A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - What I Learned From 12 Hours of DOGE Bro Depositions (with Krystal Ball)

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Last year at the behest of Elon Musk, a group of young men in their 20s with no political experience set out to reduce federal spending by terminating lifesaving public health programs, slashing thousands of science and culture grants, and gutting entire federal agencies. The “DOGE Bros” wreaked havoc on American life — and somehow, reduced federal spending by nothing. Recently, two former DOGE employees were deposed amidst a lawsuit by organizations that want their money back. After spending days watching videos of their lengthy testimonies (that the government is actively trying to wipe from the internet), I’ve concluded that nobody benefits from identity politics quite like a mediocre white man. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at https://www.blueland.com/fruity.  Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  Watch Krystal on Breaking Points. Follow Krystal on Twitter. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each of those grants funded projects, real projects by real people, some of those funds were used to pay for housing. Now those funds are gone. Does that make you feel anything in particular? Exactly so. No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero. Did you reduce the federal deficit? No, we didn't. So you weren't able to reduce the deficit and you still don't regret that people lost some of their livelihoods? of their livelihood based on your action.

Injection. No. Hello, hello. And welcome back to A BitFrudy. I'm Matt Bernstein. We have a great show today. What do we have, Crystal? We are going to be talking about the Doge Boys.

I just always wanted to do the breaking points intro. Hello, hello. And welcome back to A BitFrudy. I'm at Bernstein. We have a great show today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Thank you.

Is that what you're going for? Yes. I wanted an indeed we do. Last year at the direction of a newly re-elected Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, established the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge named after the 54-year-old's favorite internet meme. Elon Musk, whose wealth could single-handedly end world hunger, was on a mission with Doge to cut what he viewed as wasteful government spending

and lower the federal deficit. This was perhaps most notably done at the behest of executive order, 14151, which Donald Trump signed the day he entered office in 2025, and which required the termination of all activities relating to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. What does that mean exactly? Today, we may or may not find out. Elon Musk hired a group of 20-something-year-old young men, and over the course of a few months, they terminated thousands of federal grants, gutted entire federal agencies, and upended countless people's lives and careers. Doge immediately ended USAID, which brought humanitarian assistance

in the form of life-saving medicine, education, food, and water to people in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. According to the New York Times, one canceled grant, quote, provided an education program in Nepal to keep girls in middle school to avoid early forced marriages. When that grant was canceled, parents in Nepal could no longer afford to keep their girls in school. The National Endowment for the humanities, or NEH, a federal grant-making agency that supports research, education, and public programs across the country was gutted by 97% in 22 days. Cuts included museum air conditioning funding, newspaper digitization, documentary filmmaker grants, and more. By the end of 2025, Fortune estimated that the number of jobs destroyed by Doge-related cuts was 400,000. A

A few of the groups whose grants were cut due to DEI, including the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, filed a lawsuit seeking to reinstate their funding. And so lawyers recently deposed two young Doge employees, Doge Bros, as you might know them, named Justin Fox and Nathan Kavanaugh about their time at Doge and why and how they canceled thousands of grants at the NEH. videos of their depositions were available online until a few days ago. When the government asked for them to be removed, saying that they had no legitimate bearing on the case, the judge ordered for the depositions to be taken down, and now those full videos are nowhere to be found on the internet.

I don't agree with the government or the judge. I think people who terrorize the livelihoods and careers of hundreds of thousands of Americans should be household names. I think they should be celebrities. If they can, with the flick of a wrist, upend our lives based on their judgment of our usefulness, I think we're entitled to judge them with a fraction of the same scrutiny. So, thanks to the person who bravely stored all of these depositions on the Internet Archive, I spent 12 hours watching Justin and Nathan make their case about why LGBTQ people don't deserve funding. You and Mr. Fox identified this as one of the craziest grants at NEH?

Yes, it appears so. Why did you do that? because it explicitly says LGBTQ. And today, I'm going to make my case about why we don't hate these people enough. That's what we got going on today, Crystal. And to do that, I am so excited to be joined by Crystal Ball. You most likely know her as the co-host of Breaking Points, which is definitely part of my news diet.

Crystal, welcome to the show. It is an honor and a privilege. Thank you for having me. How do you feel top line before we? get into because I essentially spent yesterday watching 12 hours of deposition footage in 2x speed, which severely fried my brain, as one might imagine. And I, and I clipped those depositions up and we're just going to watch them today. A couple of these clips have gone viral, but a lot of them haven't. And I think it's important to have these on the internet. Hopefully

no one comes after me for putting them there. Yeah, I've seen the ones that went viral, where basically what comes across is two relatively young but grown men who signed up for this job where they could run rampant through the federal government. They thought with impunity. They thought with no accountability, not really having much of a sense of what they're doing outside of the vibes. They probably, you know, worship Elon. They probably worship Trump.

It's part of the moment of the vibe shift and the sense of dominance of the Trump. maga movement, this sense of ascendance, this sense of acting with total impunity. And so they come in and are just running roughshod over things that they frankly have no understanding of what these programs are, what these grants are doing, and have an almost like sociopathic detachment from any of the real world consequences of the job that they are undertaking. And that level of sociopathy and stupidity definitely come through in these depositions. So do you want to meet Justin Fox? Let's do it. Okay, I'm going to actually text you a photo of Justin Fox just so we can establish a visual for everyone.

Crystal listens to a bit fruity, so she has to know this song and dance we do with like, I'm going to send you a photo and you're going to tell me what you see. I'm ready to go. Okay, yes, I see him. This is not a show where I judge people on their looks, and this really isn't about his appearance as it were. I think it's more about his styling, how he comes across. Tell me what you're getting from this image of a young Justin Fox. Young, a very quizzical or confused look on the face.

Eyes narrowed in bewilderment. We've got a beige quarter zip going over top of a light blue striped button down. Indeed, we do. When I started seeing these video depositions, I was just like, oh, man, like, I went to high school with these guys. I went to college with these guys. These guys were in fraternities, you know, and I know he's not a stand-in for every privileged young straight white guy, but he doesn't make an effort to fight the stereotype, let's say. Well, here's one of the things that I'm curious about since you watched the 12 hours

of the depositions and I'm just going off of the clips and my general sense of what Doge was all about and what these guys were all about is I have a theory of intelligence that there's a bit of like, There's like a bit of a horseshoe on the IQ curve where what we were sold about these Doge Bros is that they were like these super savant young geniuses that were going to be deployed in the federal government. And so I'm curious if that was at all reflective of reality. But also, I think it can also be the case that someone can technically, like Elon probably has a very high IQ. And it's also one of the dumbest people you could ever meet in your entire.

life were you to have the misfortune of meaning him. And so I'm wondering if that applies to some of the, you know, Elon Dogebro Acolytes as well. They definitely do come across as like young Elon protégés, as you all are about to see. IQ is also just like not as far as I'm concerned, a real measure of like anything. Agreed. They might pass an IQ test with flying colors, but these men, to say the least, are not intelligent. In any way that would be meaningful to. certainly to the public. Totally. So Justin Fox attended UVA. Oh, that's where I went to school. Oh, I mean, one of the things we do in this podcast is create empathy. So, you know, at least we're building some bridges that Justin Foxes might be the first and last. I mean, it's much younger than me,

but I'm zeroing and on the type here, just knowing that he went to UVA. He graduated in 2020. He majored in commerce and minored in German. He interned for Morgan Stan. Manly doing wealth management during college. He has no graduate degrees or PhDs. He previously worked at a private equity firm called Nexus. I feel like I have to put on a voice when I start saying this shit. It's like I'm reading them. A resume here.

Yeah. His income at Nexus with a private equity firm was a base salary, $130,000 a year. Bonuses were anywhere from zero to $100,000 addition. dollars. Prior to that, he was an investment banker at Jeffries. So he had a finance background that I would go so far as to say his privilege bought him into. It's a very elite sounding pedigree. So even UVA, obviously, it's a public school, but it's one of the best public schools in the country. The fact he majored in, they don't call it business, they call it commerce. You have to apply separately to be in the comm school, as they call it. He's got all these very well-known, prominent

prestigious checkmarks in terms of financial institutions he's associated with. He's climbing this career trajectory, which is very aspirational for a lot of the people that I went to school with at UVA as well. So you can see the track that he's on. Clearly, if he went to UVA, if he's able to get in the Com school, if he's able to get at these institutions, this is someone who has always, you know, succeeded in school and done well and gotten the pats on the head and is on the up and up and has also the privilege of being this, you know, coming from this background, being a white man of people patting him on the head and saying he's, you know, he's brilliant, he's a genius, he's the next big thing. Yeah. And the last thing I'll say to that end is like, part of what to me is so disgusting about this

entire situation, why I want to make this episode is that the premise of Doge, particularly as it related to cutting grants related to DEI, which is grants for gay and black people and women who talk about, you know, sexual violence or whatnot, is that, you know, they're getting ahead, they're getting these grants from the government, they're getting based on weaponizing the, the apparent privilege associated with having a marginalized identity. And we should, everything should be merit-based. That's, they say this over and over and over and over again. So tell me why this project is DEI. Projection. It's promoting inclusion and diverse perspectives.

Okay. What about diverse perspectives is DEI? it's not merit-based when you look at this person as we are about to do you really get the sense that DEI policies at companies where like

maybe they would try to balance their hiring ratio across different demographics and stuff maybe tilted the scale like 1% away from the innate privilege that young white privileged wealthy men

like Justin Fox have always had and continue to have. And to me, that's the thing that's so egregious is that these are the ultimate privileged people. They are the ultimate winners of identity politics in there being straight white men. Well, and that's why there was an appeal with Trump and that's why there was an appeal with Doge. He saw this as a sort of, I mean, it's a sort of like class solidarity, right? It's like, no, I was promised this certain system where I would have this privilege. And anything that undercuts that even a little bit, and it also speaks to a capitalist like zero-sum mindset, all of those things are attacks on me. That's a problem for me. So that can

provide the motivation. And the other thing that I'll say is just like, it sounds like such a joke at this point to talk about the Trump regime having a merit-based approach. When you look at the people they fill this administration with Pete Hegseth is just absurd, ridiculous, you know, cartoon character type of person cash patel are you kidding me keystone cash you know it's utterly devoid of merit i mean most of these people part of why they're there is because they can never ascend to this level of role in any other administration and under any other government so this is their one chance to get in there and do something and so that's why they're there it's not because they deserve it's because they're willing to pledge a level of fealty and they're willing to be humiliated for the cause couldn't have said it

better myself. This is why we have crystal today. So Justin Fox goes from his a couple years in finance after UVA to work at Doge, where his salary was around $150,000. Did he have any relevant experience for that job? Let's take a listen. Before joining the government in March of 2025, did you have any experience in government? No. Were you ever part of any political campaigns? No. Did you ever engage in any public grant administration before you joined government? No. Private grant administration?

No. Had you ever engaged in anything that required you to review scholarship for scholarly merit before you join the government? This is in 1.25 speed, by the way. Oh, my God. I can't remember. Wow. This is DEI for white men. Well, in the position inherently selected for this type of person, because who else was going to sign up for the job of like rip things apart at the request of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, come in with no background in government and just run rampant.

And so you're going to get a certain type who is going to think that, you know, that they're entitled to make those sorts of decisions, that they're, you know, perceived like I can't. or academic success or privilege bagger or whatever gives them the right to issue these decisions to the lowly mortals. And I'm sure they have all kinds of contempt for government workers, all kinds of contempt for the libtards, right, who are pushing these grants, et cetera. And so it comes from this sort of superior view of I get to say, and throughout my whole life, I've been on this ascendant track. And also a sort of internet fuel. disconnection from what the reality of what this is going to mean for people, what the reality is going to mean for the government, what even it is that you're doing and how you're being

used as a tool in someone else's larger political game. Totally. Justin Fox was hired to do work at Doge by a man named Anthony Armstrong, a businessman and collaborator of Elon Musk, who is now the CFO of XAI, which is Elon Musk's AI. By the way, I will add, so many of the people who make some of the most consequential decisions in our lives aren't famous. We don't know their names. They're not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump. They're the people who work like one or two rungs below them.

They accrue so much power. They accrue so much money. And they never get any of the public scrutiny involved, which is another motivation for us being here today. I just wanted to add that. Yeah, I think that's right. And also, there's just an important principle of transparency. as well, because here we are more than a year after the Doge project launched. And there are still massive questions about what did they do?

What were the real goals here? Because we know no money was actually saved. So, and I personally don't think that was ever really the goal. How much was AI deployed? How much data was compromised? What are the sort of government functions, which have been lost potentially permanently? So to focus on these characters and also what the hell it was that they were up to during their time, I think is vitally important.

So Justin Fox was hired by Anthony Armstrong, this guy who knows Elon Musk. How did Justin Fox know Anthony Armstrong? Let's find out. He's the father of one of my friends. Yeah, that tracks. That tracks. What are we doing? Yeah.

I don't want to make too much of this episode. And you just like, ugh. But it's like, there comes a. point. And you're the one opposed to DEI, right? And that's the thing. It's like, it honestly is such a mirror on how you do end up perpetuating these structures where it's like, you know, since the previous elites were mostly white and male and straight, then the next era of elites, because they have a connection to those, that's how the whole pipeline works. So he's just a microcosm, you know, of that phenomenon, which does persist in our society. So top line thoughts. Does Justin Fox think he succeeded in reducing federal spending during his six months working at Doge? Before we get into the details of his workflow, let's find out. Do you feel that you succeeded looking back now and achieving that goal? In some ways, yes. Did the deficit go down during your tenure, the government?

In other ways, no. Do you know that the deficit did not go down at all? Yes, I do. In fact, the spending was. went up. They did manage to fire a massive number of people. And so in a sense, I actually think he's correct in this answer that in terms of the stated public goals of Doge, it was a massive failure. You know, spending went up. The debt continues to grow. And that was really the presentation is, oh, we're going to trim the fat. We're going to make the government more efficient. That part certainly didn't happen. And so we're going to cut spending. Remember the original promise of Doge was two trillion

dollars that they were going to cut from the budget. Then it was one trillion. Then it was put down to like $150 billion. Even that they didn't accomplish anything close to that. Then it was 25 bucks. Right. Exactly. We remember we're all going to get Doge checks in the mail. Remember that? They just like pretended they never said that and everybody just moved on. But Doge really was the sort of front for effectuating a lot of the goals of Project 2025. It also was a front for effectuating a lot of goals that Elon had, both in terms of his business and also ideological goals. These are people, including Elon, who hate the government. A functioning government is a rival for power to the business world. So in a sense, just destroying, defenestrating the government, gunning it, going after

ideological opponents, stripping down its capacity, attacking these agencies that again they see as liberal and that compete for power against the business world or against the ideological allies of President Trump, that was the real goal. And they did accomplish some of that. Some of that they actually did accomplish. Also, I feel like in this, there's a, there's an aspect of like the cruelty is the point. Yes. They were able to upend hundreds of thousands of jobs, so many of which belonged to minorities and save no money at all. And so it's like, how can you say that the cruelty is not the point? Yeah, that's right. And look, it'd be one thing. I used to be back many, many years go right out of college at EPA. I was a federal government contractor. I worked for a contractor

and my client was the U.S. federal court system. And so I've been inside of that world. And look, I think anyone would say, yes, there are ways you can make it more efficient. You see Zoron in New York city saying, all right, we're going to trim the fat. We're going to do a better job. We need to respect taxpayer dollars. That is a project that I think doesn't have to be ideological in that many, many people across the political spectrum could buy into. But even with the people that got pushed out or decided to leave the government, it was the opposite of merit-based. So it wasn't by and large, the people who aren't doing a good job and, you know, are kind of excessive or not really needed superfluous in terms of their roles. It was by and large, the people who took the fork in the

road and decided to go elsewhere, were the ones who could go in the private sector and earn a different paycheck. So it was the opposite of the merit-based approach. A bulk of the people you lost were some of the top performers, some of the most important people in the government, as evidenced by the fact that they had multiple times where, you know, key functions were lost. They had to quit, go back and hire people because it was just such a collapse in some function that was actually needed for the federal government. But again, I think losing that talent from government, that's not necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of, for example, a Russ vote who was, you know, the spearheaded Project 2025 and he's the Office of Management and Budget Director and is really the person who is the ideological architect of this attack on the federal government. He wants the government to be degraded. He wants it to be stacked with loyalists. He wants it to be set up to fail. That serves him in his ideological interests. So even that approach, as we look from the outside, like, this is crazy in your losing all the best people, they're like, yeah, we are. And that's actually cool with us because

we want the federal government to suck. Hmm, pretty dismal shit. So let's get back to laughing at Justin Fox. No, I'm kidding. That was so dismissive. Crystal, you're so, you're so intelligent. And you texted me before we started and you were like, I didn't watch the depositions, but I do have a lot of thoughts. And I'm so excited to hear all of them. So what were the finer details of Justin Fox's work? He was the main Doge member assigned to gutting the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NEH. During his tenure, Doge gutted over $100 million worth of NEH grants. These are grants, my dear listener, that are going to researchers, they're going to scholars, they're going to people who run museums, they're going to artists, they're going to filmmakers. I don't know how to explain to you that culture is important.

So what was the basis for which Justin Fox decided what was on the chopping block? Let's go back to Justin. Did you use any particular methodology in assessing NEH grants for termination? There was an executive order that said to eliminate spend on DEI. Crystal, are you ready to hear Justin Fox's definition for DEI? I think I am. I'm not sure, but I think I am. This is a longer clip, and so we are now officially entering

da-da-da-da-da-one-5 speed the audience thanks you how do you interpret DEI there was the EO explicitly laid out the details I don't remember it off the top of my head I'm asking for your understanding of it yeah my understanding was exactly what was written in the EO okay so can you I don't remember what was in the EO

so right now do you have an understanding of what DEI is yeah okay so what's your understanding as you sit here today in this deposition well it was exactly what was written in the EO and so anytime that we would look at a grant the lens of complying with an executive order. We would just refer back to the EO and assess if this grant had relation to it. Okay, but I guess I'm stepping back from your methodology strictly in terminating the grants.

Do you have an understanding as you sit here today of what DEI means? Yeah. Okay. So what's your understanding of what it means? Well, it is exactly what was written in the EO. And I don't have the EO in front of me, but we would always reference back to the EO and make sure that this grant was in compliance with the EO. I understand that.

Okay, but I'm not asking necessarily about what was in the EO. I'm asking very specifically about your present understanding of what DEI. Do you have a present understanding of DEA? Yeah. Okay. Can you explain what that present understanding is? Well, it's just easier for me to be referencing back to the EO. Are you refusing to answer the question? I'm not refusing to answer the question.

I just feel that referencing back to the verbatim executive order was the best way for us to capture all of the DEI language. And so I think giving a high level overview of what I could relay as DEI is not going to do justice what was written in the EO. And that's okay. We can look at the EO as well. I'm asking you for, I mean, this is a deposition, I'm asking questions. You're under oath and you're required to answer them. So what is your understanding of what DEI means? Well, I think I would say, again, that I would go back to the EO to make sure I'm capturing enough.

I don't feel comfortable saying a high-level overview because it is such a big bucket, and there's just a lot of pieces of the puzzle. What's a part of the bucket? Gender fluidity, sort of promoting subsets of LGBTQ plus that might alienate another. part of a community. Again, it was just easier for us to reference back into the EO. Okay. And I don't want to give you a broad overview because it's like, in the day, it is capturing.

It is all encompassing in the EO. It's how we did our methodology. Right. Do you always refer to EOs to date an understanding of words used in your typical daily vernacular? Objection. Ooh. I personally think this attorney deserves like a Nobel Prize. incredible. My favorite part of Sony is like, it's a broad bucket. And the attorney's like, well, what's in the bucket? Tell me a part of the bucket. And Justin Fox is basically like, well, I guess trans stuff and also like trans stuff, I guess. But I don't want to get too specific. I'm not comfortable. He says it one more, I'm not comfortable getting more specific, which I think is a very revealing comment because he knows in his mind the way he thinks about DEI. It's like the women, the blacks, the browns.

the gays, the trans. But if you say it outright, it doesn't sound so good. Now does it just a box? Exactly. Because like the thing is, I mean, we make all these jokes, especially on the left of like, oh, nobody can define DEI. But we all know what they think DEI is. It is anything that promotes the acceptance of, the equality of the dignity of a minority group. And, you know, something they fall back on a lot in these depositions is like, well, you know, DEI is anything relating to a specific race or sexuality or gender. And then, I mean, I can't play you the full 12 hours of deposition because we would be here for like three times that length to talk about it, which I know as much as you guys might enjoy listening to me. I don't think anyone wants that. But they would reference

back to lists that these people made for words that they would look for in grant descriptions. and they would go, LGBTQ and homosexual are on this list. Why isn't heterosexual on this list? And you put on here homosexual. I don't see heterosexual, though. Could you scroll down? Don't know why I didn't put heterosexual, but it is not on this list.

Okay. Do you see white on this list? I see privilege. Do you see white on this list? Could you scroll back up? No. And we know why, because it's not about singling out any sexuality or any race. It's about minorities existing and like getting funding for their fucking galleries.

Yeah. Well, to me, one of the most telling moments in terms of exposing what they really think is quote unquote DEI is I remember somebody called the mayor of Baltimore, a DEI mayor, because he's a black man. It's like this man like literally the definition of a merit-based position. He had to run for office. He got elected by the people in his city. In what way is this some, you know, unfair advantage that he got? No, he is the mayor of the city. The fact that he's black is why you think he's quote unquote DEI. And this is what it became shorthand for.

Remember when the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and we were also a bunch of right wing influencers also let us to believe that the reason was because they like had one gay person on their board or something like that. So it was a DEI bank. The California wildfires got out of control because some of the firefighters were lesbians. Right. Yeah, that was that was another great one. That was another great one.

DEI hires for DEI fires. Sorry. Yeah. So it's abundantly obvious what Justin Fox, he knows what this means to him. He just can't articulate it because it sounds so terrible when you actually spell out the truth of what he was doing in this role. and what he saw himself to be doing in this role. Exactly. When he says that he's uncomfortable stating the definition for DEI,

that I believe. Because it makes you look like a homophobic, transphobic, racist piece of shit, which is what all of these people were very happy to be when they could do it in the comfort of their sort of anonymized boys club fraternity within the government. Like, that's what this was. At one point in his deposition, he literally calls Doge a club within the government. Doge felt more like a club of folks with a different mission than traditional folks that were career employees.

Wow. Wow. Well, and that's without even getting into the next layer of like there's no one who gets more like woke in an authoritarian way than this government when it comes to cracking down on any like anti-Israel sentiment and calling that anti-Semitism and actually, you know, using authoritarian tactics to jail, people and criminalize any sort of. on this issue. So yeah, it's all very, very selective and very particular. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to Blue Land for sponsoring this episode and being this podcast, a longest running sponsor. I know you probably have your routine schedule of cleaning products that you buy over and over and over again. And I know when you're used to buying your same trustworthy products over and over again, it can be hard to change it up and I will tell you, Blue Land is worth taking that chance, especially if you hate microplastics and love sustainability. Blue Land is a sustainable line of home cleaning products on a mission to

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Blue Land products are beautiful. They are easy to use. They are easy to refill. And they're cost effective with refill tablets starting as low as $2.25. sense. If you'd like to start trying Blueland today, you can head over to blueland.com slash fruity for 15% off your first order. That is blu land.com slash fruity. Thank you to Blueland. And now, let's get back to the episode. So the attorney then questions Justin Fox specifically about what makes LGBTQ

DEI. Why is, in your view, is LGBTQ? DEI? This is based on the EO discussing underrepresented minority groups of which LGBTQ is often associated with. That actually was his entire explanation. That was the whole thing. That was the whole thing. Incredible. You can see him like going through his mind thinking of like, how can I say this?

Because he undoubtedly has some gay friends that he's like, uh, let me, how can I talk about this in a way that's not just going to like make me look like a total bigoted asshole. There's a distinction between Justin Fox and Nathan Kavanaugh who are going to meet in a little bit while Justin I think is pretty clearly unintelligent, let's say. Okay. Constantly out of loss for words, let's also say. Nathan is a little more of like a slick, smarmy asshole. Definitely a lot more like LGBTQ is DEI because it's a minority.

Fuck you. I don't feel badly. I think Justin is both dumb and also has a little bit of shame. These people thought that they would never be held accountable. I think that sentiment really shines through in this next thing I clipped. Justin starts doing something really interesting, which is he plays heavily into the idea that he was just following orders. Despite everything we know, right,

about how much power these young men were given, like, they were selecting grants to be terminated. They say a lot of, like, I was just making lists of grants to be approved by someone else, to be looked at by someone else, to be looked at someone else. Like, I was just a cog in the wheel. But we know that that's not true. He seems very uncomfortable with the idea that his decisions caused grants to be terminated

and lives to be upended. Why would you suggest that grants about those issues be terminated? I didn't suggest they be terminated. I only tagged their relationship to DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. With the understanding that you marking that would service a precursor, a signal to cancel those grants, right? Cignell to review those grants. On the road determination, right?

Inaction. If that's what they wanted to do, yes. Well, I'm a little confused. Your goal with Doge was to save money, reduce the deficit, and apply these EOs on the road to those goals, right? Objection. To assist emergency heads with being in compliance with the EOS.

Part of the EOs were to find savings through reduction in spend. Right. Right, okay. And so part of, we discussed this hours ago, part of your work was to help to identify grants termination, right? I'm not saying you terminated them. I just want to be clear that we're that we're kind of collating these things. I'm not saying them all at once. Part of your job was to identify grants for potential termination. Is that fair to say? For the review of Mike and Adam.

Yeah, I mean, that is very revealing of a mentality where he wants to not have any of the responsibility placed in his hands. He wants to say, oh, it wasn't really my decision. I was just flagging things. We also know they use chat GPT a lot to just go through and find like the word trans. So that's how you end up with this. You spoiled my next clip, Crystal. Jumping ahead. All right. Well, I'll table that for now.

But you also get this from his body language. There's a lot of like heavy size of like, oh, like he's frustrated. He's sort of tormented. He can't explain himself. He's got a war going on in his brain between rationalizing what he did and also not fully wanting to say what it was his understanding of what he was doing. And it very much gives someone who was kind of like caught up in the heat of the moment, you know, oh, Elon's this bill, he's the richest man on the planet.

And he's so cool. And he's waving around this chainsaw. And I'm in this administration with Trump. And Trump is such a badass. He went on all the podcasts I like. And now here I am at the heart of it all. It gives someone who got swept up in the heat of the moment and is now having at least some sense of, I'm not sure that everything I did was really great.

and I don't really want to have to reckon with what the downstream impacts of this whole thing ended up being. And it's so interesting, right, because he thought he was acting with impunity. He was having fun. He was probably high on his own supply as well as Elon's supply. And what's interesting is that through this case and it becoming so public, what strikes me is that these two young men who were making $150,000, which is a lot of money, but it's, not Elon money. It's not whoever Anthony Armstrong is. It's not Anthony Armstrong money. And it's interesting that they become the sacrificial lambs in this situation. And, you know, they fully deserve it. But right now, there are so many people who aren't being deposed who live in this world where they

are making these decisions that upend all of our lives. Currently, I feel this way about every single billionaire. And they are acting with impunity. And I feel like it's important to remember that. Yeah, it reminds me very much of like the January 6th prosecutions, which it's like, yeah, those people should be prosecuted for the crimes they committed on that day. And yet we also had Donald Trump back in the White House. You know, so the high level people who are involved in fomenting this attempted, you know, election coup, they never faced any accountability whatsoever. So it is kind of a similar dynamic here. But I hope that people take that as a lesson, like the lower level figures in the Trump administration of like, yeah, Trump's probably going to go to prison because the Supreme Court's granted him immunity. Elon is going to be fine because he's the richest man on the planet can buy his way out of whatever trouble he gets into or go to another country or whatever. But if you're some lower level functionary who's involved in these horrific crimes that this administration is committing on every day, you really think that you can rely on Donald Trump to save your ass because you can't. He doesn't care about you. Not one bit.

In fact, if throwing you under the bus saves him one second of trouble, he will do it in a heartbeat. Yeah, where's Elon? Where's Elon for these kids? Absolutely. Sorry, I actually shouldn't call them kids because they are adult men. With a childlike understanding of the world, yes. This is true. So in this vein of feeling innate guilt and attempting to covertly cover up some of what he did at Doge, Justin Fox avoids telling us and then openly admits that he was not simply scanning the descriptions

of thousands of different NEH grants himself for words like LGBTQ, homosexuals. sexual, DEI, environmental justice, etc. No, no, he had some help. Okay, so you didn't write those descriptions? We edited and wrote on top of, but they pull out the keywords and phrases from grant description. What pulls out the keywords and phrases? There's extractors that you can layer on top of Excel to grab the keywords, and then you can pull in how it frames in the context of the EO.

When you say, okay, so what extractor did you use to pull out keywords from the Excel? Well, Excel has a lot of native functions to pull out keywords. You can overlay that on top of grant descriptions. Respectably, I'm not asking about Excel's capabilities. I'm asking what you actually did on this spreadsheet to pull out key terms. We used closed source aggregators that drew the context from the grant description into DEI verbiage that related to this grant. And then over top of what was extracted, we write in additional thoughts and clarification.

What closed source aggregator did you use to assess the these great descriptions. Within Excel, you're able to put in a closed loop LLM that extracts the key words and phrases. What LLM did you use? Open AI. It's like asking a thesaurus for as many different ways to say chat GPT.

He does not want to say chat GPT did this shit for me. Blame chat GPT, bro. I was not me. Because he knows. He knows that, like, this guy, okay, within these, I'm getting red in the face underneath the foundation. Within the context of these corporate business worlds that these boys come from, these men come from, they master this, like, corporate jargon newspeak. He knows that like to a normie or to a boss that he might have to impress, talking about using closed source LLMs on top of Excel spreadsheets, sounds a lot more. sophisticated, then I put into chat GBT. Tell me which grants have LGBT in the description. That's

what he was doing. Yeah. It's so transparently obvious. And kudos to this lawyer who's like, what does that mean? What company's LLM? Say the name of it. What is it? Also, a little bit of an L for Elon here. He's not using GROC. Like, what's up with that? He's using his, you know, arch nemesis Sam Altman's product here to do his dirty, his DEI dirty work. But, you know, I mean, it's hilarious and it's also terrifying because right now we're also like the Department of War is using AI in the Iran war. And we already have two instances that look very much like we're talking about how, you know, they put in trans, and they end up with something about transgenic mice studies. And they're like, it says trans.

So we canceled it. There was a park that was called police park in Iran that got bombed. The Israelis are trying to like bomb all the police stations and create chaos. And it's had the word police in it. So they bombed it. And even more disturbingly and horrifyingly, there was a school that had the word Shahid in it. And because the Shahid drones are an important part of Iran's war effort, they bombed the school that had the word Shahid in it. So when we think about what was actually done with Doge, I think a big part of it was also inserting these AI,

LLM, you know, all of these tools inside of all of the federal government and also very likely siphoning out a bunch of the data to feed into GROC to help benefit Elon in his quest for GROC to be the dominant AI product. So Justin is then tasked with explaining why he chose to help terminate one specific grant for an Alaskan language project. And the attorney reads him his own stated reasoning. Let's listen. Again, it says the Trophietta Project aims to increase access to diverse humanities collections, which aligns with DEI goals of promoting inclusion and diverse perspectives.

Did you write that? Yes. Did OpenAI write that? Portions of it, maybe. Portions of it, maybe. Oh, man. It really is so surreal the way this attorney is talking to, like, this executive. extremely consequential adult man.

Like he's like a little baby. It's like, well, did you write that? Did chat DBT write that? There's an irony here too because exactly the type of like white collar work that the Justin Foxes of the world do is exactly what this AI is aiming to replace. So he's he's helping to train and deploy his own eventual replacement here as well. So we know DEI really just means anything relating to the lived experience of minorities. But does Justin know that?

Can he tell us what a minority is? Let's listen. When you were assessing this Alaskan language project for DEI, it was on the basis that it promoted a minority group, a minority culture. Sarah, I guess what's a majority culture? I'm not sure. Okay.

Again, he is sure. He just doesn't want to say it. But obviously you can define what a minority group is if you don't know what the majority group is, they're kind of defined in conjunction with one another. You know, the other thing probably for this guy too is when he signed up for this Doge thing, it was like cool to be a young man and be part of the Trump club. The new right. Yeah, it was cool at the time.

And like his bros thought it was cool. And now they're like, this is embarrassing. Like, did you see the last Tim Dillon episode where he ripped all these people to shreds? And so it feels a lot less good now than it did. And also, I mean, I don't know. know what this man thinks about the ice raids and the fact that the DHS account is constantly just like overtly Nazi posting all the time. But it's also become undeniably clear that the goal of this administration is this ethno-nationalist blood and soil project and that he was being used

as a part of that. So whatever he was telling himself, you know, in his mind, he has no deniability of what that broader project is. And he does seem like someone who would be uncomfortable with the maximalist fascist blood and soil aims of what this government is actively trying to do. Yeah, I do come from a principled place of like people can always grow and change. And if we don't believe that, then like, what's the point? Like, why am I doing any of this? I would argue that you might be giving him too much credit. I think his discomfort probably comes from this is the first time he's probably in his entire life ever been tasked with like any level of accountability for anything.

You know, we'll hear from from Nate Kavanaugh next. And he certainly very openly feels no remorse and actually feels politically like things haven't gone far enough. I think the cultural element that you're identifying here is right. I think a lot about that. I can't remember if it was the cover of like New York magazine or the New Yorker or one of those. But it was like it was right on like the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration. And it was like, what was it called the cruel kids table?

The cruel kids table, yeah. I remember very well. Had like the blonde woman and the dress in the front. Yes, we made a podcast episode about that at the time. I think it's called how conservatives infiltrated pop culture. And it really felt 18 or so months ago, right when Trump won the election in 2024, there was this moment of like, it's so cool to be on this like young new right. of course we had a bit fruity never thought that but like it was an ascendant moment in american culture for like young white people to very openly be like i'm reclaiming my place at the top of the hierarchy and like i'm gonna wear the shean dress and like go to this party on capital hill that's like sponsored by like fucking barry weiss or someone and i'm gonna post on instagram about how like america's back baby that moment in culture lasted like all of 45 minutes it was just it was just long enough for trump to get a lot

was basically how long that moment lasted. Right. And this is why I, you know, continue to be hard on the, the podcast bros who made it feel like this was a cool thing to do, who had him on Trump on or J.D. Vance on and act, oh, they're like, they're edgy. And these are, they're just like our boys. And how could he be some fascist menace to the world when he can just sit and hang out with us? It's why it's important for people to, if they do learn and grow and change,

to also have some sort of reckoning with the role that they played. Because if you're just now in the place of like, let me criticize the things that I see that are bad, it's like, okay, good, welcome, glad to hear you taking that role. But if you're not also grappling with why you were wrong and the role that you played, even if it was a small role in helping to create this moment, then I can only take that so seriously. And so look, not to read too much into this guy, but my sense of him is he didn't really think he hasn't thought too deeply about anything.

Anything, truly. That's why he doesn't have, you know, even a bullshit definition of DEI that he could throw out there to, you know, at least cover his ass a little bit. Yeah. He, it was a purely a vibe based thing. This seems cool. Elon seems cool. You know, I think my boys will think that this is awesome that I'm like in the government

doing this thing. And I don't think it went much deeper than that. So now is he's being forced to reckon with it and doing. having to do some thinking that he hasn't previously had to do in the past, it's very uncomfortable for him to use his own language. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It reminds me of that meme that's like, me reaping.

Oh, fuck yeah. This is awesome. Me sewing. Oh, I don't know about this. This sucks. Yeah. Definitely. It definitely gives that.

So then the attorney asks Justin about his rationale for helping terminate a grant for a documentary project called My Underground Mother, which is about Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust, and which highlighted gender-based violence against those Jewish women. Back to Justin. Again, the rationale says the documentary addresses gender-based violence in an overlooked history contributing to DEI by amplifying marginalized voices. Yes. Why is a documentary about Holocaust survivors? Dei. Objection. It's the gender-based story that's inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group. It's inherently discriminatory to focus on what specific group?

The gender-based, so females. Females. During the Holocaust. And you believe that that's inherently discriminatory? I'm just saying that's what it's focused on. Sure. And this is related to DEI. Right.

But you just used the term inherently discriminatory. What did you mean by that? It's focusing on DEI principles, gender being, One of them. So a documentary that's about women would be DEI? Jackson. Is that fair to say? No.

Okay. So tell me why what I just said isn't DEI, but what you just said is DEI? Jackson. It's a Jewish, specifically focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture. It's inherently related to DEI for those reasons. Because it's about Jewish culture. Plus, marginalized voices. marginalized female voices during the Holocaust gender-based violence.

It's DEI because it's DEI. It's like a Mobius strip. Yeah, it's DEI because it's inherently DEI is what's going on here. It's gender-based. Okay, so like anything about women is DEI? Well, no. Okay, well, why is a DEI? Because it's just, it just is.

And the gender-based thing, he recognizes he's on a tightrope there because surely if it was a documentary about men in the Holocaust or men in general, then it wouldn't be DEI, even though that would still be gender-based. So it kind of gives away the whole game if he really walks out on that ledge about the gender-based aspect. Something that really struck me listening to these depositions is, and I talk about this topic too much on this podcast, perhaps, but like people belonging to minority groups who support the Rojolican party, who continue to be Trump supporters. I talk a lot about LGBT Trump supporters and the cognitive dissonance therein. But like, when you,

you hear them spell this out so clearly, right? A grant that funded a documentary about gender-based violence, let's use plain language, rape against Jewish women during the Holocaust is DEI. And slave labor. And slave labor. You really do have to ask over and over again, for example, why is any woman supporting this? Yeah. They're telling you exactly what they think. There's a very pick-me aspect at the core of the women support for MAGA, the LGBTQ support for MAGA, certainly the high numbers of Latinos who voted for Trump. You know, all these Latino ICE officers, that's the one that really gets me is I'm like, your name is Hernandez and you're doing this job. Like, do you understand you're not in the club? Do you understand that no amount of crushing the skulls of the protesters or, you know, destroying the lives of image?

immigrants is going to make it so that you are a quote unquote heritage American in their view. But it's, I mean, it's a very common like oldest time type of phenomenon where the attempt to assimilate means sucking up to, you know, the dominant culture or the dominant political force. And so you end up with these types. And yeah, it's frankly, it's, it's frankly pathetic and shameful. So by our four of Justin's deposition, I am going insane at this point. Just so you can have a little peek into my process. Boyfriend is begging for me to come to bed. Oh, you're just getting started.

Baby, I'm out of hour four of 12. The attorney at this point wants to know more about how Justin used chat GPT to select $100 million worth of federal grants to terminate. First, we learn exactly what Justin's chat GPT input prompt was. It starts by saying, From the perspective of someone looking to identify DEI grants, does this involve DEI? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with yes or no, followed by a brief explanation.

Do not use, quote, this initiative, close quote, or quote, this description, close quote, in your response. These people whose whole thing is supposedly like, we need everything to return to a merit-based order are like putting into, to chat TBT, do my job for me, respond in 120 characters or less, and start with yes or no in case I'm too lazy to read beyond the first three characters. Truly is incredible. And I keep going back to you as well. Like the times when I've made minor misstatements or errors on the show, I'm like so upset about it. It's like stresses me out.

I feel all this guilt and whatever. And then here you have these people who are just like, yeah, that one's gone. This one's gone. Do I know what it is? Not really. But whatever. Let me rip it up. And seemingly.

like just very casual about it. Don't even think about the impact until they're forced to have to grapple with it and explain it. Yeah, but Crystal, you're a woman and I'm gay. So inherently, nothing we do is merit-based. We're inherently DEI. Yeah. We're breaking points. More like DEI points. That's right. A woman and an Indian. Are you kidding me? There's no way that's merit-based. A bit fruity. More like a bit equity and inclusion. I slept four hours. I like that. It's a nice alternate name, you know.

Then the attorney inquires about how exactly chat chbtee was trained to know which grants were DEI. What's your understanding of how the model understood the word DEI? I just still think it's really funny. He's using chat GPT and not grok. His rock is the worst of all the products. And so he's using what Elon views as a woke. LLM to weed out the DEI grant here. So the attorney obviously isn't satisfied with that answer.

So he asks another question. My dear listener, this is the point in which I start hallucinating. Do you do anything to ensure that ChatGPT's perception of DEI, as applied here, wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? Objection. It didn't matter because, again, this was not the ultimate decision-making factor. But that doesn't answer my question. Did you do anything to ensure that chat GPT's description, perception of DEI as applied here,

wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? Objection. I didn't need to. This was not the decision-making factor. But I'm not asking whether you needed to or not. I'm asking whether you did or not. Objection. This is a rephrasing of the previous question.

What is it that you're referring to now, like specifically? Did you do anything to ensure that Chad GPT's perception of DEI as applied here wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? Jackson. It's a yes or no. This is just to identify phrases that may relate to DEI to assist in our population of giving context to Adam and Mike as they're reviewing. Did you do anything to ensure that Chad GPT's perception of DEI as applied here wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? I'd like an answer to my question eventually. I'll keep asking you.

It didn't matter. Injection. Okay. Did you do anything to ensure that Chad GPT's perception of DEI is applied here wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? Objection. Asked an answer several times. It didn't matter. We didn't need to. Is that yes or no? Objection.

Is what yes or no? Did you do anything to ensure that Chad GPT's perception of DEI as applied here wouldn't discriminate on the basis of sex? Objection. The task was to pull out anything related to DEI. There was no reason to check for discrimination. So you didn't do it. Objection. We did not need to.

Did you do it or not? Objection. This was a medium step in between getting the consolidated list to Adam and Mike. I'm entitled to an answer to my question. So that goes on for about another five minutes. Wow. Oh my God. Did you do anything to make sure that chat GPT did not discriminate on the beach? basis of sex. I like bolt upright in my sleep now. And I'm just like, did you do anything to make sure that

chat chagipit did not discriminate on the basis of sex? Didn't need to. Well, but did you? I didn't need to. I, because I wasn't the decision maker. I mean, that's the other piece of this is like constantly. I'm passing the buck, passing the bug, passing. It's not up to me. It's up those guys. Those are the ones you want to talk to, which by the way, they should. But I'm excited to hear the other dude who you say was had like less remorse the way that he responded to these type of questions. Because this is is a very not sort of Stephen Miller-esque mega way of handling this. Like the, the based approach would be like, no, because I don't care, because women are part of DEI, like to just own it 10 toes down. The fact that he shows this trying to pass the buck, it's a sign of weakness,

right, that he's not fully comfortable and totally owning and loving every aspect of what he ultimately was doing. The thing that popped into my head so many times while watching this for 12 hours was like the Nuremberg trials, which I know is like a really intense thing to draw a comparison to with these fucking idiots. But you can just tell at every turn that he's trying to like squirm his way out of any accountability. Yeah. And having to think about the way what he did will actually be perceived is again, it's one thing when you're in the moment and you're with your boys and you're all doing this and Elon's there and the chainsaw and all this. It's another thing when you actually have to say, my definition of DEI is that anything that talks about women

or black people or gay people or trans people is inherently bad and needs to be gotten rid of that we need to make sure that white men stay on top. Like he knows these things sound bad. But in the moment, you know, he's just, again, he's just not thinking too hard about it. He's just doing what everybody's doing. Before we move on from Justin Fox, I want to show you one more clip. The attorney asks Justin about the decision to determine. a grant for a documentary on the Colfax massacre, which was a KKK and Confederate-led massacre

of between 62 and 153 black men. Chat GPT labeled this documentary about the Colfax massacre DEI. Let's hear Justin. Do you agree with Chad GPT's assessment here that a documentary is DEI if it explores historical events that significantly impacted black civil rights? Yes. Okay. Why would that be DEI? It's focused on a singular race. It is not for the benefit of humankind. It is focused on a specific group or a specific race here being black.

Why would learning about anti-black violence not be to the benefit of humankind? Jacksonville. That's not what I'm saying. OK, then what are you saying? I'm saying it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. You said it's not to the benefit of human kind, right? Is that what I said?

Yeah. Is that what I said? Yes, it certainly is, sir. Ooh. Again, out of principle, I try to see the best in people. I try to avoid terms like, ooh, the mask is slipping. But my goodness, talk about the mask slipping. Yeah, and I think this really speaks to, there is a push, again, going back to a project

2025 and really the architects of all of this towards this, quote unquote, patriotic education. And they've sort of given up on some of this direction. they've gotten themselves embroiled in so many other, you know, wars and ice raids and all of this other stuff. But there was a major attempt at the beginning of the administration of crackdown on universities who weren't teaching history the way they wanted it to be taught. And this is a centerpiece, you know, of fascist projects because they want to have this glorified version of the past in which the founding fathers never did anything wrong. And the dominant group never did anything around. There was no genocide of the Native Americans.

there was no slavery and there was no Jim Crow or if there was, it's vastly downplayed. And so it's part of a propaganda project not to, you know, instill merit-based values or whatever. No, it's to erase the past is to make it so that people don't know about the Colfax massacre. So they don't know about these sins and atrocities of the country's past because they want to return the country to this mythological, glorious past that they imagined in their heads and want to push. out as propaganda to the population. And so, look, I don't know that this guy knows all of that history. I don't know if he really understands. I don't think that he does.

Oh, Crystal, I can assure you he does not. Something tells me. But he's serving very effectively in the role that they want him to serve as muddying the history, as hiding the truth. And it really has nothing to do with however you want to define DEI. It really has nothing to do with that. And it has everything to do within ethno-nationalist, fascist project. The other thing I will say about these grants before we move on to our friend Nathan Kavanaugh is that back to the stated mission of Doge, which it's about lowering the federal deficit allegedly.

Yeah. If you look at the itemized list of grants that they canceled, it's like, you know, $60,000 for the documentary. Mm-hmm. $50,000 for, you know, a black history museum's fucking air conditioning system. Stuff like that. Yeah. Crystal, you have a better understanding of the inner workings of like the government, frankly, than I do and of like budgets and stuff like that.

But these people are being paid more individually than these grants are worth. Like it's, to me, it's just so transparently, like not about saving money because these aren't significant amounts of money. To be clear, though, it is a significant amount of money to the artists and research and scholars and culture makers who depend on that money, but in the scheme of government spending, what? Right. I mean, the bulk of the government spending is like missiles and healthcare.

That's most of what you're talking about here. And so, I mean, they've gone on to cut the health care in service of spending much more on the missiles. That's the overall trajectory of this government. But no, the goal was never really about efficiency or spending cuts. That was never really the goal. And, you know, I just talked about the sort of fascist project at the center of this. And that goes together with like the capitalist project of Elon Musk. But, you know, to your point about how they don't care or value culture or cultural contributions at all, that goes to a central view of capitalism, which is if it's not turning a profit, if it's not market based, then it doesn't have value.

So you shouldn't have to get support for your documentary. You know, if the masses are willing to suck it up, then you're, you know, you'll be able to put it out on your own, not recognizing that a lot of art has value beyond just its, you know, it's sales value, its market value. And so I think that's something that, you know, the, the Trump people and Elon that these various factions in MAGA that came together in this moment, I think that's kind of a view of the world that they all share. totally which of course goes along with the AI sloppification of art and culture also i would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to rocket money for sponsoring today's episode budgeting has long been a habit of mine ever since my dad nailed it into my head as a child that budgeting is something that you have to do constantly always it annoyed the hell out of me then sometimes still annoys the hell out of me now i have a text waiting for

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So after five hours of deposition, let's get him. give him a break and take a look at his colleague, his informal superior, Nathan Kavanaugh. I want to send you a picture of Nathan Kavanaugh. He's got a little like a sweater, crew neck sweater, hair quaffed, could definitely have also gone to UVA for what I'm looking at here. He's got whatever, what's that expensive down coat that everybody wears in New York. That's what I was going to see if you were going to clock. Yes. He wears to his deposition. Just add a little. insult to injury, a Canada goose jacket. You know, it is cold in New York City right now. So don't blame

him for bringing the down coat to hang on the chair behind him as he's deposed. But that coat is just for context upwards of $1,000. Yep. Expensive tastes. Nothing but the best for this man. Let's rip money away from those gay art galleries in the South. Let's do it, shall we? So where Justin Fox is, I think, pretty clearly a complete moron, Nathan Kavanaugh, like I said, he's more of a smug, like gleeful piece of shit. Sorry, I run out of words sometimes. Nathan Kavanaugh grows up in Pittsburgh. He went to Indiana University and only went for a year before dropping out and starting a company called Brain Base,

which there's so many startups that, sell their like AI services or whatever they do, frankly, to like big companies. I don't really understand the world of like startup and founders. I spend a lot of time in San Francisco where like founder culture is a big thing where people identify as founders. You know what I mean? I'm somewhat familiar with this culture. Yes.

I mean, I feel like I being a 44 year old woman who was like living in New York for a while and whatever and also spent a good bit of time in San Francisco. there was especially when my age was coming out of college, like started doing your startup and being a founder and being on the Forbes 30 under 30 lists and all this style, these leadership summits and whatever was kind of like the peak of that culture. So I'm quite familiar with the type. Yes. And there's a particular kind of like AIification version of that happening in San Francisco now where it's like every 22 year old just like wants to create some bullshit product that like Sam Altman will buy for hundreds of millions of dollars. And then after six months, people realize that it's completely useless and then it'll go kaput. But like this child has been made very rich. Yeah, that's depressing. That's essentially what Nathan Kavanaugh's background is. He after having some success like selling. these stupid companies. I'm not trying to be mean, but it's like the world will go on without your upteenth version of like product integration management AI school skills management product software. Whereas the world will not go on without podcast.

Thank you for checking me. Thank you for checking me. Thank you for checking me. So Nate joins Doge in January of 2025 right after the inauguration. He is recruited more traditionally through what he calls a mutual investor connection, aka through his business background, despite only being in his late 20s, he knew someone. He knew another rich guy who was involved with Doge. So despite his founder background experience, did Nathan have any government experience? Let's find out. Do you have any history in like, let's say, scholarly peer review? No. Okay.

So, but this judgment call was made by you and your personal judgment combined with Justin's personal judgment to cancel grants based on DEI? Yes. Okay. Do you think it's inappropriate in any way that someone in their 20s with no experience with grants for federal government was making personal judgment calls about what grants to cancel? Jackson. No, I don't think it's inappropriate.

Okay. Why not? Jackson. I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description to know whether it violates an executive order. I don't think you need to be, have a scholarly peer review background to do that. Okay.

So presumably you read some of these books that would have informed you on how to cancel a grant? based on DEI? Exactly. I did not read a book on how to discern whether a grant includes DEI or not. I read the actual description of the actual grant. Okay. You just, I'm sorry. I'm saying books because you said books.

What books would you have read that would have informed your opinion on what grants to cancel based on DEI or? There were no books. Yeah, there were no books. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't think so. We didn't think so. I asked chat GPT to tell me what the book said. I don't think he didn't even do that.

Didn't even do that. You already can get a bit of a different vibe from Nathan versus Justin. And my connection to Justin coming from UVA has really helped me to understand his type because he's much more emblematic of the like country club Republican who will say like, oh, I don't I don't love Trump because, you know, the tweets or whatever. sure do like the tax cuts. He really is good for business. But meanwhile, you are on board with all of the rest of the stuff. And by supporting him, you are on board with all the rest of the stuff. But you know, you want to keep it all a little bit under wraps. You want to keep a little bit of class in terms of what you're presenting to the public, whereas this guy feels already much more sort of brash and unrepentantant and like, yeah, I did it. So what? You know, no, I didn't read the

book. What are you going to do about it? Exactly. Nathan's salary at Doge was a hundred $220,000, which was notably a more than 50% pay cut from his previous finance job where he was earning a salary of $250,000. Let's hear what he has to say about that and why he took that pay cut. How much were you making at flow finance? My salary was probably $250,000 a year or so. So you took a pay cut of almost half to join government. Is that right? Yeah, I didn't actually want to be paid by Doge, but it was a requirement to be...

Why would you be okay with working for Doge for free? Because I've already made enough money in my career where an incremental $120,000 doesn't make a difference for me. So selfless. He's willing to destroy people's lives for free, Matt. How can you not honor this man and his principles? I'm a 20-something year old who's made enough money in my career where $120,000 doesn't make a difference to me. and therefore I should be in the chair where decisions get made to upend the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of other people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like the other sentiment I kept coming back to watching this.

And I like to, you know, to espouse more nuanced ideas than this typically on this podcast. But I'm just like, man, you don't hate these people enough. Yeah. And it speaks to the view that Trump and Elon and clearly this guy. share of the world that if you did earn a lot of money, that is inherently meritorious. Like, you deserved it. You deserve to be in these positions. You know, you are superior to the rest of the population. So I don't need to have an understanding. I don't need to have any experience. I don't need to have read the books. I'm in this position of being, you know, extremely wealthy

at a young age. Therefore, it is my right to be put in this position of power over people, other people and their lives and their livelihoods. And I actually did to make a little bit of a connection here to some of the other things that I've been covering, you know, we've done a lot of work on the Epstein files. And one of the things that you really get from breeding the communications amongst these people is they truly do believe themselves to be different and superior. And there are a bunch of different ideologies that they can use to justify that. So Epstein himself is clearly a Jewish supremacist.

He talks about that a lot. Elon is like an IQ supremacist. I think Trump also is like a sort of like, you know, there's these like eugenicist ideologies there in terms of genetics and IQ and whatever. And one of the most common supremacist ideologies in Western culture is about money. If you made the money, if the market deemed you worthy, then you are inherently better than you are inherently, you know, above, you know, the rest of the class that haven't been able to make it. There has to be a level of dehumanization involved in the decisions that they, that both both Justin and Nathan and everybody involved was making because otherwise you couldn't do this so

casually with so little remorse, with so little thought, you know, just entering things into chat GPT, pressing a button and walking away. Totally. Yeah, I have nothing to add. You're smart. So the attorney asks Nathan why he helped terminate a grant for a project examining the experiences of LGBTQ people in military service. Man, of all the DEI grants, like this should be kind of patriotic, right? Yeah, they're gay, but they're in the military. I'm just serving the country. Nathan had put this LGBTQ military service project grant on a list of what he called the National Endowment for Humanities, quote, craziest grants.

Here's what Nathan said. You and Mr. Fox identified this is one of the craziest grants at any age? I don't know, go to the left. Yes, it appears so. Why did you do that? Because it explicitly says LGBTQ. How crazy is that, Matt? I think there's value to both of these depositions because where Justin Fox would have been,

it was in a violation of the EO. Okay, well, what about the EO? Well, it was DEI. Well, why was it DEI? Because that's what the EEO said DEI is. This guy just goes, yeah, it's about fucking gay people. Right. And I hate gay people.

What do you think we were doing? Like, obviously, this is the goal was to root out all this sort of gay stuff. That's what I did. And I found it to be crazy. Like, gays in the military? How insane is that? That's why I put it on this list. Yeah.

And he definitely has personal feelings about that. And this is where I started to get, despite my, you know, weariness after being hours and hours and hours and hours and hours into these depositions, this is where I started to get actually, like, angry. Hmm. The attorney continues by bringing up another grant that Nathan slashed for a project about the legacy of HIV AIDS. in prison movements. Wow. Nathan doesn't really say much that's notable here,

but if you're watching the video version of this podcast, I would like for you to look at the look on his face while he's being read his own decision to terminate this grant. The short of the description here is legacies of HIV-AIDS prison movements in the United States, and I'll just read the law description. This is a history of the HIV-AIDS prison movement and its legacies in the United States. my book project narrates how activists fought the convergence of HIV AIDS and incarceration from inside and outside prisons across the Reagan through Clinton years. Wow. Wow.

For someone who's not watching, what face is he making? He's smirking. He's like, yeah, you know, he's like a little kid who did something that was that was naughty, but he thought was funny and cool. That's kind of the energy that he's skipping. But it's not like, it's not like, oh, that sounds rough. It's like, LOL. Look at these losers. Look at how cringe it is that they care about this sort of stuff or that they're offended, that I would cancel that grant. I mean, these are like, I don't know.

I'm traumatized by my high school bullies. I am. Like, that's not even a joke. I am. Yeah. This man didn't bully me in high school. I didn't know him in high school. I don't want to direct my grief about my experience in high school onto Nathan Kavanaugh.

But I would be remiss if I did not say that he looks just. like them. Yeah. He hears the term HIV AIDS and he just glances at his lawyer who's to the left and he's like trying to stifle a laugh. And then he covers his mouth and looks down. And he just can't help. How funny is it that these people were doing research on HIV in prison? It's funny. It's funny to him because like I said, the cruelty is the point. You don't hate these people enough. And think of how many people died of HIV at the peak and how many died in prison. of HIV before we had any sort of treatment. And, you know, he just sociopathically, like, has zero thought, empathy concern for what that

meant to those people and their families and their lives. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A while later, Nathan Kavanaugh has the opportunity to provide his own definition for DEI. I wish him luck. Here's Nate. I know we talked about it somewhat already, but what is DEI referring to here?

It stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And what is your opinion of diversity, equity, inclusion? My personal opinion? Well, let's start with what does it mean to you? It means diversity equity and inclusion. Well, that's the label, but what does, what do those words mean to do? It means making decisions on a basis of something other than merit. How does diversity differ from equity in that term, do you know?

I don't know. I don't understand the label itself, frankly. I appreciate his willingness to say, I don't know. Yeah, rather than trying to come up with something or refer you to the EO. Yeah, it's also though, okay, so he gives a specific definition here, right? Okay, it's, you know, getting some sort of a benefit on a basis other than merit. And then the irony of this guy sitting there, like, what meritorious thing did you do deserve to be in this slot? Have you given all this power?

I mean, it's just too brazen. And then when you apply that to all the various grants that they were cutting and what they were actually doing, I mean, if you actually hold that definition, what does that have to do with any, with all of the grants that you were cutting? It doesn't compute, which is why Justin was a lot more more tortured in his analysis of what DEI actually is. Yeah. There's so many great, and by great, I mean illustrative components to this whole thing. there's these incompetent men and then there's the cruel canceling of all of this federal funding to all of these minority related projects

based on the idea that they're not merit-based. And then there's the combination of those two things that it's these meritless men tasked with doing it. I mean, it's just, oh, I'm sweating. I mean, it's just preposterous to even engage with because you know they didn't actually look into any of these projects to see, oh, is this being well done? Is this an important narrative?

like how effectively are they creating this documentary? No, it's just like, it has something about gay stuff. So it can't have, it inherently can't have merit and must be canceled. So, you know, we're going to pass it along as absolutely crazy that the government is funding such a thing. Back to the founding fathers. They were instructed to preserve grants related to projects about the founding fathers and the founding of this country. Yes. Here is what Nathan has to say about that.

So the founding fathers, was there kind of like a period, certain years that you looked at as being the founding of the country? No, we looked for grants that were politically neutral. Okay. That had to deal with the founding of the country. Right. And that both parties could look and say that these are not political grants and are worth continuing. The famously politically neutral founding of the country. Yeah.

Revolutionary founding of the country based on what was at the time quite radical ideals, just completely politically neutral. They talk a lot in these depositions about, like, you know, was it all founding fathers? Who was it? You know, and they specifically say like, oh, well, George Washington, we had to keep things relating to George Washington. If there were papers related to the founding fathers of the country, our judgment was to not terminate this. But it was explicitly the founding fathers. It was a judgment call of figures around that time period of the country that we thought were apolitical and worth keeping. When you say they were apolitical, what does that mean?

that they didn't have they weren't related to DEI and both a reasonable person would look at those and say that they're not political how would you determine what a reasonable person would we're using we're using our judgment George Washington owns slaves right but if there was a project about George Washington slave ownership that's DEI that would be DEI yeah and this is it's just this gives away the game about what is broadly considered to be quote unquote apolitical. And anything that has to do with like the dominant culture, that is deemed as the default. That is a political. Anything that has to do with a non-dominate group, then that, oh, that's edgy. That's fringe. That's inherently political. That is a very common view. That is the default view in the country, frankly. And that is what he is actively championing when he,

you know, when he articulates this. I have one last clip for you, Crystal. And to you, my dear listener, for muddling through with us. You know, I appreciate it and I will also say I don't feel that badly because relative to what I endured by watching these depositions, with love, I have made this easy for you. It's a curated experience. We're going to be the Bitfutti curated guide to the Doge depositions. Yeah. Wow. Sounds like hell. Hope you've had fun. The attorney then gives Nathan Kavanaugh an opportunity to openly reflect on the work he did in Doge because neither of these men are part of the government anymore. Nathan Kavanaugh, actually, I didn't include this year, but on his way out from the government,

he actually briefly worked in another sector of the government. Do you have any idea into what that might be? Oh, I can't guess. What you got? He worked briefly doing administrative work for ICE. Oh, I should have guessed. Aside from your work from the small agency, team, did you do anything else for Doge? At the end of my time of Doge, I worked at the Department of Homeland Security on the immigration team with ICE for about a month. What did you do with ICE? We were designing a voluntary departure program to encourage illegal immigrants to self-deport

from the country. Yeah, that feels right. Bottomless. Just bottomless. And then he goes, I didn't enjoy it. I didn't find it fulfilling. Why did you leave? I was not enjoying the work on immigration and I was ready to go start my next company.

Why were you not enjoying it? I was not drawn to the immigration program personally. I wasn't. I didn't agree with all of it. And my mind goes, oh yeah, well, probably when all of the fucking, you know, arrests and murders in the street and, you know, kidnapping of undocumented immigrants working their jobs at Home Depot got out of control, like maybe there was a moral conflict, whatever. And he goes, did you feel like the ice work was? too aggressively getting people deported or not aggressively enough. Exactly. I didn't think it was aggressive enough, but at the same time, I didn't enjoy working on that project.

Wow. So anyway, back to Doge. Like I said, the attorney gives him a chance to reflect openly on the work he did in Doge, and here is what Date has to say. During your tenure, around 1,500 grants were canceled? Yeah, yes. And each of those grants funded projects, real projects by real people, working on scholarly works, some of those funds were used to pay for housing and to further their work.

Now those funds are gone. Does that make you feel anything in particular? In fact, Sam? No. You don't regret that people might have lost important income to... to support their lives? No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit

from $2 trillion to close to zero. Did you reduce the federal deficit? No, we didn't. You did? No, I don't believe we did. I think if you look at the net deficit from 2024 to 2025, I actually think it's close to a net zero, unfortunately.

So you weren't able to reduce the deficit and you still don't regret that people lost some of their livelihood based on your action? No. Wow. So you failed. You only created misery and hardship and accomplished 0% of the goal you set out. But you have no regrets. And I think the thing you said earlier about how you then went and worked for ICE and was like they didn't go far enough. I mean, this is a person who is a true believer in the most maximalist ambitions of this fascist government.

And is probably someone unlike Justin who really hadn't thought that hard about any of this, he has thought this stuff through. Like he has an ideological view. And his only complaint about the Trump administration is that they are not going far enough in causing enough cruelty to actually cut the deficit the amount that he wanted to see that they're not going far enough in destroying the lives of as many immigrants as he wanted to see. It makes sense. The whole thing makes sense. In an effort to like genuinely try to understand how someone could think like this. I mean, how can you acknowledge outright? We didn't

accomplish our goals. We didn't do anything substantively good for anyone. And we only hurt people and I have no regrets. Like, I feel like I genuinely, it feels sociopathic. It definitionally is. I just don't know if you have insight into people who are true believers like this who really have no shame. Like on a real level, like how do you become like a comic book villain? That's probably a whole other podcast. But I mean, I do think I do think partly, especially since knowing that this guy has some level of wealth and has clearly created like a supremacist ideology in his own mind about that. And then I also think there's something about hyper online culture that makes everything sort of like surreal and disconnect. and is dehumanizing in certain ways as well that probably comes through here too.

But, you know, whereas Justin wants to be the, I'm just following orders guy, I didn't really know what I was doing. It really wasn't up to me. This one is like, no, I did that. I'd own it. I'd do it again. I want to go further. He's all about it. You know, he's a zealot. We'd have to learn more about what exactly sparks that and what the overall ideology is. it could just be a nihilistic ideology where it's like, I want the suffering, I want the pain, I want to burn it all down, I want to destroy. There are some people whose personality types, you know, it doesn't go much deeper than that. But, you know, he's someone who would have seen the connection between what Doge is doing and the broader sort of blood and soil ethno-nationalist

project and how that's, it's seamless to go from what he was doing at Doge and then to ICE. And The other thing I'll say about this is, you know, with with these depositions because of the nature of what this lawsuit is about, you're talking about these documentary grants. You're talking about cultural projects, right? Where a lot of harm is being caused to individual people and these organizations and I don't want to diminish that. But you also had in Doge, I mean, they completely destroyed USAID. And you're going to have the estimates are that millions of people were literally lose their lives because of those cuts. Like, for there were millions of people for whom this was life or death. And it was being run by. the richest man on the planet. Like, that's inherent to this project. And so this is like a microcosm with this wealthy young guy who thinks he's the shit, who thinks he gets to have, you know, say over other people's lives and just casually destroy them for no reason. It is just a tiny, like, sliver microcosm of the bigger project, which was unbelievably devastating

to millions of people and led by the richest man on the planet. Crystal, there were, as you just said, cuts across all different agencies, many of which are and will be responsible for mass death. And there was all sorts of rewiring of how money was spent as a result of these cuts. A lot of the money did continue getting spent. It was not just cut. It was just redirected. And in the context of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which we focused on today because that is the basis for this lawsuit, that is why these people are. are being deposed. I hope we get depositions from the kids who are responsible for cutting USAID

and all of the science programs as well. But with regard to NEH, do you know specifically where much of the funds saved from slashing these grants are now supposed to go to? Tell me. The National Garden of American Heroes. Do you know what that is? No, but it sounds like some Trump thing. Yes. I was preparing myself for like the Trump art. or the Trump Kennedy Center or worse. Basically ever since 2020 with like the George Floyd protests and then the subsequent like a lot of left wing activists calling for statues to be torn down of people like Christopher Columbus, Confederate leaders, people like that, you know, right wing racists.

Trump has been trying to build for six years the National Garden of American Heroes. It's a sculpture garden of people. he personally admires. Yeah. Some sort of Trump art project. Yeah. It's a Trump art project that he's actually through multiple executive orders attempted to get this done.

It's still, you guys can read the whole Wikipedia page. It's nuts. And thousands and thousands and thousands of careers and lives in arts and culture were destroyed in pursuit of building the National Garden of American Heroes. So instead of learning about the impact of HIV and AIDS and the prison population, we'll get to see a statue of like Jake Ball. Yeah. I have to laugh because I'm going to cry if I don't Crystal. I mean, it's not even like a joke. It's just like literally the case. It's just that's our reality is so absurd that you can't even joke about it anymore. Yeah. Reality has

put the onion out of business. What do we take away from this? Right. Like what's our conclusion here? I wrote my thesis here. It's offensive enough that a 20-something year old white guy would get a high-ranking position in a federal office with no qualifications and no experience. It's reprehensible, however, that the specific job these young men were in charge of was upending the lives and destroying the careers of women, people of color, queer people, etc., who they believed were unqualified and being offered special privileges on the basis of their identity. No one benefits from identity politics more than a mediocre white man. You don't hate the system, or it's Epstein class oligarchs enough.

Here, here. And I think there's actually a lot of different things to draw from this because in Justin and Nathan, you have the archetype of two young men who became true believers in a certain sense. I mean, Justin, more of like a vibe-based way and Nathan in more of an actually ideological way. And so you get a little bit of a glimpse into what that mentality is, right? Like what are the motivation? What are the thought processes? What leads you to want to put yourself? in this place. And given how much was made of like the, you know, impact of young men on Donald Trump's election and the podcast bros and the like, like, that's an important window. The way that this was all done and the ends that it ultimately served and how distinct that was from what

was being sold to the public, I think that's a very important piece of this. And then I also think out of this, it underscores one of the things that I've grappled with under this Trump regime is, you know, in the movies, the villains are always like the evil geniuses. You know, they're like diabolically smart and but also diabolically evil. And this regime is like diabolically stupid, but also diabolically evil. And, you know, you get some of that from this as well when you can't even come up with an answer for what even is DEI, which is the center of the job that you're supposed to be doing. Dei stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And that means diversity, equity, and inclusion.

It stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Well, let's start with what does it mean to you? It means diversity, equity, and inclusion. We learn so much. What's the difference between diversity and equity? I don't know. I don't know, baby. Crystal, thank you so much for allowing me to, like, do this at you

and then field responses to all of my little clips. I am so excited. to never hear from these men ever again or to hear their lawyer say, objection ever again. Well, I have some bad news for you, Matt. Not necessarily these men, but these types of men are going to be with us forever. So we need to learn who they are and what's going on there. And where can listeners of this podcast hear you continue to do that?

Check out Breaking Points over on YouTube, become a premium subscriber, breakingpoints.com, Crystal Ball, on Twitter, all those things. And you guys really should go and follow Crystal. She is so smart. She's so sharp. And she, unlike me, is on the ball. Sorry, every single day.

So you should really go and follow her and support her work. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me, listening to this episode. I appreciate you so much. I hope that we can provide you some levity as we muddle through together. I love you. And until next time. Staying fruity.