Some More News - Some More News: Why Is DOGE Lying To Everybody About Everything?

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Hi. Today we're looking at the Department of Government Efficiency and how Elon Musk and his goons spent the last several months dismantling our government and propping their actions up with embarrassing lies. Get the world's news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhDavid Christopher BellAdditional Material by Cody JohnstonProduced by Jonathan HarrisEdited by Gregg MellerPost-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#somemorenews #DOGE #elonmusk You’re going to love Hungryroot as much as we do. Take advantage of this exclusive offer: For a limited time get 40% off your first box PLUS get a free item in every box for life. Go to https://hungryroot.com/smn and use code smn. That’s https://hungryroot.com/smn - code smn to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life.No matter how you say it, don’t overpay for it. Shop data plans at https://mintmobile.com/morenewsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Open wide for the news sausage. That's right. We are taking the news and grinding it up and stuffing it into a tube for you. And here's some more sausage for your mossage. Let's talk about efficiency. No, wait, let's talk about government efficiency. No, wait, let's talk about of government efficiency.

No, wait. And so on. Bad sausage. So in theory, Elon Musk is planning to step down from the Department of Government Efficiency. Doge, do you get it? Do you get it? Look it up.

To focus on his other work, such as screwing up a car company and screwing up his space company, or maybe screwing up his kids. He's got a lot of dicks in the old bear trap, as they say. And speaking of things people are saying, people are saying that he sucks. He sucks.

Doge sucks. And he can suck on Doge, which was a big waste of time that we'll have to spend decades undoing the damage of. But listen, everyone calm down. This isn't gonna be a video about how much Elon Musk sucks or what he sucks on. We're gonna be fair, we're gonna be balanced.

We're gonna be T, we're gonna be M, we're gonna be C, we're gonna be R because we get to be TMCR. We've TMCR'd that. It's in the urban dictionary with the other cool words. So my point is, I think, that we're not gonna trash Elon Musk. We're gonna step back and actually look at what Doge has accomplished so far.

And then, if applicable, we're gonna trash Elon Musk. Because he's garbage. And they say I wear a lot of hats. I have a separate hat. We're gonna trash Elon Musk because he's garbage. And they say I wear a lot of hats. Hats, hats. Even my hat has a hat, has a hat, has a hat. Who doges the dogers? I, I doges them.

And in the interest of being fair and balanced, TMCR, TMCR, we should start by simply looking at what the stated purpose of Doge was, or dare I say, is. So the website has no stated purpose, or like an about page that we could find. Just the words, the people voted for major reform at the top, which seems more like a terse justification

than a motto, but okay, I guess they skipped that section for efficiency and got right to it. But when first conceived, Doge was described a bit like a think tank that would push for reform from an outside perspective. That was at least how Vivek Ramaswami would describe it, before being Doge right out of Doge. Remember that. Remember when the first thing the Department of Government Efficiency did

was assign two people in charge of it. And then those two people had to fight for dominance like they were joining the Joker's gang. Going back a little earlier, before he was somehow elected, Trump apparently came up with Doge after discussing it with Musk. He would go on to define Doge

as the Manhattan Project of our time, up with Doge after discussing it with Musk. He would go on to define Doge as the Manhattan Project of our time, because we all love what the Manhattan Project created, and said the goal of Doge was to quote, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies, and also drive out the massive waste and fraud, which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion

of government spending. He repeated the idea that Doge would quote, provide advice and guidance from outside of government and would make life better for all Americans. Again, his words, advice and guidance outside of government make life better for all Americans. Also, it was important that Doge would be maximally transparent with the American people,

more transparent than anything else in our government. Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible, in fact, our actions, we post our actions to the Doge handle on X and to the Doge website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been, I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.

Okay, Kitchin covers mouth when he coughs, but we have our parameters. Additionally, Elon would later say that the final step would be for Doge to delete itself, like a robot hearing a paradox. And the stated amount they planned to save our government was, as of the start of this year, roughly $2 trillion. According to fundraising emails from Trump,

that $2 trillion could then result in every American getting a $5,000 stimulus check on top of whatever future tax savings this would result in. Again, provided they hit that $2 trillion goal. So 100 days in, after so many firings and chainsaws and winning, did they hit that goal? Well, thanks to your fantastic leadership, this amazing cabinet, the very talented Doge team,

I'm excited to announce that we anticipate savings in FY26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion. Mm. Mm. Listen to that excitement in the room. OK, so $150 billion is, you know, it's about $1 trillion, $850 billion short. So let's just round up to, I, you know, it's about $1,850,000,000 short. So let's just round up to, I don't know, two trillion.

It's $2 trillion short, but give them time. They've only fired 216,000 people so far. I mean, some of those people had to come back because get this, it turns out we need people to run stuff. But if they somehow keep this pace, we will hit that $2 trillion mark in like three It turns out we need people to run stuff, but if they somehow keep this pace, we will hit that $2 trillion mark in like three and a half years, which is a tad bit

over Trump's stated endpoint of July, 2026. But you know, it's not like Elon Musk has trouble hitting deadlines or predicting things or anything like that, but to be TMCR, TMCR, that $2 trillion goal has already been pushed down to $1 trillion, according to Musk, because goal posts are actually really easy to hit if you just move them. We just do that all the time.

I mean, I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud apps. And that meaning that it will have, we will have a net savings in FY26, which starts in October, obviously, of a trillion dollars. Okay, a trillion dollars by FY26, which begins in October of this year. So four and a half more months means they have to, I guess, eliminate around $200 billion a month, despite only cutting $150 billion in four very aggressive and reckless months so far.

So you might notice that Musk isn't going to hit that goal either. He moved the goalpost and still missed. Imagine that. Imagine creating this highly curated little game for yourself and still losing. Imagine that. Imagine creating this highly curated little game for yourself and still losing at it. That's like buying a social media site and still being unpopular on it. All in all, if Trump was aiming to cut down spending,

he has failed. And in fact, the Trump administration is currently spending way more than the Biden administration did at the same point. Also, it should be noted that this $150 billion in cuts is according to Musk himself, as well as the Doge website, which now lists that number as $165 billion under estimated savings.

See, the thing about the Doge website is that, since it went up, it's actually been less than maximally transparent as Elon had claimed. Minimally transparent, you could say. There's actually a journalist named Marcy Wheeler who has tracked all the instances of Doge claiming to cut billions of dollars before quietly reversing that claim. So for example, the five largest cuts in the wall of receipts that Doge posted were all eventually deleted.

This included a boasted $8 billion in cuts to immigration and customs enforcement that turned out to actually be eight million with an M, not a B. And there are, as you probably suspect, so many more instances of this. In February, Doge claimed to cut $232 million from Social Security when the actual amount turned out

to be half of $1 million. In March, the site changed their cuts to federal real estate leases from 460 million down to 320 million overnight. In April, they deleted nearly a billion dollars in cuts, also overnight. They've also taken credit for eliminating millions for contracts that had already ended

and even double or sometimes triple counted the contracts to make the numbers go higher. After we filmed this episode, the New York Times reported that at least 44 contracts canceled by Doge were revived by the federal agencies they affected, sometimes within hours. But 43 of those contracts as of when this Times article was published were still listed on the Doge website as cancelled contracts and savings for American taxpayers. And if you think they are at least being open about these mistakes, well, when reporters started to dig through their data and reveal these errors, Doge responded by making that

data harder to find. So not transparent. not really saving anything, but what of the fraud? Oh, we have stuff to say about the fraud, but first we have stuff to say about these advertisements. You may traditionally know them as ads or ad Vos, so enjoy the Vos. Rock the vows.

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So, weirdest thing, I stepped outside to rip Wicked off my bong, and when I came back, my tie was missing and my keys in my wallet. Hey, musty! How's the beard hanging? Oh, okay. Hi. Where's my stuff? Sold them to some kids. Listen, Creaky, I've been watching and I think you're right that we need to make the show more efficient and cost effective. That is actually the opposite of what I've been saying. Yeah, um, I know how irony works. I'm not stupid. My point is you win, okay? You're right that you're tie.

It's just slowing you down, man. You're way more aerodynamic now and we've saved the show millions, okay? Gonna go do some eBay. My neck is cold. Whatever, I'm sure that won't be an escalating gag for the rest of the episode. So anywho, doge.

It's not transparent, as we said, nor is it effective at saving money. It seems like a bad thing, but perhaps it's all worth it to weed out the fraud. If you recall, Musk mentioned going after fraud in that earlier clip from… Oh god. Elon Uncut? Oh god.

With Ted Cruz? Oh god. And a bunch of that fraud, I mean the fraud we're seeing is overwhelmingly on the left. Ah yes, fraud on the left. Ah, yes, fraud on the left. What does that even mean? What is the left wing of the Department of Veterans Affairs? But okay, Elon, show us the fraud.

Where's the fraud, Elon? Whip it out, uncut. Have you arrested anyone for fraud? Can he or Trump point to any fraud case? We're not the only ones asking this. A legal note, fraud is a crime. There have been no referrals to the justice department on any of this.

Well, you don't know that, do you? How do you know that? Have there been referrals to the, are there criminal referrals? How would you know that, that there were no referrals? I think there were referrals. They generally are. There's been no investigation from the criminal referrals? How would you know that, that there were no referrals? I think there were referrals. They generally are. There's been no investigation from the Justice Department.

I'm asking you, sir. No, you're not asking me. You made a statement. You're not asking me. Now I'm asking you. That was a statement that you made. There had been. Now I'm asking you.

Have there been? Yes, there have been. So there have been referrals for fraud from the work of the judge. Of course there have been. Take a look at some of these things that took place. Right. As that news guy just pointed out, fraud is a legal term. And so far Musk and Trump have continued

to vaguely talk about it like it's a vibe or something. We just have to take their word for it, I guess. It's weird because you'd think that considering how much people hate Elon and Doge, they would love to parade out the specific cases of fraud they found. Musk claimed more than a month ago on the 1st of April that on the following day,

there would be massive charges for somebody. April fools, I guess, because so far they just keep saying there's fraud. And I guess they left the evidence in their other pants. A, it seems like they're lying. Probably, because they are. Pretty much the most solid evidence of fraud they've given was this tweet Musk boosted,

claiming that they had found millions of dollars of unemployment fraud since 2020. This would then be reported by Fox as quote, doge reveals bizarre findings of Unemployment Insurance Claims Survey. It should be noted that at no point did Doge actually cite or link to the survey. Probably because the data was from a Biden-era study and multiple departments had been aware of that information for years before Doge showed up. As an expert on unemployment from the National Employment Law Project put it,

I don't think it's news to anyone. It's been widely reported. There have been multiple congressional hearings. Indeed, there have been over 2,000 convictions since 2020 for the unemployment fraud he is citing. That's why there's been no actual fraud arrests related to Doge, because the fraud cases he's finding are old crimes that have already been found and

settled before he came along. Really, stand back and think about how dumb and obvious that is, how duped anyone who believes him is being. This is like saying you discovered the Great Pyramid of Giza because you browsed Wikipedia. Like when Musk says in a Fox Business interview that there's half a trillion dollars in entitlement fraud. He's probably citing this April 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, and not even citing it correctly since that report was explicitly about all government spending, which to be TMCR, TMCR, he does acknowledge while immediately contradicting. It's confusing, he's confusing.

If you look at the Inspector General reports and the Government Accountability Office, there've been many audits that have pointed out that there's a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the government. In fact, there was a report issued by by the GAO, the government Accountability Office last year.

So during the Biden administration, which estimated the federal government fraud to be half a trillion dollars, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that's like the big one to eliminate. That's the sort of half a trillion, maybe 600, 700 billion a year. Doge generally, and Musk very specifically, are such obvious liars, it is truly disgusting,

and he should be constantly shamed for it. And people are starting to notice that these claims of massive fraud and abuse aren't leading to anything or anyone being punished for fraud or abuse. There's a reason you see so many posts these days angrily asking where the arrests are. Where's Bondi? Get him! Oh, the White House has no specific timeline for releasing the Epstein files after weeks ago

making a show about binders with various MAGA influencers? Why? Oh, why? Musk said there are 100,000 federal workers getting unemployment benefits while still working. Where are the arrests? Well, see, there aren't mass fraud charges because they're not actually doing any of this. It's a play.

They're doing pretend. And they're also massive liars. Take that one hundred thousand claim. You can see a lot of right-wing accounts on X the Everything Slop posting this specific clip. It's about 15 seconds long. We've actually found there's a lot of people who are federal government employees, they're active employees who nonetheless applied for and have received unemployment insurance. While they're federal employees? Yes. Wow. And this appears to be at least a hundred thousand people. Wow. Okay, wild claim, but for transparency and truth, what was he claiming right before this? We've seen just crazy things like the 20 million dead people in the Social Security

database marked as alive. So that's a lie and it has been debunked many, many, many times by many, many people. The social security administration literally had to make a statement about it. Mayor Pete had to explain it to podcasters faces. It's just not true. Next.

Many of whom were receiving benefits. One person was 360 years old. Wow, older than the country. Just to think that would be a bit of a red flag, you know? They're older than America. Yeah, man, that's what she fucking said. Did you not decide who was going to do this obviously planned line before the interview?

Come on! Also, I said next. And, you know, we found people receiving unemployment insurance with a birthdate in the future. Oh, hey, it's that thing we already talked about earlier that was another big lie. So when he gets to the third thing on his list of so far only disinformation.

We found at the Small Business Administration that they're giving out loans to people as young as nine months. You simply should not believe that. Because why would anybody? He consistently, brazenly spouts obvious bullshit, often about things like specifically unemployment fraud. The pattern he's established should lead us to think

that the number is drastically lower than 100,000, and that it's about something else entirely, or something we already knew about. It's weird he said they got unemployment insurance instead of benefits, but also, maybe more importantly, a reason a lot of people in the federal government might be employed, but receiving unemployment insurance, is because you keep firing people and then rehiring those people. You dimwitted goon. Two months and one week after Doge initially started fucking up a lot of stuff while also

lying about it, Musk and some Dogers finally appeared on Fox News with what Fox would claim is their least extremely unserious news person, Brett Baier. I'd like to say he did a good job, but more accurately, he did his job. Let's watch the literal first few seconds. Thanks for having us and doing this. I know there's a lot of interest in this. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having us here. I don't see a ring, but is there a piercing or buttock I could kiss? Sorry, this isn't the important part, but like, you're having them, Brett. They thank you for the opportunity to share their transparency and truth with the American people.

And speaking of, let's find out what Musk chooses to open this interview with, knowing that they're going to talk about the alleged waste and fraud and abuse in the government. I'm going to talk to all the guys here about the specifics, but for you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process? The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind-blowing. Just, we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more, casually. Now, our greater wax-moth-eared listeners may have caught for that split second Brett Bayer asked the correct question any normal person might ask. Let's see it again. For just the survey.

Right. The claim is that a simple, single survey that would otherwise cost $10,000 cost $1 billion. Wait, you'd say. A billion dollars for just the survey? This is a good opportunity for Musk to clarify. Which he does? For just the survey. A billion dollars for a simple online survey,

do you like the national park? And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the survey would just go into nothing. It was like a tank. Okay, so him quickly saying all of that and stumbling out, it's like insane, along with the obvious absurdity of the claim itself, makes me want to look up more about this billion-dollar survey. There's no evidence, there's no receipt on the Doge website, there's no

billion-dollar savings for the Department of the Interior, although there is $2.9 billion over five years for facilities and daycare for up to 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children. And even this $2.9 billion is a lie, because if you dug into that contract, you'd find that it was only potential spending over years, much of which might never have even occurred. The US was only obligated to pay $428 million of that contract

and had already spent $283 million. So the savings in reality for abandoning refugee children is only $144 million. Well done, dipshits. According to AFP, they were able to find a document outlining how, in compliance with US law, that federal agencies assess their performance and services and make plans to improve, the National Parks Service would spend $2 million a year on a manager and researchers, and that would include a bunch of surveys.

But no $1 billion survey about, do you like the parks? But no $1 billion survey about do you like the parks? So I guess that was a lie? Like just a big, enormous lie? Again, this is the first thing he wanted the American people to know. He just only lies. The interview continued with him saying he'd get to the trillion dollar goal

before he leaves after 130 days, that there won't be any kind of report after all of this, and that he prefers to measure thrice and cut once. Can we show the delicate art of measuring thrice and cutting once? This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! More lies. Here he is claiming that the Department of Education had a COVID fund that could be drawn from by people without showing receipts, and they were using it to throw parties. They were renting Caesar's Palace. Yes, they were basically partying on the tax chair money.

Stadiums. Yes. Leasing stadiums. Leasing stadiums. For what? For parties, basically. For parties? Yes. That's a big party.

It's a big party. Basically partying. Basically. Basically. Interesting word, basically. So, um, not at all, actually, probably. I'm not going to defend every single one of these expenses. A school district probably didn't need to spend hundreds of dollars on a school district. basically. So, um, not at all actually, probably. I'm not going to defend every single one

of these expenses. A school district probably didn't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent out the LA Angel Stadium for their graduation ceremony. But that's what it was for. A graduation ceremony. Not partying. That renting out Caesar's Palace for partying was submitted and approved for government hotel rooms to send people to a boring education conference in Vegas. Now, knowing that it was for hotel rooms at an education conference and the graduation ceremony, watch this again.

They were renting Caesar's Palace. Yes, they were like basically partying on the tax chair money. Stadiums. Yes. Leasing stadiums. Leasing stadiums. For what? For parties, basically.

For parties. Yes. That's a big party. It's a big party. They think you're so fucking stupid. Hey, Elon, if they could get this money without showing receipts, how do Elon, if they could get this money without showing receipts,

how do you know what they spent the fucking money on? At one point, Doge claimed that $7 million was spent on various projects studying magic. But actually, $6.3 million was spent on a children's science museum in Minnow, North Dakota, which is known as the Magic City. They're liars and they're careless. They're literally just control effing buzzwords they don't like because they don't actually know

what they're doing. They have to make up absurd claims and misinterpret everything and take credit for past discoveries because they don't know how to make those discoveries themselves. Basically, Doge just wandered into all of this data that a lot of people had already looked at and addressed and is forcing everyone to sort of re-litigate it all. But no one at Doge seems to understand the actual data,

perhaps because they have absolutely no experience in fraud detection or auditing, nor do they actually seem interested in it. Like, here's the thing. The terms fraud or waste are real and specific things. There's a job called forensic accounting that specifically exists to look for fraud and waste. We made a documentary about it called The Accountant, I think. Now, from the staff we know about at Doge, we can see that not one of them is a forensic accountant. I don't think any of them even know how to assassinate dudes,

which I'm told is part of the job. According to the information we have, some of the staff working with or at Doge are in no particular order, several aides and assistants to Trump and Musk, a former Morgan Stanley banker, a research assistant, multiple entrepreneurs, multiple real estate investors, the CEO of an energy company, multiple executives,

at least one racist, and a smattering of software engineers and lawyers. Also, the co-founder of Airbnb seems weird and so many former employees of Elon's companies. Not a single person we know of has a background in fraud detection or auditing of any kind, which is odd because those are the first people you'd want for efficiency.

Again, fraud has a legal definition, which is how the government's accountability office can track it. But to hear Musk tell it, it is more of a vibe. So this is where you get into the sort of gray boundary between waste and fraud. If money is sent to a person or organization from the government, and you didn't really

deserve it, but the government still sent it to you, is that waste or fraud? Right. Right. That's not a philosophical question about one-hand clapping. There is a single legal answer to that question. But of course, we kind of know what the answer is. For Elon, it's whatever he wants it to be. I mean, the fraud we're seeing is overwhelmingly on the left.

There he is, uncut or mangled as some allege, saying what we all know. The fraud that we're seeing is on the left, he says. Except fraud can be a gray area, like a Rorschach test or the character Rorschach. In this case, fraud and waste is actually what a bunch of executives and investors and rich people decide is wasteful or fraudulent to them, not by a legal definition, just what they see it as. So for example, Musk has decided that a lot of fraud

is coming from undocumented immigrants. Entitlements fraud, that includes like Social Security, disability, Medicaid, entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here. America, come for the fraud. Stay because you've been imprisoned.

Hey, fun fact also, no, that's not true. Sorry, I'm not being woke when I say that there just isn't any evidence that immigrants are committing widespread fraud. In fact, the opposite is true. A 2024 study found that unauthorized immigrants paid almost $100 billion in taxes in 2022. That's almost as much as they've saved at Doge, but again, they don't care.

This is a partisan group that was told to cut a specific amount of money and find a specific amount of fraud. And they're going to do it so long as it fits into the right-wing narrative. And in case you don't realize, that's not actually how audits work. Auditing is another very specific thing with a specific definition and process, and that

definition doesn't include starting with a conclusion and then forcing it to happen. Kinda like how medical studies don't start with a government official vowing to find the environmental causes of autism by a certain month. That's obvious, right? Determining the outcome and timeline and then forcing that conclusion is the opposite of science. It's the opposite of an objective audit, which is by the way, something we already do.

Like, not sure I've stressed that enough, but I keep mentioning the Government Accountability Office as the smart kid Doge keeps copying their homework from. But auditing isn't simply the process of hacking down spending and then calling it a day. It's an involved and timely process that takes a lot of attention to nuance. That's perhaps why, when asked by Wired about the Doge cuts,

actual federal auditors were horrified by what they saw and pointed out that stuff like canceling contracts is likely going to cost the government more money because most contracts penalize you for breaking them. In fact, according to one analysis, when you tally up stuff like the paid leave, firing and rehiring workers, and the lowered productivity, Doge has nearly cost the American taxpayers as much as they claim to have saved. I repeat, Doge has nearly broken even.

And that isn't even counting all the stacking lawsuits or the effect these cuts will have on the IRS's ability to collect taxes. Nearly broken even. And that isn't even counting all the stacking lawsuits or the effect these cuts will have on the IRS's ability to collect taxes. I know we all hate taxes and boo taxes, boo. But it should be noted that the Internal Revenue Service is one of our most efficient agencies when it comes to the amount of money it makes

versus how much we spend on it. It is after all the internal revenue service. It makes revenue for the government. And so it's very stupid to, for example, force them to cut down their staff and make them less able to collect that revenue. That's the equivalent of a store throwing out their cash registers to save money.

And we know this because when Biden increased staffing, the IRS revenue increased and the cost of collecting taxes decreased, meaning that the IRS was spending less to collect more. This is all to say that cutting the IRS is directly counterproductive to the claim of saving money or creating efficiency, which anyone could figure out by just taking a moment to think about it,

or like ask somebody. And so perhaps there's another reason they want to do this. And of course, when you stand back from it all, Doge has actually done the complete opposite of what it claims to achieve, not only on a monetary level, but by destabilizing our institutions. A whistleblower complaint filed by an IT staffer at the NLRB claims that DOJ gained access to closely guarded data, including case files, and that could have led directly to a quote

significant cybersecurity breach. That's the National Labor Relations Board, which functions to protect workers' rights these files and that could have led directly to a quote, significant cybersecurity breach. That's the National Labor Relations Board, which functions to protect workers' rights to join a union. I wonder why Elon went after them, which was, according to a whistleblower, raided by Doge for private worker information. I wonder why.

I keep wondering stuff. When will somebody tell me? Because remember when Trump said that Doge would be working outside of our government as a separate entity? Technically, that's true, except they have all the access and authority of a government institution without that oversight or attention to privacy.

So that means it's an independent group owned and run by wealthy business executives and investors, with an army of software engineers and not a single forensic accountant, claiming to be doing an audit for which there will apparently not be a report, and cutting waste and getting access to the sensitive information and code to every government institution. Even if they had the best intentions, there's absolutely no way that's going to be good. They simply don't know what they're doing.

They've opened up the engine and are just pulling wires. At best, all our sensitive data will be leaked. We know this because they already did this, accidentally posting classified information on their silly little website. And again, this is at best. Because dare I say, I don't think they have the best intentions.

Remember Big Balls, that 19 year old Doge Staffer who made the news for being one of many young tech workers with absolutely no business having access to government information. Well, here he is just delighting Jesse Waters. Who's Big Balls? It's me. What does Big Balls do?

Right now I'm working on some payment computer stuff. So one of our initiatives is to root out fraud and waste. And to do that, we started looking at the payment computers. And as mentioned earlier, there is no accounting of what payments actually go to in the payment computer. Big Balls! It is hard to really stress how

unserious and dangerous this is. This clown shit dystopia somehow surpassing the drunkest dreams of Paul Verhoeven as we watch Elon Squire, Mr. Big Balls, talk about his time rooting through a government payment system. Young Big Balls, who also allegedly worked for a cyber criminal group in the past, because he's just some kid.

Also, I hear his balls aren't really that big, so they're all just liars. Big Balls isn't the racist one, by the way. That's a different guy. And these guys, Big Balls, the racist, the other racist, they have access to your medical and bank records, your earnings, your tax filings, your social security number.

Some of these employees were given this access before they were given background checks. But even if Big Balls and Indian Hate Guy were on their best behavior, there is still a deeper reason why DOJ is doing the complete opposite of what it's claiming. We're actually gonna do a whole separate episode about this, but Doge has been fundamentally built on a lie.

Part of that lie is that efficiency is the same thing as spending less money. We see this in how Doge set up their website, which has an efficiency leaderboard that is only based on the amount of money that's been cut from the departments. Less money spent isn't automatically the same thing as more efficient, that's absurd. But the main lie they're telling is that the purpose of the federal government is to be efficient

and cost effective. That's not the point of government. The value of a government isn't monetary. I mean, they literally make our money. The value of a government is how effective they are at supporting their citizens. So to go in and declare that you have to cut a trillion dollars from the government,

a completely arbitrary amount, is fundamentally counter to the function of a government, especially when you consider that in order to actually hit that $1 trillion mark, you'd have to go after vital agencies that we can't do without. I mean, the government's one big permit scheme, if you ask me. Yeah, well, you could tell me better than anybody.

Social Security is the biggest policy scheme of all time. Aha, yeah, it sure would be convenient if Elon Musk could convince Americans that it's actually good to destroy social security and Medicaid and Medicare. After all, the US spends $1.5 trillion on social security alone. If they could just wipe that out,

they'd meet that arbitrary goal and Elon might get a second special badge. Man, that is a picture he actually posted. He wanted us to see that. Whew. You ever try to install a new video game on your computer but you don't have enough room? Then you go through your files and you're like,

let's take up all this space. And all you can find is a bunch of random little files and also your big school or work or porn folder. And you start deleting all these little files, but you have no idea what they do. And you keep eyeballing that big school work porn folder, but you need that folder to learn or work or cum. That's what's happening with Doge. They were told they need to delete a certain amount of money, but have no idea how anything

works and simply aren't educated enough to weed through it all. So it would be a lot easier if they simply dumped the big stuff. And Social Security is one of those big fish. Except, unlike the porn folder, the people doing the deleting don't actually care if they lose it. And they are trying to delete it. Last we checked, Doge is elbow deep in our social security administration in his hunt for fraud and waste. And he really wants us to think there's fraud,

even if he has to, you know, say stuff that isn't true. One interesting statistic was that 40% of the calls into social security were fraudulent. Like meaning that it was someone trying to get a Social Security payment that was going to a senior to go to a, instead to go to a fraud ring. So that was almost half of the phone calls. Interesting.

Also incorrect. The statistic he botched is that 40% of a specific type of fraud was calls to social security. Not that 40% of all social security calls were fraud. In fact, social security fraud from direct deposits, which does happen, totals to, bear with me, 0.00625% of their payments. Let's put that number on screen.

0.00625%, which is roughly $100 million in social security fraud. Now that's not, not a lot, but it's certainly less than a trillion dollars. This is all to say that Elon Musk has absolutely no justification for gutting Social Security by claiming widespread fraud. There just isn't enough.

And even if there was, the answer wouldn't be to make massive cuts. And yet, that is what Musk is planning to do as hundreds of offices are set to close this year, and at least 7,000 employees will be out of a job. This is not only devastating, but the opposite of efficient. Fewer employees means seniors don't get their payments on time and also fewer people to investigate fraud, the thing they care so much about.

Since Doge took over, the social security site has crashed multiple times due to Musk's goons trying to install fraud detection software that is untested and likely unable to handle the traffic on the site. Again, 0.00625%. It is very important to everyone's survival

that they understand how little we need Elon Musk to touch the Social Security Administration. If he breaks it or guts it, then a lot of people might lose everything they have. That includes 90% of all Americans over the age of 65, many of whom simply won't be able to afford food and clothes without those benefits. He needs to stay the fuck out of there.

Someone put a big padlock on it. And I can't stress enough that this is just one of many vital agencies that Doge is dismantling. Two devastating results. Their cuts to USAID, for example, have already killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, who depend on their support, and they're projected to cause millions of more deaths over the coming years. It's hard to fully fathom how many people Doge and Trump are not only killing,

but also essentially discounting their existence as fucking waste. That is, dare I say, I'm gonna dare, evil. So to recap, Doge is costing as much money as it's cutting, is making the government less efficient, killing people, and is making our data more vulnerable, opening us up to more fraud and potentially causing a great deal of us to go broke.

So what does it actually do? What is the actual purpose of Doge? Glad you asked me, because after the break, me will tell you, and hopefully nothing else will be comically removed from our set. Friends, I'm known for my hot takes. Here's one. Marcy Playground should have had another radio hit

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That's mintmobile.com slash news. Okay, you want more hot take? Okay, are you sure you can handle it? I don't think you can, but here it is. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plan options available,

taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. What are you gonna do? Cancel me? Welcome back. Katie, come on, this is too much. Yes, my oat biscuits. How does this make the show more efficient?

Mm-hmm, glad you asked. By cutting down on waste, like the desk and the backdrop and utilities, those savings can be passed down to you. So I'm getting money for this? No, I said can. It can do that. Money can do a lot of things. Build cities, ruin empires. You can wear it like a hat. It's honestly pretty wild when you think about all the importance we put on it. I learned that from you. It's fake. We made it up,

just like food and clothing. I mean, honestly, does anyone really even need stuff to live? What are you even saying at this point? Zuppadoo, Dibidida, Bop Bop Bop, Beep Boop Boop, and also Glorbidiglu, Blah Blah Blah. Okay, now you're just making sounds. Blah Blah Blah. Well, can't get any lower than this at least. I've definitely hit the bottom. All they can do is kill me now.

And speaking of hitting the bottom, Doge, as we've recapped, it's not saving us money, but rather costing us money. It's not finding fraud and in fact might cause more fraud. It's not saving our institutions, but actually degrading our institutions. None of that is my opinion. That's just what it's doing.

So what is the actual point of it? Well, there are two options there. Either Elon Musk and Donald Trump earnestly thought that Doge would make things better and then failed, or Doge was actually created for another goal that had nothing to do with making the country better for most Americans. Or it could be both of those things, but who?

Who stands to gain from our agencies and regulators becoming less efficient? Oh, the mystery. If he loses, man, what? What? What? What? I'm, I'm. You're fucked, dude. I'm fucked. If he loses, man, what? You're fucked, dude. I'm fucked.

If he loses, I'm fucked. It does seem that way. So, yeah, let's explain the heist. Within hours of becoming our very popular new president, Donald Trump signed an executive order that took the United States Digital Service, a small agency designed to streamline government websites, and renamed it to the United States DOJ Service, as well as moved it under the Executive Office. What that did was make DOJ immune to the Freedom of Information Act and shielded it under the Presidential Records Act instead. In other words, Trump immediately made it so that no one,

not even Congress, could easily see what Doge was doing from the start. He also classified it as a temporary organization, which allows them to circumvent certain regulations around how long people work there and what they get paid. This temporary status also allows Elon Musk himself to personally fund Doge, which is fucking nuts, and means that it's basically impossible

for anyone to keep track of their operations. In fact, we don't actually know if Musk is funding Doge or where their money is coming from or how they are spending it. All we know is that about $40 million was set aside for Doge at the start of the Trump administration. That could be 40 million total or 40 million a month. We know that a portion of that money

was allocated under the Economy Act, which allows agencies to charge other agencies for work. So a lot of it was probably paid for out of the budgets of other departments of the government. We don't know if that money is being spent on salaries or equipment or more cool meme badges for everyone. I can't stress enough how UN-transparent they are being. According to NPR, many Doge staffers have actually erased their online profiles to make it harder to figure out who the hell they are.

And you might notice that, bureaucratically speaking, this is the equivalent of Danny Ocean putting together a crime team. Doge was formed in a very specific way to ensure that it can't be monitored, their employees can't be identified, but it has full wide access to our agencies to ensure that it can't be monitored. Their employees can't be identified. But it has full wide access to our agencies

and is run by an outside benefactor who happens to have a personal motivation for deregulating the government. FAA is investigating why a SpaceX rocket exploded after a critical test launch today. But tonight the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is raising concerns about the actually smart summon feature

in an estimated 2 and 1 half million Teslas. Elon Musk was sued on Tuesday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused the world's richest person of waiting too long to disclose in 2022 he had amassed a large stake in Twitter. US House Democrats are investigating SpaceX amid concerns that Russia might be using

Starlink satellite internet for military purposes in Ukraine. Medical device company Neuralink is reportedly under federal investigation due to employee complaints regarding its animal testing, according to Reuters. Seems like a bit of a stupid oversight that somehow a completely unelected billionaire being investigated by so many government agencies

was put in charge of those agencies. That is kind of hard to even fully comprehend. It's so obviously bad and stupid that even a child would see that. It's like making the Zodiac killer the next district attorney. I guess that family is in politics already though. But yeah, this is just so stupid.

Does anyone not see that this is stupid? I guess Trump doesn't. It really seems like Elon Musk has essentially scammed his way into deregulating himself out of his crimes, his probably fraud and abuse related crimes. Trump is like the old man falling for the Nigerian Prince email scam, I guess.

Or rather, more likely, Trump is in on the scam. He and Elon did a bunch of crimes, sometimes in tandem, and by some cosmic idiocy, were allowed to be in charge of the people who were supposed to prosecute them. They are doing a scam together as pals, or rather it's more of a love hate thing like Midnight Run. They don't like each other, but they're stuck with each other.

A fun romp or more aptly put, this is a raid. They are raiding the government. We've seen all these headlines. Doge has locked federal employees out of their own computer systems. They've screamed at, mocked, and laughed at the people they are mass firing, putting people on leave if they dare

to stand up to their weird goons. On the day we recorded this, it was reported that part of Trump's tariff negotiations is to push some countries into approving deals with Starlink. This is a raid. It's not even clever enough to be called a heist. It's a smash and grab.

And it's not just to ensure that Musk avoids consequences for all the crimes he already did. This is very important to realize. This is also about avoiding the crimes he's going to do by simply not making them crimes anymore. There is a reason, for example, why Musk kept saying that we'd never reach Mars if Harris won the election.

For starters, he doesn't really mean we, he means him. He would never reach Mars because he is under investigation and doesn't want to follow all the regulations and competition that SpaceX would need to navigate. It's much easier for him if he just, you know, becomes a shadow president, cuts those regulations,

and then rewards himself all the government contracts he needs to make billions. Meanwhile, his co-president can fire all the inspectors general who were supposed to be overseeing those contracts for conflicts of interest. And bam, next stop, Mars. And we're gonna take Doge to Mars! Again, HE'S going to take Doge to Mars. We're gonna be here on Earth struggling to afford food because our Social Security

was gutted. Also, he's not going to go to Mars either way. But he is going to have enough money to buy Mars. It's a raid. Elon Musk raided the government so he could make himself even richer and more powerful, as well as make his other rich buddies even richer and more powerful. And it was at the cost of our quality of life. Because, of course, this all helps other rich people and corporations who get to save money by cutting corners, harming their employees,

harming the environment, harming all of us, thanks to this new lack of regulation. He raided us, the taxpayers, and made all our lives considerably worse for his gain. He should go to jail soon, efficiently, one might say. As for what Trump is getting out of this, well, incredibly, that's actually far more chilling because the other thing Doge has been doing this whole time, the other heist

that's going on, is the collection and consolidation of our private information. Trump is using the guise of efficiency and anti-bureaucracy to, according to his own executive order, remove unnecessary barriers to federal employees accessing government data and promoting interagency data sharing. In other words, he's trying to merge all of your personal information into one big database. The obvious first purpose of this would be to track and spy on immigrants, but of course it's not limited to that. See, the reason our data is spread across different agencies isn't because of needless

bureaucracy. It's because the people who look at our tax records don't really need our medical data. Our credit history doesn't need to be in the same file as our IP addresses or criminal records. It's for our safety and privacy that all that stuff isn't in one place, not just because of leaks or hackers, but so our own government stays out of our business.

You'd think Republicans and libertarians would be pissed about this. This is, without exaggeration, the creation of a surveillance state. They are already using Doge to spy on people, citizens, and will keep doing it. You know how in movies when a corrupt senator or official could just have some hacker weirdly played by Jack Black pull up this godfile about the protagonist and know everything

about them? Well, that doesn't actually exist. Until now. And the first guy to take it for a spin will be Trump. And if you, perhaps, dislike Trump and think that he's guiding us into an authoritarian state, well, you know why this is bad. But if you, for some reason, really like Trump and think he won't abuse it, well then what of the next president? Cyborg Biden, perhaps? that commie AOC. Do you want every subsequent administration to have this power, this extremely destructive genie

that can't be crammed back into the bottle? Wow. So I guess Trump was right when he called it the Manhattan Project of our time, wasn't he? Einstein is gonna be so disappointed what with all the ripples and rain and junk. Well, that's my time, I guess.

Weird. Now that it's dark, I feel a lot calmer, like it's night or something. Am I a bird? Is that why I keep pooping white? Oh, so we've been talking about Musk as the head of Doge this whole time because he's in charge of it and he named it and he's the one interviewed about it and it's staffed by his own colleagues and employees and he's just like, he's in charge of it and he named it and he's the one interviewed about it and it's staffed by his own colleagues and employees.

And he's just like, he's everywhere. But the actual head of Doge is a woman named Amy something? Gleason. Someone should talk to her about all this, I guess. Hey there, thank you so much for watching. Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a nice comment and turn the lights back on. Thank you so much. watching. Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a nice comment and turn the lights back on. Thank you so much.

I assume you also left a nice comment and liked and subscribed. So you can go now. We've got a podcast called Even More News you can listen to if you'd like to do that. We have that on our YouTube channel twice a week. You can also listen to this show as a podcast if you didn't like our fun little visual gags this week.

You can check out our patreon.com slash some more news. That's a website. You can also go to our merch store. That URL is on the screen. It's for you. RL. And you know what? Turn the lights back off.

Ah, thank you so much. Oh, I just needed to poop real quick. Some white and then tweet, tweet, tweet, I think. Right? Yeah, I think tweet, tweet, tweet. If you're looking to streamline your audio advertising buys and maximize your revenue, look no further than Triton Digital's Programmatic Audio Advertising Exchange, A2X.

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