Some More News - Some More News: Yes, DOGE and Elon Musk Killed People

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Hi. On today's episode of Some More News, we look at the lasting impact of Elon Musk's DOGE: all the jobs and programs they slashed, plus USAID and how feeding it "into the woodchipper" resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Rachel Van Ness and David Christopher BellProduced 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#DOGE #ElonMusk #USAIDFor 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: SMNIf you’re 21 or older, go to https://indacloud.co and use code SMN for 30% off the entire month.Elevate your summer bedding. Go to https://quince.com/somemorenews for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.This year, skip breaking a sweat AND breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at https://mintmobile.com/morenews – Upfront payment of $45 required (equivalent to $15/mo.). Limited time new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 50GB on Unlimited plan. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.Chapters:0:00 - Introduction2:23 - Perhaps Putting A Nazi in Charge of Government Efficiency Was A Bad Idea9:23 - All the Things DOGE Did To Us23:27 - What Actually Happened With USAID?32:28 - Who Is Responsible For All The People DOGE Killed?50:29 - DOGE Was A Heist59:01 - How Do We Fix This?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summer of Cody! It's so hot in the studio. Hey friends, what a month. Tay Swift got married to Trakels, two grams dropped out, and America celebrated 250 years of being around. You know, fireworks, tiny American flags, conflicting emotions, liking, subscribing to YouTube channels, a great American tradition, of course. But here's some news.

One thing that got missed and all that hullabaloo, is that July 4th was also the official termination date for Doge. Remember Doge? In case you forgot, that stands for the Department of Something Something. Donald Trump, who is the president of the something something, used to be so into Doge. Remember that? Remember Trump running around with Elon Musk,

holding hands, playing with his robot son? Like a proper family they were. Together, they were going to cut the waist. and fraud and make our government more efficient. And then what happened? I forget. All I can remember from that time is the color red, and these days they don't really talk about Doge anymore, do they?

You'd think, right here at the end, they'd do some kind of victory lap for Doge's success, and yet it seems like both Trump and Musk don't really talk about it much and perhaps want it to go away. Like it's one of their kids or something. And in fact, the only official mention was from the Office of Management and Budget back in June, which stated that there were no plans to do any kind of post-mortem on Doge's performance. Shucks!

I guess that would be too inefficient. But hey, here's some more news for Musk and Trump. Great news, in fact. If the government is too busy to do an exit interview for Doge, we're not! Might as well kick the job. job to the private sector that is this show, because we got nothing going on! Look at my suit!

You think I go to clubs? Don't you worry, Mr. President and or Mr. Musk? Cody's on the case. I'm sure it'll go... Really swell. Boy, Doe sure did kill a lot of people. Oh no! Not swell!

Generally speaking, a government program designed for efficiency isn't supposed to kill people. Of course, to be fair and something something, this statement that Doge killed people is technically being challenged by one guy who might be a little biased about it. So you don't buy the idea that anybody, to put it really crudely and simply, any kid in Africa died because of the suddenness with which... Zero. I just don't think that's right.

Zero, says Elon Musk, guy who started Doge, about the child death count caused by Doge. Maybe we should check his work on that. Later in this episode, because he's wrong, and a liar, and a bad person who sucks at Eldon Ring. I mean, look at that. What's going on there? Okay. Also, notice we keep saying Doge killed a lot of people and not a specific person. That's probably important. For legal reasons, sure, but also for accuracy. We're not exactly fans

of Elon Musk or Donald Trump here on this show. But as Jordan Peterson, who we love, taught us, we need to be precise in our speech. So yes, to be specific and legal, the program that was the Department of Government Efficiency took actions that resulted in the deaths of many people, which will explain later. And it just so happens that Doge was at least partially conceived by Elon Musk, Specifically, back in 2023 at a fundraising dinner for Vivek Ramoswamy, where Musk joked that, if given the right passwords, he could fix the government. My goodness, Vivek! Holy Toledo!

I completely forgot that Vivek Ramaswamy, who you should not vote for if you live in Toledo, Ohio, was originally part of Doge. I lucked out of that, huh? A real Doge Dodge. Or rather, he was sort of stabbed in the back by Musk and booted out. Some real Corey Matthews behavior for Musk there, huh, Vivek? Should be noted that none of this was really Musk's or Vivek's idea. For one, a whole bunch of Silicon Valley dips were involved, including venture and or vulture capitalists Mark Andresen and David Sacks,

Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebia. But also, the concept of looking to the private sector to streamline the government is something Reagan explored with the Grace Commission. Heck, even the name Doge wasn't Elon's idea. He got it from an ex-user. Basically, Elon Musk made Doge the same way he makes everything by launching off of a bunch of other people's ideas and work

and taking all the credit. Genuinely surprised he didn't call it Doge X. Don't give him any ideas. But I mainly bring up this history to point out that making the government more efficient isn't particularly new or insidious on its face. Mark Andresen even pointed to Albus Gore's national partnership for reinventing government initiative when defending Doge, adding, quote, at the time, it was a Normie Democrat thing. Of course you want government deficiency. Of course you want a balanced budget.

And ideally, you want a government surplus, right? And somehow, now that's turned into, oh my God, it's fascism? You tell those libs, Mark. I mean, I have some big thoughts about the merits of government deficiency, but you can see how at its core, at its vaguest, this is an appealing and bipartisan idea that presidents have considered in the past. And so I guess it's just Trump derangement syndrome that people were suddenly so against it with Doge specifically. Or maybe there's another reason. Oh yeah, right, the Nazi thing. Hey, Mark, maybe that's one of the reasons people are saying, oh God, it's fascism, due to the fascism stuff, because the world's richest man gave not one but two Nazi salutes during the inauguration of the president who specifically ran on removing

specific people from the country. And then that Nazi salute giver, who was also famous for lying and raciously treating workers like shit, was put in charge of government deficiency. And then that Nazi salute giver in charge of government efficiency was like, great news everyone, I'm going to take all your personal information and give everything to AI, this new and famously unstable technology, so it can be in charge of firing everyone, specifically anything involving diversity, equity, or inclusion. I don't know, Mark Andreessen, perhaps it's that and not people mad at the idea of Efficiency. Perhaps it's the fact that Musk and others treated the task of laying off thousands of people with open Glee and hostility. Perhaps it's not a good look for the guy in charge of devastating the careers of others to wave around a chainsaw while screeching like the least popular kid at the laser tag arena.

See, Doge started not only from the premise that the government was inefficient and packed with waste and fraud and DEI monsters, but that the the people causing this were doing so as a kind of deep state enriching themselves off of the taxpayers. And Elon was liberating us from them, therefore justifying his antagonistic approach. Well, we have this unelected fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has in a lot of ways currently more power than any elected representative. And this is there's not something that people want and it's not it does not match the will of people so we do find it's sort of rather odd that you know there are quite a few people in in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few

hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions dollars in net worth while they are in that position which is you know what what happened to USAID we're just curious as to where to came from. Oh, are we concerned about people enriching themselves while in office? Love that little chuckle Trump does in the clip. But sure, a bloated bureaucracy and inefficiency can be issues in a government. But they don't feel like the issue, you know, unless you're a billionaire who doesn't want

to pay workers or taxes and is trying to send your whims pinwheeling into space and need to deal with a lot of regulations and laws. But okay, Elon and Trump pinned all the problems of the country on this fourth unconstitutional branch of our government. And in that clip, he seemed particularly hostile toward USAID, which is interesting. End of note.

So actually, yeah. So they very loudly and publicly started with this conclusion, saying they were going to save the government $1 trillion, despite having no previous investigation or analysis into government waste. So there was just no world where they could say, Oops, we were wrong, or more realistically. Oops, we were wrong.

Zero. And almost immediately, Musk and Trump claimed they had found fraud, but didn't give any specifics. As reporters pushed for information, the White House would point to several instances of funding toward climate change and DEI programs. Which isn't fraud, but rather just stuff they personally don't like. And also, they referred to a 2024 government accountability

office report that found fraud. Which isn't them finding fraud. It's them finding a report from other people who found fraud, the other people being those who work at the actual offices responsible for finding fraud and waste that already existed. See, it turns out it's not very efficient to create a confusing new office of efficiency when there are already several offices that do this. Or rather, it's not very efficient to take the United States Digital Service, a department within the larger Office of Management and Budget that was originally in charge of improving government websites, but then just rename that doge. That Office of Management and Budget also works in tandem with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency,

which in 2023 made recommendations that they say would have saved the government nearly $93 billion. It's all to say that Doge was this confusing redundancy, bafflingly designated as a subdivision of a larger office, but somehow now in charge of all efficiency. But only until July of this year, and then it's gone, which was a wildly inefficient and suspicious thing to do. Similarly, Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general in January of last year. So dare I suspect that this was never about finding fraud or waste. Because if you did care about government efficiency, there are actual ways to address that. Back in May, New York mayor, Zoran Mamdani introduced the Commission on Government Efficiency, or Kozh for short.

Cute. He's so cute, guys. Unlike Doge, Koje is set to review the. the entire New York City Charter, put together proposals, and to get feedback on them from 10 public hearings across the five boroughs before they're put on the ballot. See, he isn't just mass firing everyone and then sifting through the rubble, because that would be stupid and destructive and ineffective and not cute. Like Doge was stupid and destructive and ineffective and not cute. We know this now. But we also knew this back then. But we super

know this now. At Doge, for this administration, you had no fire government experience, right? No. You don't regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives? No. I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from two trillion dollars to close to zero. Did you reduce the federal deficit? No, we didn't. Right. Despite eliminating over 272,000 jobs, Doge didn't really do much. They claimed to have saved $160 billion well under their goal, but even that number will likely cancel itself out after subsequent lawsuits and paid leave

and having to rehire some of the employees they fired because they, you know, had no idea what they were doing. That child in the video is one of many who were recruited through word of mouth in tech circles and was basically told to ask ChatGPT to seek out woke stuff to cut for, the government, but ultimately just sort of blindly cut whatever these 20-something dudes deemed unimportant. It could never be about saving money or targeting waste because most of what they were doing

was just firing people, people who only made up 8% of total spending. The Cato Institute found that even a 10% reduction of the federal workforce would only save $40 billion or 4% of Musk's goal. Meanwhile, Trump added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in his first year. So what we're left with is more spending, but less quality since Doge cut down really important stuff, like VA health care providers, national park staff, and scientific research. They also targeted the IRS, an agency that, mind you, pays for itself, and also collects 96% of federal revenue. The Yale Budget Lab estimated this led to $861 billion in lost revenue.

Doge also did away with 18F, a government department that worked with federal agencies to streamline technology and workflows. They were working on direct file, an IRS pilot program that helped Americans file their taxes directly, and one could say, more efficiently, with the IRS for free, instead of relying on third-party tax preparation companies like TurboTax. Doge, of course, acts that too. But don't worry, because along with costing us more money and making everything worse, Doge also stole our data. At best, the mishandling of our private information was done out of incompetence. At worst, it was a guy literally stealing our social security information on a thumb drive

and taking it to his next job. This is all to say that, just at a surface level assessment. Doge was a heist, and not even a smooth and cool heist where Denzel figures it out at the end and gives a little smirk like, you sly sons of bitches, but rather a sloppy and grotesque heist, where you tie a bomb to a dog and throw it through the window of a 7-Eleven. It was a front used to justify dismantling the government in order to better plunder it. But that wasn't the only thing it was, and this is where we get to the whole Doge killed people thing. Specifically, it's this. As of November 5th, it estimated that USAID's dismantling has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children.

That's 400,000 children. Wow. That kind of information, if true, would sure haunt me for life if I was even partially responsible for it. I'd be like Sam Neal, RIP. at the end of In the Mouth of Madness, or Sam Neal, RIP, at the end of Event Horizon, or Sam Neal, RIP, in the middle of dead calm.

His characters didn't have a great time. USAID was one of the first departments Doge went after, probably because Trump wanted to cut the agency back during his first term as well. As you saw in that Oval Office clip, Elon was very specifically calling out USAID from the start. He called the humanitarian organization, evil and a vipers' nest of radical left Marxists who hate America.

Musk posted about it 160 times on X, promoting various conspiracy theories, including that USAID and the CIA had teamed up to try and impeach Trump in 2019, that USAID funds were secretly used to create COVID-19, and that USAID paid celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to visit Ukraine to boost Volodymy Zelensky's public image. Really, you couldn't get Zendaya and Tom Holland. Get with the times, guys. Then, on February 3rd, 2025, Musk proudly exed that they'd fed the world's largest humanitarian operation into the wood chipper. By March, USAID had been reduced by 83%. Four months later, it was gone. All because a few rich guys didn't like it and felt free to openly lie.

about it. And boy, that had deadly consequences. Or maybe it didn't. But zero died because of Doge. Zero. That's what I, that's what I would take issue with. I think. Hmm. Who you trying to convince there, Elon? With your zero point zero. Does the point make the lie feel more smart for you? Is your intelligence so high even though you're carrying two shields with low endurance and you have a bunch of summons where your flasked? Why are your summons there? You only use one anyone like... Okay, so we're going to go to one of our famous ad breaks. And when we return, we will look at what happened with USAID and how many point people died. Heck, maybe it'll be good and will absolve Elon Musk somehow. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if we absolved Elon Musk?

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I assume that's a minion. I've never seen any of them. I mean, I'm the minions experts in the building. And it's me. Hey, look at us. all back from ads and such, wearing pants and such, sober-ish and such, paying our bills. We were talking Doge, doing a bit of a recap about how it made this country worse

in many different ways. For example, as of writing this episode, that hot new diarrhea craze was sweeping the nation. Everyone was doing the diarrhea. And of course, we are far less equipped to handle this epidemic thanks to Doge. It's almost cartoonish, how much even Elon Musk keeps compiling the worst PR imaginable. He's the rich Nazi guy who cheats at video games, makes the world's dumbest trucks, and gives everyone free explosive diarrhea. Allegedly. Because allegedly, he's also at least partially

responsible for a whole lot of death in other countries. This is true, no matter how many times he says the word with which zero. I just don't think that's right. Not even going to address why Musk claims it's zero people because I can just say what actually happened instead. Also, I'm going to tease right here at the start of this. Elon Musk isn't the person we should be the most mad at for USAID, nor is Trump. But before we point delicious fingers, let's talk about what has actually happened. How are people actually calculating the death toll from the cuts to USAID? Also, what is USAID? A cluster of letters for sure, but also the United States Agency for International Development

was the largest source of international aid from the United States. They managed about $43 billion in 2023, accounting for 60% of U.S. spending on foreign aid. That budget might sound big until you consider it's less than 1% of the federal budget, or $24 per American a year. USAID was able to stretch that to help millions of people annually with an estimated 92 million lives saved in the last two decades. Along with helping others, it also helped everyone in the sense that addressing the problems of poorer countries reduces international issues like refugee crises and diseases. You know how they always complain about migrants crossing the border? Well, this would reduce that.

But now it's pretty much gone. murdered with the help of a vacant-eyed edge lord. And considering that we know it saved a lot of lives, it's logical to conclude that getting rid of USAID cost a lot of lives. But probably the most notable accusation here comes from Ro Khanna, calling for Musk to face accountability for the, quote, 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death. Now, Musk has been super duper sensitive about

this whole you killed children, Dilley. So we're gonna choose our words carefully when explaining what happened. Rokana's claim seems to come from this study co-created by a UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Researcher. That study collected data from multiple places, including the global burden of disease collaborative network, which boasts over 20,000 researchers

from more than 167 countries and territories, and uses data from literature, vital registration, surveys, censuses, administrative records, registries, individual studies, reports, and satellite imagery. To quote, quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to diseases, injuries, risk factors, impairments, and etiologies by age, sex, and geographic location for specific points in time. So that study used that data to track the impact that USAID had between 2001 and 2021, and then used something called a micro-simulation model, which is a computer program used specifically to see how policy changes affect individuals,

to come up with future projections of how USAID's cuts would affect people. From that model, they concluded their words, not ours, don't sue us, quote, forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14,051,715, additional all-age deaths, including 4,537,157 in children younger than age five years by 2030. So yeah. Dang. According to another model, USAID's closure has already caused 600,000 deaths, two-thirds of whom were children. Double dang.

I think this is going to be another red memory. But that horrifying number might be too abstract. So let's get into some examples. Cool, fun. So there's PEPFAR, an AIDS relief program that was largely implemented by USAID. In its absence, it's been estimated that 159,000 adults and 17,000 kids have already died in the first year. USAID was also responsible for bringing clean water around the world, which is important for preventing cholera, which is now on the rise in those countries that depended on us.

depended on us. In general, we're going to see a huge rise in sick and dying people, including here in the United States, because USAID used to work in conjunction with the CDC and the World Health Organization to combat and contain deadly diseases and viruses. We're already seeing it happen globally. This past May, there was a deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Odds are it's going to spread with many refugees traveling through the Eturi region, where the outbreak originated. In the past, USAID would have been on it much earlier. But back in February of 2025, Musk and Doge cut funding for Ebola. When they were called out on it, Musk said it was an accident and that Doge would make mistakes. Oops! A little oopers there from the double Nazi salute

Giver. Musk claimed they restored that funding immediately. Except it doesn't seem like he actually did. But at least the CDC and WHO can step in and help is something I would love to say. Except Doge also cut funding to the CDC and Trump barred them from communicating with WHO, which Trump also broke up with back in January. Now the CDC is completely understaffed and can't communicate with WHO. Their teams are burnt out. No help is coming and over 3,000 people have already been confirmed positive for Ebola. Experts warn that this current strain is carrying more momentum than the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, which claimed over 11,000 lives. Will there be a global Ebola pandemic? I don't know, Czech polymarket. It's hard to say,

considering we deliberately got rid of the people whose entire job it was to make sure we'd never have to find out. But I don't personally feel great that it took over 200 people being confirmed positive before the outbreak was even caught. I mean, I don't personally feel great in general all the time, but I super don't feel great about this. But okay, maybe those examples are still too broad. As Elon Musk tweeted, they cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the millions they falsely claim have died. Not a single name. So I guess that's the standard we're holding this to.

We need individual names. Seems like an absurd form of denial from someone being faced with the unimaginable consequences of their actions. But sure, Elon, we can do that. Because this guy did that. There's Jibia, a 10-year-old who died of malaria when her local clinic ran out of medicine specifically due to USAID cuts. Similarly, there's eight-year-old.

year old Achold Dang, who died of an AIDS-related infection when she no longer had access to medicine. And there's Yama Freeman, a pregnant lady who died because USAID no longer provided the fuel needed for the ambulance to bring her to a hospital. So, boy, Elon, man, I know you didn't personally go out and throw AIDS at some kids, probably. But it must feel pretty fucking ghoulish when you're up there with your own child shrugging off the death of other children that you at least partially caused. We are moving fast, so we won't make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly. Hey, Elon, um, how do you fix it when a child dies?

No, don't say Neurrelink. It can't do that. And how do you fix the fact that you waged a propaganda war devoted to closing an agency that was keeping millions alive? How can you, um, sleep at night? I guess that's why God invented ketamine and denial, allegedly. So this is all to say that it's not actually a question of if people died because of the cuts to USAID. That absolutely happened.

The actual question here is, who is responsible for that? And did they know? And what should be done about it? And yes, obviously, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are high on this list. But I can't help but to observe that Elon Musk and Donald Trump also happen to be stupid people. Very stupid attention-seeking mutant babies who seem to ruin everything they touch. And Musk specifically has very few accomplishments that can be actually attributed to his imagination or intellect.

This is all to say that in true Elon fashion, he's kind of taking credit for another person's work. That person being Russell Vote, the current director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, and also the guy responsible for this. So VOTE is a self-declared budget hawk who wants to shrink the federal government and he gained national attention for co-authoring the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. Yep, we've actually talked about Russ in our Project 2025 episode. He has been ride or die for Trump since his first term, including supporting him during that whole attempted coup thing. So remember how I mentioned that Doge was technically under the Office of Management

and Budget? I think a lot of people might have imagined this as a takeover situation where Musk sort of strong-arm the entire agency into following his directives. The reality is that Russell Vote has wanted to do away with USAID before Doge even existed. He is, in a lot of ways, the sheave Palpatine of this administration. He even looks a little shrews. sheavey. He's got that sheave sheen, you know? Because it turns out that the OMB has a very large amount of internal power without a whole lot of attention. It's almost like some kind of deep state. According to one official speaking to the New Yorker, quote, we work for the president of the United States, but it feels like we work for Russ vote. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the

commander-in-chief. In that same article, they describe a meeting with Both vote where experts explained to him that people were going to die if they cut funding to USAID. And votes reaction was, quote, blaze. His stated goal was to cut USAID funding down to zero, maybe even zero point zero. And many people in that meeting left feeling deeply disturbed by it. One person remarked, it was the day that broke me. It's like they're describing meeting drag.

As for Doge and Elon, well, Vote didn't love their tactics, but sure found them useful for achieving his goals. After all, no one's talking about Russ, right? Probably because we had this guy running around instead. What a useful and loud idiot! Way to Patsy, Elon! That's your true talent. You are a natural dupe. Oh, also, maybe an important detail. Russell Vote is a Christian nationalist, or allegedly, of course, I should be precise in my words.

Russell Vote is maybe a Christian nationalist, as evidenced by this op-ed he wrote for Newsweek titled, Is there anything actually wrong with Christian nationalism? Oh, also, this audio clip of him saying he's a Christian nationalist. The phrasing is too after it to run away from the term, so you will see me, diving into it to say, let's talk about this. I'm a Christian, I am a nationalist, and so we were meant to be a Christian nation. Oh, okay, so he's a Christian and also a nationalist. Probably a more efficient way to say that.

We should get Doge on it. So that's Russ, a Christian nationalist, and Elon, the guy who did a Nazi salute twice. And Trump, who's a real Trump type, you know. And at least one of them reportedly knew that what they were doing was going to kill people. But people who were perhaps not Christian and not American. That sure sounds like some Nuremberg fodder, you know?

I'm not a detective anymore. But it really seems like we have motive and intent and a lot of evidence that these people knew their actions would kill other people, just not people they cared about, aka the whites. Going back to the actual purpose, purpose of Doge, it's just so clear that their directive was to root out minorities more than it was to make the government efficient. Similarly, the cuts to USAID were clearly about affirming Christian nationalism amongst other things.

It should be noted that a lot of USAID programs are being folded into the State Department so that they can, according to Marco Rubio, align with administration policies and advance American interests. See, because again, it's not about saving money, but taking the money and giving it to the things they want to support, specifically because of their ideology. And in the case of USAID, it's clear the goal isn't just to dissolve it or save money, but redirect it to better serve their political goals. See, here's the thing about USAID. For some people, the fact that it saved lives was actually a side effect of its actual function,

which was to serve as a form of soft power for the United States. While that's also what I named one of my guitars, in this case, soft power is basically the act of gaining influence and support in the world through dependency. It was created during the Cold War, likely for this reason. You could argue it's kind of insidious, and in fact USAID is only as good as the administration that wields it. Most recently, they had been helping Ukraine since Russia invaded, which of course aids an ally and sticks it to Russia a bit. But before that, USAID also cleared landmines in Asia, helped eradicate smallpox, and gave refugees much-needed aid. It even rehabilitated President George W. Bush's reputation in Africa, at least.

Bush gave financial aid to African countries working toward more democratic governments and championed PEPFAR to dedicate billions of dollars to HIV treatment and other diseases. Through programs like this, the U.S. established itself as the world leader of humanitarian and aid, which in turn makes us too big to fail. Even if you don't care, it's just good networking folks. We're like the dude at the party walking around with free beer. No one wants to mess with us. It makes us look cool and good and like we're so prosperous that we're just giving it away.

Which is useful because if these other countries knew how we actually lived, well boy, they wouldn't want to hang out with us at all. We're like that coworker slopping on Cologne to mask the smell of cat piss and pizza boxes. Please ignore the broken healthcare. We're still moving in. It's just good networking. But of course, a lot of the criticism of USAID also comes from this.

Because again, it depends on who is in charge. For example, under Reagan, USAID was more focused on paying American businesses to address problems for other countries, thus ensuring those private companies would embed themselves in those places. Because of course it was that thing, it's Reagan, baby! There have also been, yes, Elon, legitimate cases of fraud and mismanagement. In Afghanistan, USAID spent tens of millions on unsustainable projects without consulting locals. In one instance, they pushed an $8 million project to distribute seeds and tree saplings

that failed due to corruption and theft, which both the State Department and the Afghan government warned them would happen. This is why some leaders in Latin America celebrated the end of USAID. They saw it as a front for U.S. political intervention because that's oftentimes what it was. They rarely gave money to foreign governments to fund public institutions. Instead, they directed their cash flow toward private U.S. owned clinics and schools with ridiculous overheads. This was also a trend in Africa and the Caribbean, where Haiti was an unfortunate victim of this strategy. In the 1980s, the U.S., IMF, and World Bank pressured Haiti to lower tariffs in exchange for huge loans,

allowing them to import American rice for cheap. This rice was cheaper than anything Haitians could produce, driving Haitian farmers to quit farming. In 2010, President Clinton openly admitted that destroying Haitian agriculture was a huge mistake and to regret he'd have for the rest of his life. USAID has since tried to rectify this by supporting Haitian rice farmers

to end their dependency on U.S. rice, but that's not enough to make up for the decades of agricultural disruption. Also, in 2010, USAID created a fake social media site in Cuba in order to foment political dissent. The point is that, yeah, USAID did some bad stuff, which was used to justify getting rid of it by people who just want to do those same bad things more secretively. And at times, they'll pretty much just confess to that without even realizing it. I don't want to have a argument practice. organization. It may also have been that, but it was the biggest funder of healthcare systems.

So I am very sure that there was- Biggest funder of regime change. And there may well be benefits from having changed the system. Also, USID funding was not stopped. It was moved to the State Department. Biggest funder of regime change, he says, with his terrible voice, to justify abolishing it before noting that it's now being handled by the State Department. Hey, Musk, you think the State Department isn't going to do those

regime changes you're so pretending to be mad about? Again, what's left of it is being absorbed into other departments seemingly so that we can use aid to extort other countries even more. For example, the brand new Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response is taking over one aspect of USAID. That new department is going to focus less on climate change measures and be selectively choosing where to send aid for various disasters. According to one official there, quote, going to pick more carefully the stuff that we respond to. It's not the United States' responsibility to respond to every disaster, every crisis, especially when our adversaries or groups that hate the United States are at issue. We're not the world's policemen. We're not the world's social

safety net. But when our allies and strategic partners need our help and when there's stuff that we're engaging in because it's important to our national interest, then we're going to be, I think, allocating more resources there. So there it is. We're just openly declaring that we're only going to help people for the purposes of national interest, most likely a very narrow view of what that means. The same is happening with the food assistance programs that are now going to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which we're now literally calling the America first international food assistance, which, hey, that's not international at all. It's just so overtly trumping. Trumpian business scam shit.

The same way he canceled grants to states that didn't vote for him, were now only going to help the countries that we've decided fit American values or that we want something from. And you combine that with the open double Nazi and the open Christian nationalist, and you can already figure out which countries will be ignored. Just like how Doge internally targeted DEI initiatives without really saving money, the gutting of USAID was clearly just a way for the people. people in charge to support their Christian nationalist ideals. Just racist getting rid of stuff they don't personally like,

which will ultimately make the United States a worse place to live in and a weaker presence on the world stage, because they're too stupid and racist to understand how soft power really works. So, bummer, bummer stuff. Let's do a second break, and then we'll give our final assessment of Doge. Maybe slap a grade in it. there. Could be anything. Maybe it'll be an A. You have to keep watching to find out if Doge

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It won't be an A. Unless that A stands for ass, am I right? Okay, so the final assesment of Doge is it was bad. Big twist. Objectively speaking, like according to depositions and evidence, Doge was a bombastic and careless gutting of the United States government for the express purpose of removing people that the administration was ideologically opposed to, even if that was at the expense of the American people or the deaths of many. It made the country weaker, less efficient, probably smellier because of all the loose stools, and didn't save any money, perhaps even costing us more money. And that was probably the actual point. It was a trick.

knew it then, but we also know that now. Everything is worse. Air traffic controllers were already understaffed before Doge made cuts to the FAA. But this has led to more flight delays. Our national parks are experiencing a severe staffing crisis with some beaches not having a single lifeguard for peak summer months. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation doesn't have enough examiners to protect against bank failures. And that's all by design, because they want that small government and to kick all these essential services to private corporations focused on making a profit. That's their ideology. And it's pretty fucking telling that the only way for them to affirm that ideology was to create the problems it would then solve, right? That's what this is. Republicans

have spent forever yapping about how the government has bloated and slow and needed to be privatized. Except there wasn't actually that big of a problem. So they made one. Like if an exterminator poured cockroaches down your chimney, they made the government less functional in order to justify kicking it to corporations. USAID, along with being folded into other departments, is going to be offloaded to private corporations even more than Reagan did. That's not speculation. This is, according to Ambassador Mike Waltz, telling Fox News that is their plan, adding,

quote, you go to these forums at the United Nations and at development agencies around, the world and you never find the private sector. You find NGOs and academics and governments, but you don't find the creators of growth and the creators of jobs. Yet, what's the deal? You go to all these UN meetings about helping needy people and junk,

and for some reason you never see like, McDonald's there. What's with that? It's almost like there's no profit in doing the work of a nonprofit organization. We gotta change that. Or maybe, hear me out, but not. maybe not everything is designed to make a profit for someone.

Maybe not everything that makes a profit is good. Maybe not everything that's necessary for humanity's flourishing makes money. And in fact, forcing that result completely negates the original purpose of certain tasks. Sometimes society just has to do things to make the world better without getting all the money in return. That's just what a government often is. It governs for the sake of maintaining order without expecting a huge return in the process. But of course, this is the new plan across the board.

Not just with USAID, but everything Doge cut. The Office of Personnel Management just awarded a $400 million contract to Oracle to build an HR system. The agency basically hired a private company to replace itself. Project 2025 proposed fully commercializing the National Weather Service, and sure enough, Doge torched Noah's staff, which tracks severe storms. Trump also rerouted Biden's broadband equity, access, and deployment program, which was meant to deliver much-needed fiber optic networks to rural communities, and gave that to Musk's Starlink Telecom company. Musk, who also got the pleasure of gutting the very agencies that were supposed to regulate his companies,

while specifically sparing the ones that supported them, and who got access to every American's personal records for whatever purpose he needs. And at one point, got Trump to try to convert a Biden-era plan to spend $483,000 on electric vehicles to instead buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas, which experts determined wouldn't hold up in a hostile environment. Because, of course, they wouldn't. Thank you, experts. That was it.

That was the actual purpose. of Doge, to make Trump and Musk and other rich dudes even richer at the expense of the American people and just like most people. Like armored Teslas that cost way more, you think that benefits anyone but like two guys? It was a heist disguised as a service, like bank robbers dressing up as cops. Except the disguises were very shitty and only the stupidest people believed their lie. It's obvious what people like Musk got out of it. But for others like Russell Vote, it was an ideological win.

And the last thing on their mind was if this actually helped the country. Christian nationalism, this America first isolationism, massive deregulation, it doesn't work as a policy. Pushing aside how racist some of it is, it still just doesn't work. For many reasons, but one obvious one. For example, just a few weeks ago, in Myanmar, a massive earthquake killed thousands of people and leveled entire communities. The U.S. response included sending a three-person team who flew out to Myanmar, and then those people were fired two days after arriving on the scene.

Meanwhile, China sent a 600-person team to the disaster zone, many of whom are still on the ground there today. So the question is, when it comes to power and influence is our loss, China's gain. Maybe you don't care about China growing as a world power. Maybe you like it. But Trump sure seems concerned, or I guess he doesn't. But this is what their ideology leads to. From dissolving USAID to imposing international tariffs, to threatening to annex Greenland,

the Trump administration has burned most bridges with the international community. And China is more than happy to step in because they actually know the value of soft power. With USAID cuts, China has surpassed the USAID cuts, China has surpassed the US, U.S. in bilateral development support for the first time ever. They're outspending the U.S. in 84 countries. They're building alliances and trade partnerships, while the Trump administration continues to make enemies of all the former allies. Even Canada hates us.

I didn't think they felt hate as an emotion. Trump seems to think that the world is scrambling for our help, but the truth is that everyone will just move on without us. It's just really stupid and short-sighted thinking that could only come from a failed business idiot. It's putting personal racism and greed and ideology before long-term goals. And it also fucking kills people. USAID might not have been perfect and at times downright bad, but it saved tens of millions

of people from starvation and disease, which is somehow the part they don't like. They want to keep the bad parts, even though they use the bad parts to justify getting rid of the good parts. They've made that clear. Everything they do is built around this idea that America, at least on a federal level, should operate as this paranoid and aggressive force focusing all its money on starting fights with other countries, kicking everyone out, putting up a big wall, while the internal job of actually taking care of its citizens should be outsourced to corporations or handled on a state level. Or, you know, just left to rot.

rotten on the inside and hardened on the outside, just like them. It's just not a good way to run a country, man. It's like North Korea shit. We're isolating ourselves from the world while failing to help our own citizens. And it's expensive and cruel and stupid and frankly, very inefficient. And as I keep saying, they knew. They know. If you truly think that Doge existed to cut waste and spending and creating and

create efficiency. Well, it failed. But if you realize that it was actually just an excuse to plunder and reshape the government, then I guess it worked. And the final question is, how do we fix it? And what do we do about the people who caused it? Might I suggest, we do something? Because this was a bad idea. Doge was a bad idea that killed people. And even the stupidest person knows that. I have proof. Do you think you were successful? We're a little bit successful. We're somewhat successful.

Oh, he knows. Elon doesn't know much, but he knows he fucked up. Would you ever do Doge again? Do you mean would I repeat history or would I... Two ways to think about it. One is if you could go back and start from scratch, like it's January 20th all again, would you go back and do it differently? And knowing what you know now, do you think there's ever a place to restart you, not saying others in your stead?

You go back and restart doing Doge. I mean, no, I don't think so. What I do, I think I probably, I don't know. You fucked up, Muscoe, done goofed and so on. You know it. Everyone just hates you more now and a lot of people died. Amazing, hard-hitting reporting from a... Katie Miller, host of the podcast called the Katie Miller podcast.

Listen, I'm not saying Elon Musk killed people. However, there's this recent tweet where some blue check wad claimed that communism literally killed 100 million people. And Elon retweeted that with the added commentary, highest death count of any philosophy. So I don't know, Lon, if philosophies and policies can kill people. people, then Doge killed millions of people too, right? The Doge philosophy has a death count. And you were the guy at Doge.

So it seems like maybe Elon Musk would think that Elon Musk killed people. Of course, he also retweeted and then deleted, a real banger saying that Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mount Satang didn't kill people because it was technically the people under them. So perhaps he's actually thought about this on and off. But if we're going to talk about what kind of body count that an ideology or philosophy creates, well, then perhaps we also need to talk about the Trump administration's cuts to stuff like food stamps and health care, right? Perhaps we have to talk about the reasoning for why you're pretending these USAID cuts were acceptable. The amount of funding we're talking about is far less than what can be done, than what can be supported via private foundations like the Gates Foundation,

or McKenzie Bezos' foundation, she's given away tens of billions of dollars. The Gates Foundation has tens of billions of dollars. They are capable of acting very quickly. And if they didn't, I would say they're equally responsible. Look at his little duck face. He's so proud of his very good point. Elon, do you make a poopie in the potty?

Good job, buddy. Hey, also, Elon, you know who else has tens of billions of dollars? You! In fact, you have tens of tens of tens of tens. tens of tens of billions of dollars. Did your companies or some foundation under your name also step in to fill in the gap? If you're gonna blame the other rich people

for not picking up the slack, for not fixing your mistake, are you not then equally responsible? Dare I say, sounds like you're more responsible. But you're literally saying, well, someone else will clean up my mess, and in fact those people are equally to blame for all the deaths my mess caused, which I could all. clean up. Did you hear yourself? Like you really want to play this game must go?

Do you want to do that math? In the end it just seems like he's bargaining with himself. Perhaps it does haunt him because it should. But more likely he just keeps repeating this in his head. Which- Zero, but zero died because of Doge. Zero- that's what I- that's what I would take issue with- I think- Objectively wrong.

Not zero. And he must know that, right? And maybe it's not that Musk needs to convince himself that zero children died because of his efforts. Maybe for Musk, it's zero point zero children that he cares about. You know, zero white children. Maybe that's why he added points to the calculation,

to account for kids that are only half white. That's the actual math he's doing, you know, what with Elon Musk being an open Nazi, constantly talking about white genocide, and encouraging violence against images, Whatever the case, Elon Musk will simply tuck away any feelings of guilt and move on with his life, unlike the children that Doge killed. Which is why we're supposed to have consequences, right? Remember those? I don't know, it feels futile, but when people are killed due to the actions of other people, we usually have a trial and junk, right?

To make sure it doesn't happen again, because we can't rely on them simply feeling bad about it. Maybe I'm Mandela affecting myself, but I have this very clear memory of people being held accountable for stuff like manslaughter and murder and other crimes. Just a suggestion for the next Democratic presidential candidate We need to never forget what happened with Doge and we need to as much of a slog as it will be Restore what they dismantled the same way we'll have to put back up the east wing and fix the goddamn Reflecting Pool and all the other stuff It sucks

So much of the last 10 years has been Trump and the GOP just gripping onto our heels and pulling America backward, undoing all the progress we've made. And we have no choice but to just keep going like this political game of shoots and ladders. But maybe the reason we keep falling down these shoots, snakes, is it snakes and ladders? Why would there be so many snakes? Why? Sorry. The only way we can win this game is by removing the snakes or shoots or whatever, right? It's what the Democrats keep failing to do, which is to actually pursue legal consequences for the people who keep sabotaging our country and who know it and know they did it with Doge and would rather not talk about Doge for that reason

Which is why we can't shut up about it and therefore I will now give Doge the lowest grade imaginable A sad clown sticker. I went to one of those hippie sunflower schools where all the quizzes were feelings, so, you know, bah, got it. I graduated and passed with flying, you're doing your best. We're done with the episode. Not with everything else, we gotta do. Onward, like and subscribe if you would. That would really help us out.

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