hellscape exactly in fact. And my things were just fine in 2019

Mike can vouch for this too. Though, what we saw with COVID, as we were pushing all those dollars out the door, they started a lot of programs with those dollars, and people just continue to expect those dollars to come, even though we're way beyond COVID. Yes, way beyond COVID.

Well, so often people will say like, well, you can reduce the deficit that much, because what about all the entitlement spending? You know, like, there's the sort of guaranteed spending. Well, but here's the thing, this, and especially during COVID, as you're alluding to, there was actually a massive growth, massive increase in the amount of fraud and waste in entitlements, with with like fake people, like collecting Social Security, like bogus payments to Medicare. It is the level of fraud is actually staggering, and it just cutting, cutting back on that. And by the way, it's not just even us. Fraud rings. I don't think no people realize this, but there's the estimates I've seen are between 100 and $200 billion in foreign Ford fraud rings, their professional foreign fraud rings operating that are taking somewhere between 100 and $200 billion a year, of us, taxpayer money out of the country. A lot of people realize that it is and like so the fraud in this, in that case, isn't even going to American fraudsters in other countries.

Well, Iman, I sent that example to you the other day, sat down with a friend of yours, works in ID technology, and he showed me that video of a deep fake, where it was a it was a Chinese scammer trying to receive US federal government benefits. You know, just it's out. It's outrageous, but so much of that money that Chinese scammers are taking out of the pockets of our taxpayers.

Yes, and I mean, there's really, there's, there's American entitlements are being defrauded by people, not even in the US and from from many other countries, because the fraud controls are so weak on the entitlements programs, the due diligence is so is so bad that is actually possible to operate hundreds, if not 1000s of fake people and get entitlements sent to you that you then take the money out of the country, out of the United States. This is happening as we speak. It's utterly insane. So this is why I'm actually quite optimistic that that that trillion dollars can be saved just by addressing waste, fraud and abuse. It, it's a like, like, it's, it's, I, while it's a lot of work, I don't think this is some insurmountable task. I am confident it can be done, and we'll do everything in our power to to make and I think that that'll be if we succeed. And I hope, you know, I'd like to ask for the support of the American people, because we're going to get a lot of opposition. Let me tell you, like you know, from from the What I remember most from, from one of the things I remember from the PayPal days was that, you know, who complains the loudest is the fraudsters? Okay, so, like the So, so when somebody was trying to commit fraud of PayPal, where we would see the most amount of righteous indignation, like it would be like immediate over the top righteous indignation was from the fraudsters, not from honest people, because honest people are like, Oh, I think there's something wrong with my account. I guess I wonder what's wrong. Let me inquire and but the fraudsters will come at you immediately. This is it's like, it's like a tell that someone's actually doing fraud, because the level of sort of faux outrage is way over the top. So we're gonna get a lot of that, a lot of people claiming, with fake outrage, you know, claiming that they're sort of, you know, sort of a single mother with kids just trying to feed it. Meanwhile, it's like some dude operating a fraud ring out of another country, actually. You know, that's, that's, that's what the kind of thing we'll see. So really, you know, I would like to ask for the support of the American people in pursuit of this goal and and bearing in mind that we see some pretty outrage from the boards as we crack down on fraud, they're going to be the loudest complainers. So, you know, to anyone Erica listening to this, your support in pursuit of this goal. It's very much appreciated. Thank you.

Oh, absolutely. And and, thank you, Elon and Vivek. I think we've got a ways to go, but I'm glad it's rolling along, and this Doge has been the most aggressive effort, really, to downsize or right size our government since probably at least the Reagan Revolution. So just excited to be part of it and half the support of the American people as we move through and, you know, make them squeal in Washington, DC,

yeah.

Thanks to dj t Thank you, Elon, and you keep, keep kicking ass. And when in doubt, send it to the states, and we'll take care of it there, exactly. All

right. Cool. Well, thank you. Thank you, Senator, Senator sir Lee, for Wow, it is wrapping up, isn't it? Perhaps one day. Senator Ramaswamy, well, Governor, yeah, that's kind of the direction. We're ready. And and everyone who who tuned in, and once again, I'm asking for, for support, for noble goal. And, you know, please help in any way you can, like, sometimes it's like the small things that that happen on the side that, you know, there's this, those sort of small, thankless tasks that actually will result. The Doge is gonna win. Those will win if millions of people support it in ways that I wouldn't, I wouldn't even know how they supported it, but, but just that you did. And, you know, thank you to the Unknown Soldier.

Yeah, definitely. And hey, Elon, before we all break out of here, I do want to acknowledge the you know, I've founded the Senate, Doge caucus on my side of the rotunda. We've got some great co chairs at all as well, with Pete Sessions and and Aaron bean and Blake Moore, they have got now, I think over 100 members of Congress that have joined the doge caucus, and we've got 18 and climbing in the United States Senate as well. So you and the President and Vivek have all kind of really gotten everybody to come. I'm just really grateful that we have an outlet and are able to do this. So thank you all so much.

That sounds good, and we'll be doing this every week. So look forward to having every week members from the house and other contributors, and try to keep the people informed and and someone's keeping them to a tight hour, very interesting to follow along. So thank thanks everyone. Thanks so much.

Exactly one hour sass. Wow guys. So yeah, exactly one hour to the to the second damn near, I mean, probably a little less than an hour, because he, he definitely did spend about 10 minutes letting that, that thing kind of build. We can see that the space is now ended. People are dumping off. There goes. That's the end of it there. So we have a recording, not not only do we have a recording, just so you guys know, I did run a transcription on this entire thing, so I'll make that available in the comments as well publicly. So if you would just want to skim or get the the notes, please share the video out on rumble and that'll I'll have the notes in the comments on rumble. Okay, so unless anyone else wants to join in, I think I'm going to probably wrap this up too. I didn't really want to spend all night on it. I'm kind of glad it wasn't like one of those three hour streams. I don't think I could have, I could have hacked that tonight, but I will be anytime he does a Doge, notice like that. You could tell if you look at the beginning of this video, I was building it from scratch, I just like, You know what? Yeah, this is probably one of those types of things that I want to discuss, and I want to make sure that not everybody's going to get in when he does 100,000 200,000 a million people listening on a space. They're not going to have their voice heard. And there, if he keeps them tight to an hour, that's going to leave a lot of opportunity for discussion afterwards, if people jump in, Brian like, like I said, if you ever want to join, you can I try to keep it pointing to the right direction you can go to join dot Sass and dot live. And it should send you back backstage for this studio, and I can pop people in that have the proper equipment, mic and camera, and, you know, don't scare people. So it is 1205 Central Standard Time, Monday, Friday, February 3, and we just listened to the first kind of Doge update, which kind of is a reminiscent of the fireside chat, right? Fast, and to the point like Brian said, I like that. It's, you're absolutely right. And that's, that's kind of the, I mean, you don't run the Department of government efficiency and run long for three hours, right? So, yeah, I will probably set up a bit of a specific template for this if he's going to make a regular thing out of it, and I'll make sure that we all have an opportunity to hang out, talk, discuss, maybe run it for an extra half hour afterwards and do a little recap, as long as he gives us enough enough notice or does it on a regular schedule. Yeah, you can count on me covering that here, so we'll get custom thumbnails and all that stuff for it. It's a brand new category, and like I said, I will make sure that there are transcriptions for each of those those meetings. As you've seen, it's very valuable to have all of that processed. So thanks for hanging with me tonight. We'll see on the next efficiency report. I guess I don't know what you could call it. I'm really kind of bummed we didn't talk about Mars, but it'll be good, Brian, thanks for hanging out. We'll talk to you all soon. Take care. Let's roll out with what do you think? Do you want? Do you want music? Yeah, let's do music. CEO, you CEO.