The Chaser Report - DOGE-Y STYLE! | PEP with Chas & Dr Dave

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

In this excerpt of PEP197, Chas and Dave explore how Americans are responding to the actions of Elon Musk and DOGE. Do people love or hate what he's doing? And how does all of this impact Trump's popularity... and ego? 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. Dom here, Charles unfortunately has a migraine or something. So instead of a new show, we present an excerpt from PEP, episode number 196 PEP, which has and Dr. Dave, of course, the US politics podcast, which frankly is producing far too much content. They've done seven hours of US politics podcasting in the podcast. past week. So we're stealing some of it, thanks to producer Lachlan. In this episode, which Chaz very maturely called Dogey style, you'll hear the Smell the Musk sting that we played on our podcast a few episodes ago, because we share the same studio. Dr. Dave explains why Trump is

having a honeymoon period, perhaps his fourth, I suppose, and Chaz explains how Musk's doge jihad to cut costs everywhere could hurt Trump. He also asks whether Donald Trump can ever really afford to ditch Elon Musk, if you're interested in these matters, do stay with us for PEP episode number 196, or perhaps, I don't know, about 1% of it right after this. Let's get PEPI! Welcome to PEP196. That's PEP or Planet Extra podcast. I am the host of Planet America on ABC Australia, but this is not. Official podcast of the ABC's, repeat, not an official podcast. But on PEP, we do cover all the stuff that's too nerdy for TV.

Not just plain America. Any TV show at all. Too nerdy for maths on PEP. But for now, let's turn to a man who never raises the stakes on inconsequential views. I'm talking, of course, about Dr. David Smith. Hi, everyone. I'm David Smith. I'm an associate professor at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

But let's get into the content, Dave. Okay. Now, I spent an hour and 40, I reckon, talking about Doge after you left last week. There's a lot to talk about. Yes. Now, I've said my piece. There is more Doge stuff this week, though, not an hour 40 worth. But do you want to kick us off by saying your thoughts about the Doge stuff generally?

Yes. So I saw someone likening Elon Musk to the East India Company. So in other words, a gigantic commercial entity that is kind of a government unto itself. Yeah. That is a useful way of looking at it. But I think that the most politically important point to make is a nut, Musk is, and I mean, Trump himself, they are really enacting this long-stage. right-wing fantasy about imagine if you could just send a smart businessman in to sort out the

government. Yes. And when people ask, why isn't this getting any pushback? It's because for half of the country, this is a longstanding dream about after decades of being told government is always worse, always less efficient than business, that finally there's this situation where you have two businessmen who are just going to tell. tear down the government and run it like a business. And certainly a lot of the things that they're targeting

are things that have been targets of Republican administrations for a long time, including USAID. All of the talk about potentially abolishing the Department of Education, which I don't think is going to happen. But that's another Republican dream. So if you're wondering why people aren't more furious about the idea that an unelected billionaire suddenly has access to previously off-limits payment systems,

is issuing these probably illegal buy-out attempts to employees, is getting rid of departments on the basis of they have targeted him in regulation, or just because they've pissed him off, meaninglessly accusing people of committing crimes. If you're wondering why all of this stuff, much of which is blatantly illegal, some of which presents a potential constitutional crisis, Why aren't people getting more furious about this? It's because this is what half the country wants.

And I do think that it won't be until people actually see the bad consequences of it that it's going to generate outrage. We have to remember at the moment what public opinion is actually being driven by in the United States is not all of this constitutional crisis stuff. what polling suggests is that Trump's approval is basically as high as it has ever been. The average approval rating is around 48%. There was one poll that showed him at 53%, which is an outlier, but it is within this sort of range of the highest approval that Trump's ever had.

What Trump is basically having at the moment, this might seem extraordinary given everything that's going on, he is having a very typical honeymoon period. If anything, it's a bit below what a president usually has. About 10 points below Joe Biden. About 10 points below Joe Biden's, although a little bit higher than what he had last time around. Yes. Yeah, he's just having a very typical honeymoon period.

What people are actually worried about with Trump is that prices aren't coming down. That's the biggest concern that people have. Trump is very aware of this when the latest inflation figures came out, showing that core inflation had risen slightly. he posted Biden inflation up again. He may be able to get away with that for a little while. The only thing I'd like to challenge from what you just said is the assumption that this is not becoming less popular.

I think there's enough polling evidence already to point to the fact that this is wearing thin. I mean, it's not like a disaster yet. Yeah, yeah. But it's certainly, oh, I'll just give you numbers. You can decide for yourself. Number one, Quinnipiac, Musk's approved. is 37% to 53%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The economist, straight after the election, 47% Republicans said they wanted, Republicans I'm talking about here, Republicans said they wanted Musk to have a lot of influence in Trump's administration. Yes. Now it's 26% of Republicans.

Heart research found 56% of people have an unfavorable view of Musk's role on Doge. Now, Trump can live with those numbers. They're not like 70%, 80%, but how much worse do they get before that becomes a problem? This is a really interesting point. Musk is not the best messenger for this at all. He is actually a very bad messenger for this.

Musk could, by the time this is all over, have completely discredited the idea of big tech as offering anything in terms of solutions to people's lives, right? Depending on how badly he fucks this up, Musk could, I mean, that would be a much-needed corrective to the way that tech entrepreneurs are currently looked at, which, you know, is just way out of whack with what it is that they actually offer. But, yeah, certainly the arrogance, the sort of, you know,

conviction he has that because of his business success, therefore he has the answer to everything, therefore he's anything that he turns his attention to for however short a period of time, he's the expert on it. This sort of attitude is what Trump is really encouraging at the moment, and I think that the consequences of it are going to be disastrous. Yeah, on that note, I actually think the question I raised about is he, how bad as it get before he throws him overboard. Because I think most people, from the beginning, have expected that one point in time Trump to throw Musk overboard.

And if I'm right, that the Doge thing is wearing thin and that in three weeks' time or a month's time, the numbers are going to be even worse and they're going to become a problem. And that is what I think is the case. Yes. Will Trump throw Musk overboard? Because while you'd expect him to, I just, number one, Trump does seem to have a deep fascination with Elask.

generally. That's the first thing. But much more importantly than that, can he afford to throw Musk overboard? The guy's got $400 billion. He's got 216 million followers on X, which is twice what Trump has. And in particular, I reckon, I've forgotten who I saw argue this, but it's a great line, I think. Musk has arguably done to MAGA what Trump did to the Republicans in that Trump captured about half the Republican base, making it impossible to deal him out without destroying the party. And Elon has captured about half of the MAGA base, the online half. Yes, yeah.

And similarly, it would be, I think, impossible to deal him out without pissing them off and destroying the MAGA movement. Also, Republicans knew back in 2016 that Trump would always go further than them. If they messed with him, they knew there was, that there was just nothing stopping what he could do. And he would always push it further than they would. Yes. Now Trump knows that Musk will always push it further than him.

Because Musk is definitely willing to go further than Trump is, I think. And can, has the resources to as well. Yeah. So, like, so I'm not sure he can afford to throw Musk over the ball. He, Musk, and I've said this before, he's the only person in Trump's orbit who is genuinely has a power base that is independent of Trump. I think that if Trump threw him overboard,

he would suffer, especially because the share prices of his companies are linked to the political influence that he has. So I think that he would take on some damage. But yes, he does actually have his own base. Yeah. Unlike anybody else in Trump. So if Trump throws J.D. Vance overboard,

that's the end for, yeah, for J.D. Vance. Yes, yes. Yeah, Musk has an independent power base. Yeah. And just I want to pick up one other thing you mentioned. You were talking about conflicts of interest at one point in time before. Yeah. I want to pick up on that because Musk held a weird press conference this week

where this was a key issue. Yes. I'm not sure if you saw that one where he had this son with this like Kanye-style silver chain around his neck in front of him. That was incredibly weird. It was weird. It was weird. We're going to show a bit of this?

Yeah, we're going to show a bit of this. Okay. We are going to show a bit of this. But just before you do, I just want to just say something just in general, which is, dude, because I know Musk is a pepper. Dude, stop doing that to your kids. Stop bringing them to your press conferences when they're bored and they don't want to be there and they end up looking like a doofus in public.

And in 15 years, they're going to be so embarrassed when their friends bring up these videos, which they will all the time. But anyway, let's get to the press conference. I thought it was useful press conference because it did clear up this conflict of interest issue, because people kept asking about over and he was happy to answer. So this is what he said in a nutshell about conflicts of interest. Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself?

What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency? see. 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's been more transparent than the Doge organization. I don't know who's looking more bored out of the cube and Trump. And the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. They're not, we're, you know, What I mentioned brings, for example, about Treasury, just making sure that payments that go out,

taxpayer money that goes out, is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the do not pay list, which are, takes a lot to get there, that actually are not paid, which currently they are paid, these are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it's got nothing to do with, like, say, a contract for some company of Vine at all. But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts, when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president, I know, has directed you to look into. Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people? Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything, you say, like, wait a second, hey, that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there.

I sort of like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately, you know? Including you yourself. Yes. The thing is, that's extremely unconvincing because, firstly, people are saying he has conflicts in interest. They're saying it all the time, and he just ignores them. They're just saying it into the Twitter echo, and then they get drowned out by Elon fanboys.

So that's the first thing. So I'm not sure what that achieves. Yeah. Secondly, let's face it, this entire administration is really, really, with conflicts of interest for Elon Musk. For instance, do you know who the administrator for NASA is? Have you heard this one? No.

His name is Jared Isaacman. He's Elon's great friend, SpaceX investor, and an ex-SpaceX astronaut. He's the guy who's deciding how much money they give to SpaceX. Massive, massive conflicts of interest, right? It's unavoidable that there's going to be conflicts with Elon. The question is, does he try to minimize these conflicts by following proper processes? And the answer is no. No hearings.

No confirmations. No ethical pledges. No accountability whatsoever. They're not even releasing Musk's financial disclosure form. No. What kind of financial disclosure form isn't disclosed? I thought that's the point of a financial disclosure form. And to say, it's so transparent because we post about it on,

Yeah. On the platform that I own, we put out what are effectively press releases, but written in Twitter form. And below every one of them, there are a thousand people saying how wonderful they are. Yes, yes. And they include emojis. Yeah, this is a radically different idea of transparency from what the concept usually means. Yeah. And Musk's solution to everything is basically say what you want, right?

Call it the Texas solution. Sure. Okay. Yeah, you can say what you want, but it won't change his mind. And the idea that transparency just means everybody talking a lot more, that is not transparency, especially when you control the terms on which you talk about everything. Yeah. In summary, my view on this is that.

I don't expect you to be perfect, Elon. I expect you to try, though, and you're not trying. He's trying very hard to look cool. He is. He is. He's not trying very hard to go through proper processes. He's trying extremely hard.