The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Knows He Can Do Whatever He Wants

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie discuss how the guardrails that were supposed to keep President Donald Trump in check are all gone now—and the Democrats don’t know what to do about it. Plus, Virginia Kase Solomón of the pro- democracy watchdog group Common Cause joins the show to talk about how they’ve been fighting back against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Then, Wired senior politics editor Leah Feiger dives into the magazine’s exclusive reporting on all things DOGE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today. Virginia K. Salomon, who's the president of Common Cause, joins us to talk about the actions they've been taking against Elon Musk's doge.

Then we'll talk to Wired Senior Politics Editor, Mia Figer, about the amazing journalistic work they've been doing over there covering Elon Musk's doge. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, we have a bit of a special occasion today. This marks the 500th episode of the new abnormal. Whoa. 500 episodes you and I have done together. And it really doesn't feel like that many. Because it's not for us, but the show fantastic.

Well, yeah, but that's a nice little milestone. And in all seriousness, obviously shout out. to the prior hosts and co-hosts, Molly Jong Fast, et cetera. And we don't really have anything special plan for today. What we did was we thought we would take a look at some really crappy things that are going on in the country right now. And list them out from one to 500. Right, right.

And then we kind of realized there's nothing special about us doing that. I will just say thank you to our listeners. Thank you to those who are like, super dedicated to the new abnormal and listen to us and comment and shout us out on Blue Sky and other social media platforms. We genuinely appreciate it. So thank you. Yes.

I forgot to thank the listeners because I'm always thinking about the listeners. So to me, it's just, I didn't even realize that I didn't actually say it because it's the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think of before I go to sleep. As it should be. are the listeners and how best to serve them and how grateful I am for them. I'd like to just point out also that it is technically episode 816 since we don't count the bonuses each week. Can I just say, Jesse, you're the one that told us it was the 500th episode.

Listen, it's the 500th episode in counting in the back end, and that's what matters. Technicalities like this. And shout out to Jesse, who has actually been here for all 500 episodes. Yes, that's true. And if the listeners can see all the gray hair, they'd see that I had almost done with this started. Oh, wow. But really not from us, so that's fair. Not from you, from the sense.

I feel like you don't really have any gray hairs now. That's very not true. Okay. Okay. All right. So let's talk about the fact that we have a president who thinks he's Napoleon. He posted over the weekend on his dumbass busted truth social and then on dumbass bustle. busted X. He who saves his country does not violate any law. It's giving Nixon. It's giving criminal.

It's giving. I don't give a fuck is what it's giving. Yeah. It's talked about as being from Napoleon or a variant of something Napoleon said that's something that may be may or may not be apocryphal, but it doesn't really matter because the fact of the matter is we are now talking about a president of the United States who believes that anything he does not violate any law. And first of all, I can't imagine where he got that thought from John Roberts. But what's troubling is, in addition to the fact that he said it, how little the media seems to care that he said it. I believe the New York Times story about it was on page A22.

Look, we try to do our best here not to consistently highlight the, abdication of responsibility that legacy media has just given up on doing their job, just given up on journalism. They've given up on alerting the people to the danger that we are all in and have been in over, I think we're 28 days into this administration. And every single norm has been upended. Every single bit of our data has been pillaged through by 19 and 20 year olds who, whose father is Elon Musk. Look, to say these things has become a shrug to most people, because there's still some folks that don't believe what Donald Trump says. But to the point that you made, this, like, why would he say these things? Because the Supreme Court gave him a total

green light and clear runway. He knows that everything that he does from here on out is not going to be considered illegal because, one, ain't nobody checking. him. And two, like, even if it were to make it up to the Supreme Court, they've already given him the powers of a king. And everyone around him just sits around at his feet waiting on a pardon. I guess the question that I have, is he wrong? Did he speak out of term? Because if the Supreme Court has given you a get out of jail free card and has said that any actions that the president takes is a matter of law now, then I don't know if he's really speaking out of term. Exactly. Everything we have seen in the last 29 days, so I guess when this airs. Okay. So we're basically, we're in 28 days later right now. Oh, shit. Oh, God. In the last 28, 29 days, I think we've all lost track of how many laws have been broken by this administration, how many precepts of the Constitution have been completely shredded.

And this is where I start to get really mad. Where are the Democrats? I don't know that this is where we intended this conversation to go. But I do just want to say that the Democrats spent a lot of time campaigning on the fact that Trump was a threat to democracy. And correctly so. But since the election, they have been acting like we are still somehow within the bounds of normalcy. And we've got a president sitting here saying, he who saves his country does not violate the law. We've got an administration that is basically flaunting how much they believe that to be true by violating laws, by violating the Constitution. And we've got an opposition party that is not acting like this is not business as usual. And I don't know, we've talked about this on the podcast

before, that the guardrails just seem to be gone, completely gone. We already knew that. We already knew that from the Supreme Court ruling that we're talking about and other Supreme Court rulings and various absurd and insane judicial rulings from other federal courts. And now it just seems like the Democrats have decided that the legislative branch is also completely worthless as a guardrail against unchecked executive power. And at some point, someone in power, and we've talked about it there are some Democrats who are out there doing good. So I don't want to blanket everyone. But the Democratic leadership is not doing anywhere near what it should be doing.

And all of that is a way of saying that does nothing but emboldened Donald Trump even further to say things like he who saves his country does not violate any law. When you have the minority leader of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, give a press conference last week where he literally shrugs and looks at the camera and says, what leverage do we have? What do you want us to do? It's their government now. They have the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. And I keep playing that clip over and over again because I'm just like, step the fuck aside. Like if you don't know what to do, if you're at a point where you have a failure of imagination about how to slow this fucking freight train down that's had the brakes cut and like you said

are absolutely no guardrails going 200 miles per hour off of a fucking cliff like move out of the way between him and schumer and Pelosi and the rest of them i'm just like your hands are in your pockets and the only admonishment that they have are for the progressive organizations that are telling people to call their members to take action. And now they're like, why are we getting so many phone calls? What do you want us to do? Fucking resign then if you don't know what to do. Because the idea that we're all supposed to sit around for the next two years, assuming that, like idiots, frankly, that we're going to have midterm elections that are free and fair elections, while Doge guts the IRS, guts like Social Security, Medicaid, all of these things are gone, not in the next year, but like literally in the first 100 days of this presidency and you do nothing?

I don't understand like they are not an opposition party. And I don't understand what they think that the American people should be doing now. Just being like, oh, well, I guess the majority voted for him. Donald Trump won this election by a percentage point. This was not a mandate or a landslide. This was millions of people deciding to stay home because, frankly, Democrats have a failure of messaging completely to the people, the dangers that we were in. But now you told us, we're going to save the soul of this nation and Donald Trump is akin to

Hitler. And then now he is acting like Hitler. and we are more than halfway to the 53-day point that Hitler took to dismantle Germany's democracy. And it's like Elon Musk and Donald Trump took that as a challenge. Yeah. And look, the blueprint for all of this was there. And it was Project 2025. And we talked about it ad nauseum on this podcast. Plenty of other people on the left warned about it. And Donald Trump's big reaction to that was we have nothing to do with Project. 2025. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it. I'm not going to read it. There were people in his campaign who said, we are not going to hire any people associated with Project 2025.

All of that was lies. We knew that was lies. And I promised just a brief aside here, this was another media failing of people of places reporting, not necessarily that Trump was telling the truth, but not reporting that he was lying and giving it the, liberals say X, but the Trump campaign says why, and giving those two things equal footing when what the Trump campaign was saying was very clearly a lie. Okay, that's my little media rant there. There's a woman named Adrian Cobb. She goes by Rustic Gorilla online, and she has a website that tracks Project 2025's development. And she says that as of Friday, 32% of Project 2025 suggestions had already been implemented or were in the process of being implemented by the

Trump administration. She spoke to HeatMap about all this. We are less than a month into this new administration and already a third of Project 2025's goals and aims are being implemented. So we can assume that it's not going to be all that long until that number is 100 percent, Daniel. And when it is 100%, which will be, again, Project 2025's plan was for the first 100 days. This is day 28 or 29. So by the time that it is complete, our entire government will have been gutted. We have said this ad nauseum on this show that we will no longer have a democracy. We don't.

We will not. And we have not since inauguration day. When you have an unelected bureaucrat, Elon Musk, who is standing and giving pressers inside of the Oval Office, while the actual elected president of the United States sits slumped over the resolute desk being admonished by a four-year-old for not being the actual president, right? And this man is getting access to all of our tax returns, which we're getting ready to file in two months, has access to our social security numbers and who's been receiving social security and Medicaid? right and all under the guise of a quote unquote audit that we know is not happening because this motherfucker is not a CPA. So what do we think is happening right now? What do we think all of that information is going? Where do we think that like the code is being rewritten and routed to?

So I'm like Project 2025 was their blueprint and it was their masterpiece. and Democrats came up with absolutely no response to it. And now, after the first 100 days, when we no longer have a functioning government, right when the elderly are no longer receiving their social security checks, when we start to see breadlines and food pantries overwhelmed and homeless shelters overwhelmed, people losing their homes, like, then what?

Then this manufactured chaos will give Donald Trump and Elon Musk the ability to just usher in what I believe will be the peace de resistance, which is martial law. Because violence and criminal activity is going to explode when people find themselves in desperate situations. And this is manufactured desperation and chaos that they are doing. It's wild. Yeah, I was just checking out the website that Adrian has. It's Project 2025.Observer. And it is absolutely wild.

She lists every agency and what percentage of the objectives that were set out for that agency in Project 2025 have already been done. And for example, USAID, 92% completed. That's five of six project objectives from Project 2025 for USAID have already been completed. 89% at the State Department. That's eight out of nine. The only one that hasn't been done yet is withdrawing from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Every other one has already been achieved. And the list just goes on, 73% at the White House, including remove the words sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, abortion, reproductive health, and gender equality from every federal rule.

That has already been completed. And that's just one objective. And the list just goes on and on. It's a great website. I encourage people to check it out, Project 2025. But it really does put in stark relief exactly how quickly they have been operating, how in lockstep with Project 2025 they have been operating as we all knew they were going to. and it is wild because for a while during the campaign, this was a big deal. And it was a big turnoff to a lot of Americans.

And you had politicians highlighting Project 2025 politicians on the left and a lot of people on the left writing about it. And it was working. Like people were not happy about this. And then all Trump had to do was come out and lie about it. And that seemed to be enough. That just made the whole thing sort of go away. And that's the world we live in now, where Trump comes out and says something that is on its face, just so obviously a bald-faced lie.

Or Elon Musk does the same thing as he is doing literally every day, whether it's on his dumbass social media platform or sitting in the White House being the president while Donald Trump sits in the cuck chair. It's just all they have to do. They know. All they have to do is come out and completely lie. and there is a sizable percentage of Americans that will go along with it. And there is unfortunately a sizable percentage of our media that will simply report that they said this and not say that they're lying. This is how you lead a quiet, fascist revolution. It's not even quiet, but, mm-hmm.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. the president and the CEO of Common Cause, Virginia Case Salomon. Virginia, can you give us some insight into your organization and the incredible work that you all do at Common Cause? Thanks, Danielle. So good to be here with you. Common Cause was founded 54, almost 55 years ago now, right after, well, in the middle of the Vietnam War, after the women's rights movement, after the civil rights movement, really to be a people's lobby. that was our original goal because everybody seemed to have representation in Congress and in state capitals, except for everyday folks. And so that was our mission from the beginning. And we have a tagline that says to hold power accountable. And that's really our big focus as an organization. Hold power accountable. Make sure that democracy is being upheld and that we have good government. So you have your hands full right now, essentially.

a little bit is where we are. Because it seems to me, Virginia, that no one is really interested. And by no one, Democrats right now that I have a very big bone to pick seem to want to hold power accountable, particularly power from an unelected bureaucrat such as Elon Musk, who has now, by virtue of his made-up agency, Doge, been given access to Americans' most sensitive and private information and is now making his way inside of the IRS. He's already made his way inside of the Department of Treasury. He's used his weight and his power to ensure that folks in developing countries will not receive medicine or food in places like the Sudan and others

through USAID that he has gutted. Talk to us about what is, and I cannot stand this word, but I can't think of another one, this unprecedented power grab that we have seen now over the last 28 days of this presidency by Elon Musk. It's staggering, right? Just kind of the scope of it. But I think that one of the things that we have to be reminded of in this moment is that there was a playbook for all of this. It's not as though Project 2025, Agenda 47 didn't tell us what was going to happen. They publicized That was their marketing tool in some ways. I think what people didn't realize was that they were actually going to be able to do it so quickly this time. And so I think that's where it's been the biggest kind of shock and awe moment for folks.

Because in the first Trump administration, government really held the line. It did what it was supposed to do. And so what they did was over the past four years, they looked for every loophole. They looked for every opportunity. they were poking holes in the system to figure out where the vulnerabilities were. And then they came out from day one swinging. And I also want to just say the interesting thing with Elon Musk, which was not necessarily something that was contemplated in this moment, Elon Musk has his own agenda.

Let's name that. It's not as though he is Donald Trump's kind of crony. I think it's the other way around. As a technocrat, he is somebody who has believed for a long time that democracy could be run better or government could be run better. Quite frankly, the world could be run better through technology. And this is his great opportunity to do that. And so what he has done is presented what Donald Trump wants in the form of being able to make cuts to government, seeing a wealth transfer going from poor and everyday working folks to big tech and corporations, because it's a,

it's almost a quid pro quo in some ways or achieving Donald Trump's agenda. and Elon Musk is all too happy. I would say giddy to do that for him. And I think that what makes me so angry right now, there are so many things, but one of them that makes me so angry is to your point, Project 2025 was laid out, right, in an over 900-page manifesto. They went agency-by-agency, policy-by-policy, and essentially provided the world with their playbook.

This is what we're going to do. This is what our first 100 days will look like. And it seems to me, Virginia, that for some reason, the opposition seems to be caught off guard by the fact that this time around, it isn't a clown car. They are clowns, but they are much more organized and strategic in how they are moving and functioning and gutting these agencies than they were in Donald Trump's first term when they didn't know what the hell they were doing. And so the Heritage Foundation took it upon themselves to say, okay, well, he's going to run again.

So we're going to lay out this plan of operations so that we don't have the hiccups that we did in the first term. So what are your thoughts as to why there was not a concerted effort to develop a response to what it is that they are going to do? Why is it now, you think, that Democrats are shrugging their shoulders and finding themselves in a place of, well, we have no leverage. So what do you want us to do? That's a loaded question because I have feelings about that. I think one thing is that the Democrats have, for a long time, I think, tried to follow the playbook, follow the rules, just what I was talking about before.

They spent the last four years the Republicans did making a plan. And they're executing on it now. I think the Democrats oftentimes have a short range plan. And they often come from a moral standpoint what is good for certain individuals. And they're not as good at long-term plans or as being as ruthless way that they execute. And unfortunately, a lot of the voices in Congress right now who really get it for whatever reason aren't being elevated. And so the message, anything that they do have, isn't catching on. Because you look at what happened with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Jerry Connolly recently.

She should have been head of that committee. She is probably one of the best communicators in Congress right now and really has a way to break things down in a way that resonates with people. And instead, they chose a man who's in his 70s who has major health issues. That's a problem that the Democratic Party has got to focus on. And so it's their long-term strategy as well as just remixing a playbook because they can't do things the way they've done them in the past. And that's a huge problem. I would also say part of the problem at large is the fact that there is a ridiculous amount of dark money in these political campaigns. And people do not have the political courage to be able to stand up for what is right in this moment out of fear that somebody will put money against them and run them out of office.

And if that's the case, then you are not serving the people you are trying to maintain your job. And that's a problem. You just hit the nail right on the head because I think that it's from a movie and I can't remember which one. But it is a line in a movie that says that you're too busy trying to keep your job that you forgot how to do your job. Exactly. And that is exactly how I feel about Democrats. What is the point of having a D behind your name right now and saying that you are a representative in Congress or a senator? and you are taking no action on behalf of the people.

And not only that, but you are admonishing organizations who are riling up the people and saying, call your representatives and tell them to take action, right? And instead of saying, this is what our plan is, this is what we're doing, this is our organized narrative, and this is how we plan on pushing back, whether we're in the majority or the minority, like we're fighting on behalf of the people, they're standing around shrugging. I want to go to a move that you all made at Common Cause with the Washington Post to buy a $15,000 ad, wrap around ad entitled Fire Elon Musk. According to the Hill, the Washington Post signed this agreement, right?

This ad was supposed to run on Tuesday. And the Washington Post has since pulled out of that deal. Talk to us about this, Virginia, because one, bravo to you all at Common Cause, to me, this is how you grab attention. This is how you alert the public as to what is going on, that you get in their faces. But now we saw Jeff Bezos sit on the dais with Donald Trump on inauguration day, right? We saw them change their mantra, right? They are no longer interested in ensuring democracy doesn't die in darkness. They're providing news for all America, whatever the hell that means. So talk to us about this move now by the Washington Post to go

go back on their deal and agreement with you all at Common Cause. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. So on February 3rd, we launched our fire Elon Musk campaign. And that was really coming from our membership. We have over 1.5 million members throughout the country. And we're, our members are all over. They're in every state. And they were coming to us saying, what are we doing?

This is insane. How can Elon Musk have this much power? And they saw the conflicts of interest. And they saw the attacks on voters and taxpayers. and just pretty much everybody who was deemed for arbitrary reason as having resources going to them in a corrupt way or whatever the heck they were making up, right? And so our folks were like, this is insane. Elon Musk should not have this much control. He's not elected.

Is he, who is the real president? They're asking these questions. And so we actually reached out to the White House. And we laid out a whole reason and a letter why he needed to fire Elon Musk because I think it's always good to put folks on notice. to sometimes, right? We're asking nicely, so don't tell us when we come the other way that somehow we weren't thorough in our request, which just put it like that. And so we started this campaign and part of it was putting this ad out, a full page ad in the Washington Post, which I will say was expensive for an organization. And it's not something that we had done before. But again,

we feel it is critical and important that Elon Musk has to go. And he is not doing good for the American people. And there's a special edition of the Washington Post, which is called the White House edition. And it goes to Congress. It goes to the White House. And it goes to the Pentagon. And so there is a wrap that you can put outside of that paper. So when we submitted this, it was actually the rap that they declined. They said, okay, you can put the ad inside the paper that goes to everybody. You just can't have this advertisement on the outside. Now, mind you, they sent us the sample of what the appraisal could look like. So it's not like we just came up with this. And the sample that they sent us was from another association who actually was thanking Donald Trump for putting an end to

electric vehicles or whatever. It was something to that effect. They have no problem having that addition go to the White House, which was complimentary and thanking the president, but one that was criticizing. And they wouldn't give us a reason. They just said, nope, we have to pull oldest. So they let us know very last minute. And when we asked them why they said they weren't at liberty to give us an answer. And so it leaves us begging the question, are you afraid who made this decision? Why? Why is it okay for it to go in the regular paper as a full page ad, but not in the White House edition on the cover and to Congress and everywhere else? Is this a rule? Is there a killing effect that's happening right now within Washington Post? Is this coming from Bezos

himself? Is there some kind of mandate? So we don't have the answer to those questions because they won't give us an answer why. So I think right now, all we can do is speculate. And based on their track record, the fact that their editorial board didn't allow an endorsement, the fact that they've had to pull cartoons that weren't complimentary or were critical of Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump, this just feels like one more thing that question. frankly just feels like their tagline is democracy dies in darkness. I'm a little concerned that democracy died with the purchase of the paper by a billionaire. A hundred percent. Because here's the thing, anybody's response to something that is what I am

going to refer to as blatant censorship, their response being, we're not at liberty to say, no, you could say, but you're trying to play both sides and appear to the public as if there is some ability to not be biased, when in fact, by sitting on that dais, you told the world where you are, right? And it's not in the camp of free speech, right? When you have a cartoonist that is fired or that is censored and then decides to leave the paper after nearly over a decade, when you have an organization like yours that is going to pay money, right, to run an ad. And then that agreement, is broken, it sends a very clear message. And it is just a chilling effect. I think that they are done. I think that they are entirely in the tank for Donald Trump, for MAGA. And I'm wondering,

so what does it look like? What is your next move here? If the goal is to raise alarms and awaken the public to what is happening, what Elon Musk is doing, this man that was not on a ballot, that no one elected, is seeking to invade the IRS. get our tax returns, Americans banking information. What is your next move here? So one thing I want to say is that to back up a little bit, they said we could still run the inside ad. We said thanks, no thanks. They said no to the outside wrap. We said thanks, no thanks. You can't give us the one that makes you feel comfortable and not the one that makes you uncomfortable. So we walked away from that because they pulled the outside ad to be clear. But our next.

move. This is one piece of a larger campaign. And so we have a petition. We've already had over 64,000 signatures on the campaign. It's firemusk.org if you want to be able to sign on. And so there's the petition. But we have other strategies and tactics. One of the things that I think we need to be reminded of is that our ancestors and people who came before us didn't always have newspaper ads, right? That's just one way. And there are other newspapers. So that's number one. And we are going to continue to shine a light on that. We are going to continue to pressure Congress because they have abdicated their responsibilities of oversight in a ridiculous way. And as needed, if there are opportunities to file litigation, because we have standing and we can, we will file litigation. And we're going to

continue to work in partnership with other organizations who also are paying attention to what's happening and saying no. And so it's going to be a combination of all the tools in our toolbox to continue to push back and to highlight the corruption that is coming out of this administration. He talked for years about draining the swamp. He brought the whole swamp. The Everglades are in Washington right now. They come on. And so what we're saying is we are going to continue to put pressure. We're not going to stop. We are not going to be intimidated. And we are not going to be afraid because ultimately what is happening now is going to do such drastic harm to every day people in our country and compromise our safety and our personal data. And we can't not say something.

And so, yeah, we're going to continue along this organizing campaign. We are going to continue to raise awareness. We will continue to push members of Congress. We will continue to put policy solutions forward because nobody's saying we shouldn't get rid of government waste. Who in the world doesn't think? But like my grandmother used to say, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. And you shouldn't have somebody like Elon Musk using codes to identify keywords for things that he says are taxpayer waste or somehow corrupt spending. Well, guess what, buddy? I think protecting our nuclear secrets was kind of an important thing, but yet you all decided that we just need to fire everybody who was part of that or ask them to resign, which is the

same thing as firing people these days. And now you can't get a hold of the people who are protecting our nuclear secrets. That does not seem like an appropriate way to make sure that we're getting rid of corruption. In fact, it's opening the door for more and for harm to our country. Yeah, the inmates are running the asylum right now, and it is just astonishing. I thank you so much, Virginia, for the work that you and your team and folks at Common Cause are doing to continue to hold power accountable. Please remind people one more, time where they can sign up for the campaign and also find out more about what you all are doing at Common Cause. Yes. So if you want to sign up for the campaign, you want to sign on, it's firemusk.org.

We also have firemusk.com. So you can go to either one. But you can also go to common cause.org and find out information about what we're doing and to be able to get engaged in your state and be able to become a member. We do have offices in 23 states. So people who are looking at, to volunteer. Get involved. Act. This is not a time for people to sit home. There's a space and a place for everybody who wants to be part of this movement and who wants to be able to move us towards a multiracial democracy that we've never finally achieved, but that we all hope for. And so we just invite people to join us along in this bite. And it's going to be a long one. So we need sprinters and marathon runners. Brilliant. Virginia K. K. Solomon, thank you so much

for the work that you're doing and appreciate your time and joining us here at the new abnormal. Thank you so much. There's been some great work by various journalists chronicling the first month of the Trump-Musk administration, but no outlet has been killing it as consistently as Wired, where stories are constantly being broken, particularly on the topic of Elon Musk's ridiculously named Department of Government Efficiency. Joining me now to talk about all this is Wired Senior Politics Editor Leah Figer. Leah, thank you so much for being here. Andy, thank you so much for having me.

So I said the first month of the administration, it really hasn't even been a month. It feels like a year. It hasn't at all. And to be clear, you didn't just say first month of the administration. You said first month of the Trump-Musk administration, which I loved. I honestly, like, I know people have started that as sort of a hashtag resistance thing, which is not my thing. I don't know what else to call it because I do really believe at this point that Trump is becoming, if not already, there, a figurehead, and that Musk is really the great and powerful laws at this point.

To quote Brian Barrett, Wired's executive editor, Donald Trump may be president, but Elon Musk has installed himself as CEO. Exactly. And I think that's how we have to think about it. No, absolutely. So how are you all constantly staying on top of everything? Are any of you sleeping? Definitely. And in shifts and mostly, is I guess the answer there. But I think at the end of the day we were prepared for this. When Doge was announced, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, at that point involving Vivek Haramami, when it was announced, we dove in immediately and our reporters and teams started looking at what this actually meant. How do you create a new

department without Congress? Is that actually a department to begin with? And where would one situate themselves in the government if they were to go about doing something like this? And that led to our first couple of stories that really broke the news on Musk's Dodge team inserting itself into a variety of agencies at OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, and then GSA, the General Services Administration, and then TTS, the Technology Transformation Services. And obviously, we've seen Doge now just tear apart the government in all these different agencies, USAID, CFPB, NOAA, Department of Education, Department of Energy. They're everywhere now. But in the beginning, it was figuring out where would they start, why would they start there, and who do we need to talk

to understand what's happening? So I want to get into some of the stories that you all have broken and deep dived on. But before I do that, I'm still kind of fascinating by how Wired is just running laps around pretty much everyone else. And I was thinking Wired as an institution, as a magazine, has been around for over 30 years covering technology, how it intersects with politics and culture. And obviously, the people there now are not the people who were there in 1993. But is there something to the history of Wired that has made y'all almost uniquely suited to cover this sort of government takeover by Elon Musk? I think so. I really do think so. And I will say we actually do have a number of people who've been around for decades.

So the ethos of original Wired is still alive and well. I think it's the core understanding that technology can't be separate from life around. us. This doesn't exist on a hill in Silicon Valley at dinner parties in the Bay. This is everywhere. And that obviously was no more apparent than ever this year with everything that has happened with Elon Musk, but not just Elon Musk with so many other folks in Silicon Valley. You have Palantir, you have Peter Thiel, you have Mark Andreessen and Horowitz. It's nonstop. I have to give a really big shout out to our editor-in-chief, Katie Drummond, who joined Wired to lead it about a year and a half now. And one of the very first things that she did, for which I'll always be grateful, because I have a

job in healthcare, was to set up the Wired Politics Desk. And with that understanding, and she had worked at Wired beforehand, like, a decade prior or something, as an intern. So this was like an ethos of, we know that there is an intersection here, and we have to continue exposing it in that way. And who better than us? Who better than the people who have been spending way too long, let me tell you, diving in to all of these different communities and people and technologies. Yeah, absolutely. And as you sort of referenced, in addition to Musk, we really do have a whole sort of the tech pros go to Washington thing going on here. Nightmare blunt rotation and Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And one of the things, one of the many things that Wired has been covering so well

is the links between Doge and the tech industry. I think when McKenna Kelly, who I said to you before we started recording seems to be publishing a story every 15 minutes. She had one that spotlighted how, as the title of the story said, former Palantir and Elon Musk associates are taking over key government IT roles. So who are we talking about here? These are names that you wouldn't necessarily hear, that the regular person wouldn't necessarily hear, that I wouldn't even necessarily hear. But this article is specifically about a number of Musk-aligned tech leaders that have been installed as chief information officers or CIOs at the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Energy. CIOs are, think of them as they're

in charge of this department's tech. They manage an agency's information technology. They have access to a lot of sensitive databases, including classified ones. Basically, these are really important IT professionals that run a decent part of our government. And now we have, in the last couple of weeks this has come together. Different folks from these agencies that are the CIOs that have come from Palantir, that have come from SpaceX and others that have come from not necessarily Musk-related or Peter Thiel-related companies, but other Silicon Valley ones like comma AI. And everyone is, it just kind of appears like everyone is getting in the game right now. Wired also published an article about the new Elon Musk's man in the Treasury Department,

the new fiscal assistant secretary Tom Krause, who's a key Elon Musk ally, he is actually still currently the CEO of Cloud Software Group. This is wild. This is Silicon Valley has not only invaded D.C., but they're bringing Silicon Valley with them. They're not even leaving their old roles. Yeah, like they're not even trying to pretend that there's such a thing

as conflict of interest, are they? No, Andy, what is that? what is conflict of interest. Well, and we were told that Elon Musk himself would determine whether he had a conflict of interest in anything he was doing. So I know we all feel very secure in the fact that he will do so in a fully aboveboard and ethical manner. I have no doubt.

Yeah. Yeah. So these chief information officers, like you said, you don't really think of them when you think of the business world. Obviously, you think of the CEO. Maybe you think of the chief financial officer. You think of the CIO as sort of, yeah, he's a glorified help desk. He's the tech guy. But the fact of the matter is, as you pointed out, and as McKenna pointed out in her piece,

all these organizations, whether they're private or government, at this point, they all run on software and on information. And to have these guys sort of installing their own in those positions, it really seems like analogous to what we were talking about earlier, where Trump may be the figurehead, but Musk is the power. And it feels like these guys are sort of playing a Musk-esque role in these departments. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And I think that these positions were going to become way more familiar with them than we ever recently wanted to in the coming weeks and months for sure. They're CIO's authority over asset management systems.

These are monitoring the laptops of government officials and phones. These are people that have the keys to. the kingdom. And until now, that hasn't really mattered. I think of so many parts of government as a sausage factory. I don't necessarily need to know all of the very, very specific details as to how it's all made. I don't need to know exactly what IT professionals are, you know what I mean? Like, I want to know some, but really not all. We're entering a scenario where we just have to know every single part right now because it's all of the conventions are getting flouted every single day. Yeah, for sure. I want to talk about another story that wired, I believe you, broke.

and I believe it was you. It was the news that the General Services Administration, the GSA, is planning to sell over 500 government buildings. So explain what this means and why it's a lot more important than it might sound at first blush. Yeah, absolutely. The story made me a little bit sad. I'll be totally honest. Basically, we obtained a complete list of GSA buildings.

And the General Services Administration, it manages a lot of federal government buildings across the United States. We're not just talking about D.C. here. We're talking in every single state. So we obtained this list, and on them, the different buildings are designated as core or non-core assets. And of all of the over 1,500 assets on this list, 900 are considered core, and then the rest are non-core. We were also told, though, that core doesn't necessarily mean they're forever safe, but right now the focus is selling off the non-core. These buildings, they're. not the random, crumbling, entirely underutilized government buildings that Dodge wants you to think they are. They actually house some pretty significant satellite offices of government agencies, as well as the offices of U.S. senators.

For example, one of the buildings on this list is the John C. Kaczynski Federal Building in Chicago, which the pronunciation I for sure just butchered, which is embarrassing because I am from Chicago. But this is a beautiful building. It was designed by a renowned architect. It has this big, bold red Alexander Calder sculpture right in front. Every Chicagoan worth their salt has either gone in or walked by or spent time around. Anyways, there's offices there for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, there's a probation offices, the IRS is there, a couple of others. It also houses the Chicago offices of Democratic senators from Illinois, Tammy Duckworth, and Dick Durbin. That's nuts. They're just selling the senator offices. That's wild. And then similar situation in Boston, the John FK FEPFERAL building in Boston, also listed as a non-core asset, holds offices for Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, the two Democratic Massachusetts senators.

It was pretty shocking discovering these. There's been a strong push for GSA for a number of years now to either sell government buildings or reconfigure them, make them better for people to work out of what have you. There's been an issue without a big return to office mandate that they've been underutilized, less than 50 percent occupancy. These are all real things for sure. But these things have to happen slowly is what we've been told by sources. So I think a lot of folks have been taking solace in, say, some of the federal court orders that have been coming down, for example, blocking some Doge access to the Treasury and what have you. So it remains to be seeing what different things can be undone, that USAID, et cetera. If you sell a building is gone, and it's not 100% clear, are they going to be renting it out to senators?

Are they, like, what's, is it Elizabeth Warren's Senate office brought to you by META? I have no idea what the game plan is here. But it's pretty shocking and fast. Well, that was kind of my, I was going to ask you if I was being sort of overly cynical here, which is pretty hard to be these days. Yeah, try me. Definitely try me. I know.

This sort of has the feel of something where the government, under the auspices of Musk, says, hey, we're selling this building. And Musk cronies or private equity firms or whatever. snap up the buildings, possibly at a fraction of what they're actually worth, and then rent the office space back to the government, and they make a nice chunk of change. It's totally possible. Look, I don't want to speculate in my current role, but I think I wouldn't be surprised if something like that happened. Sources were telling us about this in particular that speed really does appear to be a priority here and how the usual process of which there are

a couple of buildings a year kind of thing, there is the public notice, local government, movements, nonprofits, et cetera, they can put in requests or dibs or offers to be able to work out of these buildings, many of which, by the way, are suited to have classified meetings and documentation and things like that. But it appears that GSA might not be following that usual process anymore. And so I think there's just so much that can happen here. And we're still going through everything on this list. It's a lot. Yeah, it really is. So you brought up the speed with which this is happening with the buildings. That leads me to another piece that was published at Wired by Brian Barrett. And that piece was called Doge's Race to the Bottom. And it sort of talks about how, and look,

obviously one of the reasons that were sort of cry laughing about how the past three weeks have been insane and feels like a year is the rapidity with which Doge seems to be dismantling the government. And Brian Bartlett in this piece says that, yeah, the speed is the point. Brian is spot on, and I'm not just saying that because he is my boss. That's what's happening. It's wild. He, in this piece, which I encourage everyone to read on wire.com, he makes an analogy to dodge picking agencies off one by one based on slasher logic. I can't not think of like the scream franchise. When we're coming up with this, it's so fast.

Every single day is something new, but also somehow the same. And that is, of course, like Brian points out, that's the strategy. Who can keep pace here? We were joking at the beginning of this is my team sleeping. We got to have very serious conversations about the fact that this is going to be going on for some time. We cannot burn ourselves out. We cannot get sick. We cannot be awake at all hours of the day. The politics team is like five people. We are small. And not only the media keeping pace, but also can the courts keep up with this? And already we've had a lot of lawsuits and have been watching unions, state attorneys, generals.

Like, everyone has been coming through and suing. And a lot remains to be seen. if Musk and Co will actually follow legal requirements here and the results of these lawsuits. But I don't even know if it necessarily matters because they're doing all of these things before the Supreme Court is going to even have a chance to weigh in. This is just going so, so fast. We've never seen anything like this before. Yeah, I thought the most chilling line in that piece that Brian Barrett wrote was at this pace, Stoge will have tapped into every last government server long before the Supreme Court even has a chance to weigh in. And that was just, that is scary. Yeah, and he's probably right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I just want to point out to our listeners that we are recording this interview on Friday the 14th because Monday is a holiday. So I have no doubt that by the time this interview drops on Tuesday, Wired will have broken anywhere from, I don't know, 12 to 94,000 news stories. And so I'm sort of explaining why we haven't talked about those. But let me ask you, what are the kinds of things, if you can say, that you have in the pipeline? Or is it really, and I don't mean this in a negative way, are you kind of stuck in reactive mode just because so many things are happening?

That's a good question. And without our lawyers on the line, I don't know how much I can talk about things that we have coming. I can say, definitely stay tuned. There's a lot to come. As you guys know, we're the first to identify the six young men who have little to know government experience but are playing critical roles in Musk's Dodge project. We are continuing to track as many people as we can involved in Dodge in the way that they've spread out to so many different government agencies. In terms of reactive versus non-reactive, a massive shout out to so many other publications and journalists out there. we've, because now there is so much other coverage, really excellent coverage across the board,

I don't feel like we're doing this alone anymore right now. And so we have a chance to also do some forward looking at what's to come, what agencies, have we not been talking about enough, et cetera. There's a lot. We're going to be breaking the news. We're going to be explaining the news. Definitely a exciting, if not exhausting time to be at Wired.com. Yeah, absolutely. And to our listeners, I do hope you're all reading Wired now. And I'm sort of proud to say I'm a little bit of a wired hipster because I had a subscription well before all this started.

That was my heart. I know. I know. I'm so ahead of my time. It's a little disgusting, actually. Everyone says so. It's true. We're hearing it more and more.

Leah, thanks so much for everything that you all are doing over there. And you certainly don't need me to tell you to keep it up, but keep it up. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciated it. Danielle Moody Andy Levy Danielle

we're at 28 days later I think we agreed into the Trump administration who's your fuck that guy the entire administration but let me be more specific okay so here's the thing

right I think that folks have to understand that our media right legacy traditional corporate media is no longer interested in providing people with any information

that they need to know they are in a CYA mode of operation, cover your ass. And this story right here today is just, I want to say that it's a breathtaking, but like at this point, nothing is shocking. But the Washington Post backed out of a signed agreement with the advocacy group Common Cause. It was an agreement in the amount of $115,000 to run and add, entitled Fire Elon Musk. That was enough money to cover the front and back page of Tuesday's

newspaper as well as a full page ad within the paper with the same theme inside of Fire Elon Musk. The Washington Post signed this agreement and then surprise, surprise, have decided to back out. But of course they would, right? The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bayes. who we saw on the dais on inauguration day, who has clearly linked arms with Donald Trump, with Elon Musk, and the entirety of Maga. They went so far as to change their mantra or whatever of democracy dies in darkness. No, it does. And it dies at the pen of Jeff Bezos every single day when you either decide to censor your cartoonists or you decide. to not run ads in your paper so that people can understand what is going on right now

and that it is Elon Musk that is operating as the president of these United States who no one fucking elected and no one wanted to provide him the keys to the kingdom and for $270 million was able to buy the presidency and make America the crown jewel right in his desire for manifest destiny and global domination. It is just, again, another sign, another disappointment, another disgusting move by legacy media that has no desire at all to inform, alert the public whatsoever. And they're just going to go along with, I'm sure, rosy headlines and great coverage of all the good things the Trump administration.

is doing. So for that reason, Bezos, the Washington Post, fuck those guys. It's become really hard to figure out what percentage of this is someone like Jeff Bezos just agrees with what is going on with Elon Musk and Donald Trump and doesn't want to run an ad critical of either of them. And how much of it is media organizations being scared, scared scared of lawsuits which we've already seen happen from Donald Trump and we've seen ABC News settle. We've now seen Elon Musk calling for everybody involved in 60 minutes to be jailed. This is Mr. I'm a free speech absolutist by the way, which a lot of people still fall for. Either one is bad.

They both are bad. It's just becoming harder to tell what's what. There are certain things like the owner of the LA Times very clearly supports Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Bezos, I think at this point, it's also very clear that he supports Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I think ABC, I think it was a little different there. I think it was more of a mix. I think they were scared and legitimately wanted to settle. But I also think they want to maintain good relationships with the White House.

This is how gangsters rule. This is how fascists rule by using fear and by getting people to curry favor with them so that they will be exempted from whatever policies come down so that they will not be taken to court. It's all very disgusting and it's all very much the world we live in right now. And there just seems to be very few media owners who have decided that this is the time to fight. And this is kind of the point of owning a media organization is to speak up, is to, as my people say, show up and show out. It's just becoming a very rare thing. And so fuck those guys. So, Andy, how are you beginning this week with your fuck that guy?

Well, it's sort of along the same lines, but it's going on at a school, and it's a school at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, famously the home of the 101st Airborne Division, parentheses, Air Mobile. And the librarians at the school, at an elementary school in Fort Campbell, are removing books that contain references to slavery, the civil rights movement, and, anything else related to a diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to clarksville now.com. Again, we have talked on this podcast. Others have talked as well as the fact that going after quote unquote DEI is not really going after DEI. It's going after black history. It's going after women's history.

It's going after American history, but specifically aimed at going after black American history, women's American history, LGBTQ Americans history, etc. You are now talking about a school that is saying we cannot teach about slavery. We cannot teach about the civil rights movement. In a real sort of horribly ironic twist here, people may remember that President Eisenhower sent the army down to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, to protect black students while desegregation. of schools was going on. The unit they sent was 101 Airborne Division. This is literally the history of that unit, is the civil rights struggle, is protecting black students during desegregation.

I can only assume that all references to that are going to have to be scrubbed from the unit's history. It is just absolutely unreal what we are seeing. Again, we talked earlier in the show about the speed with which all of this is happening. And we are literally watching. the literal whitewashing of history unfold before our eyes. And it's not just eliminating DEI programs at corporations. It is erasing black history. It is erasing minority history in general in the United States. And it doesn't seem like it's going to stop.

And on top of this, there's another military unit that now is backing. out of marching, they were going to march in a parade, a Black History Month parade, in honor of Frederick Douglass. And now they're saying they can't do that. Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest Americans. And this is what we're seeing now. So it goes beyond DEI. It always has. DEI has always been code for rolling back civil rights gains. And it's now going to, it's now going to the point of trying to erase people like Frederick Douglass to erase what the 101st Airborne Division did in Little Rock to help protect black students. It's so frustrating to talk about.

My dad was a history teacher. And I'm rarely grateful that he's gone. But when I see shit like this, there is a large part of me that is very grateful that he did not live to see this because I don't know what it would have done to him. So from the bottom of my heart, all I can say is fuck these guys. It is extraordinary. And I just want to shout out, there's an organization in Florida. that has taken it upon themselves to teach black history on Saturdays, that people are organizing and finding ways outside of the education system

that is failing and purposefully failing folks to be able to link arms and use faith institutions to teach black history. They're doing it in an area in Florida called Delray Beach. to do that. And that's what people are going to have to start doing. You cannot rely on our public education system to teach the truth. Because frankly, it never has. And two, districts are going to lose funding. Right. Like, that's next up on Project 2025's agenda, is that districts will lose funding and history books, which come out of places like Texas, who have said that slavery is basically a glorified internship. And oh, as Ron DeSantis said, didn't they learn wonderful skills as

if, yes, it was the oppressive, brutal, violent, disgusting, depraved slave owners that were teaching skills, right? Give me a fucking break. People are looking for something to do. And something to do is to connect with young people and students and teachers outside of the public education system and figure out what can we offer to families, to parents, to young people so that they learn the truth, create a banned book club or something, because this is not going to stop. It is this school today, and it's going to be all schools tomorrow. So for that, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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