The Chaser Report - Department Of Government Elongency

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Utopia have predicted it again! Dom and Charles are thrilled at the prospect of Elon Musk's appointment to the Department Of Government Efficiency. Not because this will improve government efficiency, but will make for excellent content. Plus, Charles has news on a new pandemic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Now, many people have asked themselves, Charles, is the Chaser Report inefficient in its structure? There's two of us. Yes. Wouldn't a management consultant, someone, an efficiency expert, someone who knows about, you know, cutting things to the bone, reduce waste. Reduce duplication.

Wouldn't you just have one hope? Yes, oh, yes. Well, that's what you thought might have thought. Until today, Charles, when it was announced that Donald Trump will have a Department of Government efficiency in his new universe. Which is, of course, the famous acronym D-O-G-E or Doge. Which I'm sure he has absolutely no idea is a cryptocurrency meme. I'm sure he doesn't even know what a meme is, Charles, even though he shares it often. Oh, so we'll talk about that.

We'll talk about some of Donald Trump's appointees, some of the more wacky ones. We are in for a wacky ride over the next four years and I must say in terms of comedic value The Trump, as we hoped The Trump victory is already delivering Look, there's downsides to abandoning democracy In favour of fascisms But one of the truths is it's entertaining

There's never been There's never been such an entertaining regime as this before Of any sort Plus you had a little bit of slightly concerning Bit of breaking news We're also discussed today Look, if we get to it, if we don't have time, I don't think it's a huge matter. It's just, there's another pandemic on the way.

But look, we can, we can park that one if we don't get to it. So a week after Trump gets elected to the White House or? No, no, no, no, like it's actually happening at the moment. All right, well, at least we've got the right guy in charge. All right, we'll get into that in a second. Charles, I have here a statement from President Donald J. Trump. Of course, he never gave up the title. And I'm not making this up.

is how he wrote the statement. Oh, yes, I did actually read this. I am pleased to announce that the capital G, great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with capital American, capital patriot Vivek Ramoswamy, who you might remember from being ridiculous during the Republican primary campaign, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge. Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditure,

and restructure federal agencies essential to the Save America Movement this will send shockwaves through the system and everyone involved in government waste which is a lot of people and this is my favourite bit of the piece Charles. It will become the Manhattan Project of our time.

Oh wow, wait a minute the Manhattan Project was the nuclear bomb Yes, yes, that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. It's quite possible that hundreds of things. Donald Trump doesn't know what the Manhattan Project was. Yes.

But yes, so it's going to lead to the deaths of lots of people. He says it will drive out massive ways. Have the Japanese been informed of this? It's an interesting turn of phrase, isn't it? It's the perfect gift, says Donald Trump, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. That's what they've achieved in 250 years.

It is fun, funny that a Department of Government, I mean, it really is a plotline of Utopia, Yes. That the Department of Government Afficiency gets two heads. It gets two heads. It's so good. It's the greatest.

It is the greatest. Like, that would happen on Veep. It would, like, you don't expect those sorts of gifts to just come from real life script writers. Like,

you were writing real life. It is sensible, though. Why? Because Elon Musk already has six other jobs. Yeah, right. So, you know, what they say, though, if you want something done,

get a busy person to do it. You know what he said, His first ambit goal for the Department of Government Efficiency I am. Is quite extraordinary. Because, I mean, his main job now is actually just tweeting. It is literally all that he does. He just tweets.

He said today, I'm trying to find the quote, but he basically said... Are you doing about Trump or... No, Elon Musk. Right, yeah. So, Musk's first aim here is... He says, look, there are about 220 government agencies, departments and so on. Oh, no, it was 420, something like that. I think we can do with 99.

Wow. So he's just... There is no... No way Elon Musk understands what those departments are or do or the point of them. He's just gone, no, you know, that's the number. Yeah, here we go. But see, that's the sort of clear-headed thinking that you need to be efficient. Like, that's the whole, like, we look at it and go, oh, you know, veterans affairs,

that's actually going to be important for veterans to have. And he looks at it as, well, that's an inconvenient number that gets it above 99. Why can't we combine foreign affairs and veterans affairs? They've got the same title. like that saves on nouns. Let's hear a little bit of Elon mask on this. Imagine if you were working for the federal government in America and this guy was the new boss of whether you kept your job.

Well, we just take a look at all the federal agencies and say, do we really need whatever it is, 428 federal agencies? Like, there's so many that people have never heard of and that have overlapping areas of responsibility, we should, I don't know, probably we should get, I mean, there are more federal agencies then there are years since the established in the United States, which means that we've created more than one federal agency per year, on average. Brilliant!

Brilliant! There you go. So it's not uncoonsidental, I'm assuming, having heard that, that this was also the day that Trump's representative, Chris Christie, announced that marijuana was going to be legalized federally in the United States. He's pretty chill, isn't he? I think he's pretty chill. I think he's sort of celebrating that.

Hang on, but Trump is. Because that's exactly the sort of thing that I would have said on a couch when I was in my mid-20s and had, you know, some bucket bong. The amazing thing is... It would have been like, hey, you know what, like, why don't we eliminate inefficiencies in the government, like, yeah. Yeah, I'm looking at this. I'm quite confused about Chris Christie being, because he's been very negative towards Trump. Oh, hang on. But it is Chris Christie did say today that Trump will probably remove federal restrictions on dope, yeah.

Yeah, so it's on. I mean, this is one of the amazing things about Elon Musk is that whenever you hear him speak, it's not a gift that he has. No. He's an extremely garbled and bizarre communicator. Yes. But he's now being included in Trump family photos. Yes. So they're calling him the buddy-in-law.

He's the son. The son that Trump never had. Yeah. If only Donald Trump had had a competent son. Imagine the daddy issues that's going to give Don Jr. He's the new Ivanka. Yeah. And poor Baron.

Although I think Barron's going to. No, Barron's killing it. Barron's apparently behind the victory. Have you heard this? Oh, really? The theory is Barron hooked Trump into the mannesty. He's, as they call it, he's massively into Joe Rogan and all the other podcasts. Misogyny and everything. And he said to Trump, you know, dad, whatever. He's six foot seven, Barron Trump. Yeah. He's like, oh no, he's definitely going to take over.

Trump finally won the lottery with his final child. Who knew? Yeah. That's what happens when you have immigrants, Charles, such as Melania. Anyway, all right, so that's one appointment that, I mean, the comedy potential is great unless you work for the US federal government, in which case, I think you're screwed. The other thing that I'd like to just point out, as a fan of Renaissance era history, that I'm pretty sure that the head of the Venetian administration during the Venetian Empire up until about the 13th or 14th century was called the Doe. It's the Doge. The Doge's Palace. I mean, I've been to the Doge's Palace.

Yes, and quite interesting, and it flooded recently due to climate change. But the interesting thing about the Doge was the Venetians ran a very successful empire for many centuries. It was the first proper maritime empire that Britain then replicated so successfully. And because, you know, it was the insight that actually having naval power shits all over land power. Yeah. Because you can just go anywhere and dominate everyone.

Even if you have a weird little fun-sized city that's made up of canals. It doesn't matter. And you can just make money through trade and have a merchant class and have a merchant class and have a merchant of Venice. Merchant of Venice. Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, no, no. But so the point is that the doge was all-powerful, like literally had absolute power

inside Venice. Right. But he was a prisoner to that palace. He was actually not allowed to go outside of the palace. And there were huge restrictions on who he could see and what he could do. To avoid corruption. Yeah, to avoid corruption. He was an elected king.

Yeah, and it was basically absolute power, but so many restrictions that he had to be a sort of philosopher king. Well, that's what Donald Trump is going to be, is an elected king. Yes. He doesn't want to relinquish power. Yes. But without the restrictions. Yeah, without being in Venice. But also being, I mean, admittedly Washington, D.C. is probably quite a boring city.

The Chaser report. News you know you can't trust. There are a lot of unusual appointments that have been made already. So, I mean, these wonderful Americans in the Doge, I mean, that's going to be enough. That is basically a whole series of utopia right there. South Dakota Governor Christy Noam is going to be in charge of Homeland Security. and that means she's going to be in charge of the deportations and all this sort of stuff. There's a few people who are doing that.

Stephen Miller, who's the really creepy one from the last... He was the one who came up with the Muslim ban right early on. And recently said, America is for American citizens. He's like literally enough. He's the most, yeah, fascist-y fascist he won. So he's Deputy Chief of Staff for Home Affairs. But Christy Noam, it needs to be... And she was very, very negative as South Dakota Governor.

She said we wouldn't take any homeless migrants. We want razor wire for the border. But she's particularly famous, Charles, for this story, which I think we talked about on the podcast. Christy Noam was originally on Trump's VP shortlist. Do you remember why she got taken off it? Oh, that's right. She's the one who eat her dog or something? She shot her dog.

She shot her dog. She killed her 14-month-old wire hair pointed cricket. Yes, but that's just what you do in the country. But when cricket didn't display the signs of a suitable hunting dog. So the person in charge of national security in the United States has a history. Someone who thinks it's rational to shoot a dog yourself. That's going to terrify the migrants.

If Donald Trump wants to terrify any potential migrants, that's a win. And the way they found out about this story was she boasted about it in her own biography. Yeah, in her own book. In her own biography. Yeah, someone exposed it and was like, oh, I can't believe you did this. It was like, a memoir. Let me share a charming story about my dog cricket. Of my animal abuse.

Yeah, so there's that. So that's a good one. The other one is the Defence Secretary. Do you know who's? Oh, there's so many extraordinary ones here. The Defence Secretary is literally a Fox News host. Literally a Fox News host. One of two, Charles, who he's appointed now.

Right. So the Defence Secretary is... It's literally like, you know how you watch Fox News and you go, that is just a ridiculous, what a ridiculous network. At least they're just commentating and they're not running the country. They're now running the country. So a guy called Pete Hegseth. Yes, he's a former...

You know, Trump always chooses people on the basis of their appearance. Yes, so Fox News host an Army National Guard veteran, Hegseth. Yes. And there's a great quote here from the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith from Washington who said I confess I did not know who Pete Hick-Seth was until 20 minutes ago he hasn't done anything

he knows nothing about defence policy if he knows about anything it's just veterans policy so there you go but last week but he's qualified do you know why oh he's disqualified no he's qualified because last week he went on a podcast called the Sean Ryan show and said and denounced

diversity equity and inclusion woke shit and decided well first of all you got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs and bring in a new secretary of defence. So that's it. That was his audition. Yes.

Woke shit has got to go. Yes. So Hegseth is another one. The other interesting thing is that these are all people who are quite expansionist militarily. Yes. Like a lot of these people are military hawks, right? So I think everyone, including us on the podcast, have sort of said,

well, the one defining difference between Trump and, say, some sort of, fascistic leader, like Hitler or Mussolini or whatever, or certainly with Hitler, is that at least Trump is not expansionist. No, he really is just America first. He's not at all interested in any American troops doing anything outside of America. It doesn't give a shit about the rest of the world. But it seems like he's appointing a whole lot of people who do, who warn America to go and invade China and stuff like that.

Well, that's interesting, yeah. So the National Security Advisor is a former U.S. Special Forces officer, a guy called Mike Waltz, no relation to Tim Wals. who is very hawkish on China and so on. He's called China an existential threat to the US, and he's critical of Russia's government. So I assume Trump doesn't know that. But the other interesting one is, speaking of Fox News host,

do you remember Mike Huckabee? The former Arkansas governor who had a host a show on Fox News called Huckabee a long time. He's the new ambassador to Israel. So he's totally pro-Israel, will be no moderation, settlers all the way. He's very in favor of settlers. So you can forget about that

Being a bit more moderated And that's all we know so far That's pretty much Oh and Marco Rubio Little Marco The guy he belittled and patronised In the campaign in 2016 Secretary of State

And he's hawkish too On China, Iran and Cuba Oh well it's good I mean It's good for the podcast Lots of content Lots to talk about So Charles you did mention

Another pandemic We don't have long We're afraid to sort of flip over it a bit Ghibly It doesn't sound as important No, it's Christian home. Yeah. So the thing is, there's going to be another pandemic.

It's called a H5N1. Luckily, it doesn't kill humans. It is killing millions and millions of wild birds all around the world. Oh. Yes. So this is the one, this is why you can't get eggs at the moment. And when you do get eggs, they cost like $9. Yeah, I find it really annoying that you can't get eggs easily.

Yeah. So it's really annoying, Charles, that those birds died. Yeah. So that we can't get eggs. So, but, so that the, Bird industry has faced itself with a little bit of a problem, right, which is the government has basically done a Dan Andrews on chickens and insisted that they do a full-on proper lockdown. You are no longer allowed to have chickens just roaming free, right?

Is he serious? Like everyone's got to lock down and stay indoors, right? Oh, they've got to go to Victoria? Well, I presume so. Yeah. And they're probably not even allowed to cross state border lines. This is to, you know, try and contain the pandemic, right. But the chicken industry makes all its money out of selling free-range chickens.

Oh, yes. So the government's come to the conclusion that these chickens are sort of essentially like we were, you know, technically free in the pandemic, but we were locked down. These locked-down chickens are still free range because theoretically they would be free range. Brilliant. Even though they are now caged. So you just changed the definition of free range. Yeah, just during the pandemic. Right.

So they're sort of locked down free range chickens. So in the same way that we as Australian citizens had freedom just not to leave our homes, but we were still free. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were free in theory in sort of not just, yeah. How are the chickens getting through it? Are they baking sourdough? Are they binging?

Are they drinking? Are they binge drinking? Are they binge drinking? They ought to win booze. A lot of chicky brings. Yeah. Chicky brings. Zoom dinner parties,

are they doing that? Egg run. Poor things. They're using lots of egg run. Yeah, yeah. Uber eggs. It wouldn't it be Uber eggs, although they are cannibalistic chickens.

Sure. Yeah. It would be Uber grain or something. So I'm slightly concerned about their well-being, but when can I have eggs again, Charles? That aren't $9. Well, I don't. I don't think.

ever. Oh, ever. I mean, don't you reckon? That's a long time. Well, they're in the middle of a pandemic. It always felt like it was going to last forever, remember. Oh, yes, true. But these pandemics, they last two years.

I presume this will jump to humans, will it? Well, I think, no, it's actually following the exact same pattern that COVID did. Oh, right. Which is, it's up to H7 now. So there's very, all these variants. And they're getting milder and milder and milder. I thought you were going to say that it was just a hoax, perpetrated by the administrative state

to try and oppress us. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely, it's Moderna. Or Berderna. Brederna. Baterna. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all, Deja Vu, isn't it?

I presume Donald Trump will develop vaccines rapidly and then disavow them and appoint it and aren't any vaccine. I'll tell you what, though. I do think that those chickens walking around with the little face masks does look very cute. And on that note, we're part of the iconic class network. Catch you tomorrow.